Thursday, August 30, 2007

Meeting the Locals

It's been a few days since arrival, but I wanted to update my blog about my first night.....

On my first night of training two of my roommates and I decided to venture around the institute and neighborhood to find a phone. After calling our families to let them know we were ok, we attempted to go back to our apartment.

What seemed to be a simple path from the apartment to the institute proved to be a bit more confusing late at night, especially with all the signs in Korean. Thankfully our neighborhoood is very safe, because we took a nice 30 minute walk around it until we found Apartment-- ABC (which of course was labeled #15).

After finally reaching the right place, our keys wouldn't work. Every single set of our keys did not work. Thankfully the local Pastor (I'm working for a church-based institute) walked by and offered us some help. He of course opened the lock after the first try-- laughing, saying "you only need to turn the key to the right."

We really thought nothing of it until we found ourselves in a sermon the next morning. Everyone in the congregation got a chance to meet the Americans and British "who couldn't open their doors." I'm glad he got some sermon material and a laugh out of the congregation, even though he wasn't completely accurate in his assesment of the situation! (We've since been able to prove that our key was faulty.)

Even though the Pastor was a bit off, we did appreciate his help. I've since been in many other situations where the locals were so helpful. I'm looking forward to meeting more, under difference circumstances of course.

Sunday, August 26, 2007

I'm Finally Here!



After a 14 hour flight starting in Rochester, N.Y., I've safely arrived in Seoul, South Korea for ten days of training at the language institute headquarters. There are about 30 teachers from the United States, Great Britain, South Africa and Australia all preparing for life in Korea and for the hundreds of students that will soon call us "teacher."

The first couple days have been interesting, but not particularly "foreign." We have of course met a few Koreans, but I'm still surrounded by Americans and Brits most of the time. Apart from the accents, it feels like I'm basically at home.

We've already started discovering the MANY stores that are basically everywhere. In "theory" I can purchase almost everything that I would normally in America, but am going to have a bit of trouble finding reasonably priced clothing in my size (I'm 5'10). It's out there, I just need to explore.-- Something I'm looking forward to.

I believe this is the "Honeymoon Stage" of culture shock in which I feel like it's not really that different from home and I'm on a "high" of being in a new place.

My internet availability is going to be sketchy until I'm peramently placed at a school. But, I'll try to post more photos soon.