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.
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.
posted by Michelle at
9:40 PM
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