Food and Rain

As you can imagine, there are definitely a number of differences in culture, and many problems can come up when you know very little of the language.  First off, I probably could have found my way home the other night if I knew Korean and could explain something to the cab drivers.  Instead, I was useless and turned into a long distance walker for one night.  I initially thought that eating in restaurants would be a problem, but most of the places have pictures in their menus, so you just point to something and hope its good.  For the most part, everything I've had has been pretty good, so this plan has worked out well. 

However, there are certainly some exceptions.  We have a cook at our school, who makes food everyday for lunch.  This allows me to try a lot of things before I try them in restaurants.  There are noodles here that look like rigatoni (long, hollow and narrow noodles), but they aren't hollow.   They come in a red sauce, that looks like spaghetti sauce.   The cook at school makes them, and I think they're great.  Most of the dishes here are pretty spicy, but nothing I can't handle.  Kristin and I decide to get a large portion of these noodles at a food court, assuming they will be good.  Kristin eats about 5 food noodles, I might have had a few more then that, and both of us were burning up.  I quickly looked like a tomato.  I felt like shit for a good while afterwards.  It certainly didn't taste like tomato sauce, and I later find out that its actually red pepper sauce.  Its not always that spicy but since I have no idea how to ask if something is spicy, I'm just going to avoid the damn things for a good while.  My first rule of life here is to understand that red sauce is definitely not spaghetti sauce and if I want to avoid a ring of fire, avoid it.

Apparently its rainy season here, something to do with typhoons (same as hurricanes).  Meaning it rains a shitload,  almost everyday it seems.  My first day of work it was pouring outside, so I'm forced buy an umbrella.  I think this may have actually been my first umbrella purchase of my life.   Days that start out sunny, soon turn to rain. Luckily, almost every store sells umbrellas, so when I get caught in the rain, I just buy a new one.  If its raining, its pretty damn hard to spot someone without an umbrella.  Everyone appears to be afraid of the rain. I guess that includes me because somehow I turned into a wimp and need to buy one for my two minute walk home after work when I forgot mine.  After one week, Kristin and I have three umbrellas.  I'm on pace to have about 150 umbrellas by the time I return to Canada. 

First couple days of class, and one big adventure

My first day of school was pretty basic, I mainly shadowed the other teachers to get a feel of how the classes were taught, and a little bit of how the curriculum was structured.  The school is run by McGraw-Hill. Although the text and additional reading material for the students is great, the structure that our school uses is pretty confusing, and not what is recommended.  However, the school is new, and I'm sure it'll take a while to work out all the kinks and allow everything to run smoothly.  I taught my first class and it was pretty easy.  Pretty sure I'm a pro already.  No education and no experience equals a sweet teacher.  My boss apparently tells the other teachers that she thinks I'm pretty cool, so that's a good first impression. Before I leave work though, I get them to write down my address to give to the cab drivers so I can find my way home.

Before I came to Korea, I was in contact with Brian Mann, who was leaving to go back to Canada a few days after I arrive.  After a little email tag, we arrange to meet at Suwon Station.  I haven't seen much of the city yet, so I have no idea how big it is, and figure that meeting at this place won't be overly difficult.  I decide that since it's only day two in the country, that attempting to figure out the bus schedule may be too much for me at this point, so I take a cab.  Before I leave, I get an alarm clock because I have no way of waking up in the morning without one.  I assume we'll be drinking and attempting to get up without one could be a problem.  I get it at HomePlus, a huge store that has a supermarket, appliances, and clothing.  Its huge, 5 floors.  Following a ten minute cab ride, I arrive at Suwon Station, the only subway station in my city.  I didn't expect the subway station to also be a huge shopping mall, that's 5 floors and packed with people.  Before I left, Brian told me to meet him at the top of the stairs by the escalators, or something along those lines, and if I had trouble to call his girlfriends phone number.  Seems pretty straightforward right?  Well, first off, I get to the front entrance of the place, and there are two big staircases and some escalators, right place? Nope.  Brian is no where in sight. I go into the mall, and of course, there are lots of escalators, so I move around the mall hoping to find a tall, scrawny white man.  No luck. 

I move onto plan B, call Brian's girlfriend.  You figure that in a huge mall, you would see numerous pay phones.  You don't.  Everyone here owns a cell phone.  The only reason I'm calling Soyoung (Brian's girlfriend) is because he lost his phone.  After wandering around the mall, I find a pay phone and call her.  Instead of a ringing noise, the play music while you wait for the other person to pick up the phone, so I figure that I called the wrong number.  She picks up, I'm shocked because I thought I definitely called the wrong number. Shes not with Brian, but tells me that he's out in front of the mall, where I already was.  I go back outside, and to my amazement, there he is.  We talk for a bit, then go down to the subway to find Soyoung. 

We decide to go and have supper, and eat sumgyupsal (pork that you fry on a grill built in the table) and drink a bunch of soju and wine. I forget my alarm clock there, but luckily I remember and we go pack to the restaurant and pick it up.  Shocking that no one would steal an alarm clock.  After supper, we hit up a pub, do some more drinking.  Following that, we go to a noraebang (a karaoke house).  You get your own pimped up room with tv and karaoke machine, and give er.  There are tons of these in Korea, and surprisingly they're all busy. At this point, I've obviously had a bit to drink because I'm not much of a singer.  We sing and drink some more and then we leave. 

Soyoung tells me that the address I have written down isn't a street address, but the area I live in.  They say to pick a place the cab driver knows near your place and get him to drop you off there.  I choose Homeplus.  He drops me off there, and since I had only been there once, and was sober when I did, I get pretty lost, and wander the streets of my area for about 4 hours.  Everything looks the same, so I keep thinking my apartment is on a specific street, I walk down it, check it out, and find out that its not my street.  At last, around 7am, I make it home, extremely relieved and still holding my alarm clock.  I grab a quick shower, and decide to lay down for a bit before school starts at 9.  I attempt to set my alarm clock and then dose off.  I wake up to a ringing at my door.  Its my coworker, and its 1030.  I bought a fucking alarm, put in a lot of effort to keep it with me all night, and couldn't set it properly. We go to school, and surprisingly my boss is happy that I came back and didn't run away as opposed to being mad that I was late.  I think its because she thought I was pretty cool.  The day seems like it lasts forever.  I'm not hungover, but incredibly tired and my legs feel like a ran a marathon.  Thankfully, it's Friday, and Kristin comes on Saturday.  I don't think I'll have any more of these adventures once she arrives.

Flight to Korea

After being packed and ready to leave for Korea for nearly a week, and thinking that I was suppose to leave on Saturday, Sept 2, but my ticket never actually got booked until that Monday, and I was taking off at 6am Tuesday.  Due to the lovely people at the Korean Consulate in Montreal, I wouldn't be flying with Kristin because they somehow managed to take 3 or 4 more days to process hers then mine.  We left our house around 2, got to the airport and nearly didn't get on the flight because there was some complications with the ticket so I had to call my recruiter at 4am and he had to call Korea and get some things sorted out.  Made the flight, and nothing exciting happened on the 18 hour trek as I slept most of it. 

I arrived in Korea, and was met by a man with a sign with my name on it at the airport.  I assumed he worked for the school but he was actually just a driver.  The drive to my school where I was getting dropped off was only 100km but it took us about 2 hours because the traffic.  This ride was my first experience witnessing the awesomeness that is Korean drivers.  There favorite thing to do is cut other people off, no matter the speed, and it appears as though that when you do it, you can just turn your four way flashers on, and I think that everyone all of a sudden is fine with it.  My driver had a sweet GPS system that even told him how much he would need to pay at the next toll station, and had TV and everything on it.  All I was really able to see on the drive was countless high rise apartments, sweet drivers and four way flashers.

I finally arrive at the school, which is on the 7th floor of a building but much smaller then I expected.  I really didn't know what to expect though because I had no details about the school except the name.  The school is very nice though, and I meet all of the staff which are very nice as well. There is another foreign teacher at the school from South Africa.  I'm pretty pumped about this because I expected everyone else to be Korean, and now Kristin and I will have someone to talk to in English.  Turns out all the other teachers speak good English too though, so it doesn't make a whole lot of difference. 

Following meeting everyone at school, they bring me to my new apartment, which is only a 2 minute walk to school.  Its a bachelor apartment, that still needs some things such as a stove, cable, and internet, but I have pretty much everything else.  The shower is something else, there is no shower stall, just a hose with the sink on one end and shower head on the other.  You have to turn on the hot water before you use it, and I was unable to figure this out so my first shower in Korea ended up being a ice cold one.  Without TV or internet I was forced to continue something I've been trying out lately and will probably be a huge shock to everyone............................reading.  I know, its pretty outrageous, but true.