jrkorea's Diaryland Diary
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getting used to it
Friday evening. Yay, the first week of teaching is over! It's been quite exhausting but good at the same time, better than I thought it would be. (that doesn't ncessarily mean it was great though)
I'm going out with the teachers tonight, just around the neighbourhood where I live.
Tomorrow I have to get up mega early and go get an alien registration card in Seoul. It will be a real pain to get there but nevermind.
Hmm.. so what can I say about Korea at this stage. Women do not smoke outside. Apparantly only prostitutes smoke outside. If a Korean girl smokes outside someone is liable to come up and start abusing her. Western women smoke outside cuz they are considered to be prostitutes anyway. I never do because I never see anyone do it. Maybe Seoul is more progressive but Bundang is very affluent (snobby but in an ok way) place.
The shops here are cool. I love finding odd products you would never see anywhere else. Koreans love to shop.
They are pretty cool about foreigners in Bundang. I never see any other foreigners when I walk around the streets but noone looks twice at me, apparantly there is a lot of us around even though I only ever see Koreans. Apparantly in the country towns (even big cities) people stop and stare at you and point and stuff. Kind of funny. I have experienced zero racism, everyone is friendly and helpful, much more so than in Portugal.
Restaurants are fun! the food is great even though Jon says I've had all the best of it and it's downhill from here. My favourite so far is kalbi which is beef you cook yourself in the middle of your table on hot coals, it comes with three soups, a salad, kimchi (pickled cabbage national dish, yuk) and other sauces and things and rice. It costs about 5 euros and even cheaper in Jon's area.
I feel on my feet financially again already even though I haven't been paid. Life is just easy here. I don't get worried about the same things that stressed me in Portugal. Maybe that's because of job security and good salary.
Not much else at the moment. I got my students to make a poster today of all the milestones or important events in their life. They ended up with things like:
3 years old, broke my leg
5years old, broke my arm
6 years old, got someweirditis
7 years old, fell off my bed and broke a toe
9 years old, Korea hosted the world cup
10 years old, hit my head, went to hospital.
Wow, makes me wonder what kind of parenting goes on here!
Kids are funny, the more rules you give them, the better they behave. I've started making up silly rules simply for the sake of having them. And when I draw on the board, I make my drawings really bad so the kids all laugh. Today, just for a change, I drew a really good arty pic of a face and the kids sat there with mouths open. It's good to mess with their heads now and then.
6:31 p.m. - Friday, Aug. 01, 2003
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korea entries (finally)
Teaching was a bit better today. Not as exhaustive.
Made it to a PC bang to finally update the entries for this week.
I still haven't unpacked.
I'm scared I'll go home and fall asleep!! I really want to get back to a regular sleeping pattern.
My studio apartment is quite small but ok by Korean standards. It's fairly new but cheaply constructed. It has cable TV. I can't wait to unpack and fix it up nice and cosy. And buy a lamp.
I don't know if I'll see Jon this weekend. I was meant to go into Seoul with him to get my alien registration card but now it looks like i'll have to find my own way. I haven't seen him since Monday.
As usual when we are apart I have major doubts. i guess i thought we would be spending this first week together since he has been on holiday this week and now doesn't seem to care if he sees me this weekend either.
whatever. i can't be bothered to get into it all right now.
i have other worries right now that i can't be bothered to get into either.
i feel depressed but not in a bad way. just displaced, it's weird starting somewhere new and spending a lot of time on your own figuring things out.
i'm really glad to be here. i think it's going to be a great year.
6:46 p.m. - Thursday, Jul. 31, 2003
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korean kids
some of the kids are getting a bit naughty.
i like the afternoon kids, they are younger and think you are GOD. i hated the young kids in portugal, they were insane. korean kids are crazy too but adorable, i think i prefer teaching kids here which is surprising, i thought i would hate it. i only taught teenagers and adults in portugal in the end and that suited me fine at the time but now having kids is turning out to be great but they are so DRAINING, i'm tired all the time.
went home, finally did a supermarket shop, fell asleep at 8pm Urgh!!
6:42 p.m. - Wednesday, Jul. 30, 2003
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jetlagged STILL
so tired.
i wake up at 5:30am every day.
i'm exhausted by lunchtime (2 hour break).
it is raining non stop but still humid so you are sweating like crazy.
Matt the head teacher took me of a tour of my neighbourhood so i'd know where the supermarket etc was. it's down an escalator through what looks like a florist on one side and a shoe shop on the other, i would never have found it on my own.
went home to get some money and fell asleep.
this is before 6pm!! i woke up at 10 and freaked out thinking it was the next morning till i realised it was dark outside.
worke up again at 2:30am and couldn't sleep again.
6:38 p.m. - Tuesday, Jul. 29, 2003
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started teaching
first day at work.
it's summer intensive which means you start teaching at 9am because the kids are on holidays.
i got there an hour early to prepare my lessons (two 3 hours lessons). i nearly flipped when i realised i was only teaching 5 pages of a children's picture book for the whole 3 hours.
actually there's more to it than that and i think it will be ok when i get more used to it. it gives you a lot of freedom to discuss things with the kids. the classes are very interactive which is good.
wow Korean kids are so cute. and sooo good. even the naughty ones are cute.
boy was i jet-lagged when i finished for the day (5pm) i met Jon and went into Kangnam (in Seoul) where we drank beer in a couple of bars.
they seem very friendly here, customer service is the total opposite of portugal. in lisbon you are desperate to get the attention of whoever is serving you, here you are almost desperate to get away from their attention. still, it's nice.
got home at 9:30pm and fell asleep.
jet lag.
6:31 p.m. - Monday, Jul. 28, 2003
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first day in korea
Woke up at 5:30am.
Erm.
Unpacked a little, had a shower and went for a walk around my neighbourhood.
In the rain.
Who would go for a walk around a small local neighbourhood at 7:30am on a Sunday morning in the pouring rain? Lot's of people apparantly, it was quite odd.
The neighbourhood itself is pretty cool, it's fairly lowrise and mostly residential with quite a lot of local stores and restaurants and bars.
Finally called Jon around lunchtime and met him in Samsung Plaza after a brief orientation at my school.
I think we live about 2 hours apart. I thought it would be 40 mins but it's more.
Anyway we walked through Bundang and back to mine, fooled around a bit and then I fell asleep pretty much out of it for the whole day. Later, we went out and had an amazingly awesome dinner. Shellfish like I've never had before (yeh I know never eat shellfish on your first night in a new country). Then we went back to mine and i fell asleep within seconds again.
6:29 p.m. - Sunday, Jul. 27, 2003
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getting to seoul
Well I finally made it but wow what a journey.
Waited on standby at Heathrow again, sooo boring but nervy as well in case I didn't make it on.
Luckily I got on at the last minute.
Unluckily I only had 10 mins to make it to the departure gate and the sign said it was the furthest one.
I grabbed my very heavily over-excessed hand luggage and ran all the way. This was quite difficult because I had to pretend it was light.
I finally made it to the gate, out of breath, shoulders aching. Yay, the plane was delayed so now I got to sit there and wait for ages.
The girl in front of me in the queue got told she couldn't take her hand luggage on the plane because it was overweight so I quickly jumped to the other queue where the guy was just waving people through. Phew, made it on.
11 hours later and a surprisingly fun trip (I'm normally a nervous flyer) later and I was at Bangkok where I had just 35 minutes to make my transfer.
I ran and ran and finally found the gate but yay that plane was delayed too, so more waiting.
2 or 3 hours later I was in Taiwan. I didn't even know it was a stopover as it wasn't on my ticket. Grumble grumble, got off so they could clean the plane. Soon there was an announcement. The plane was broken (!!)and there would be a delay of 5 (FIVE!) hours. Trust me, if you are ever stuck somewhere for 5 hours, make sure it's not in Taipei, that airport is miserable as fuck. Luckily (erm) a middle-aged Korean man befriended me and helped me out, carrying my luggage and phoning my school for me etc. 5 hours of helping, it got a bit creepy.
Then finally they said we could board but oh no we were taking a plane that was originally bound for Phuket and several disgruntled holiday makers began to block our boarding demanding their plane back. Aaargh. The whole Korean flight had to run around to the other side of the building and board from there.
After that, straight to Seoul. Was met by a porter who was really sweet but spoke barely any English, he drove me to my apartment and kept asking me if this was the way, where should he go? I'm like um duh. It was a 2 hour drive to the town where I live which is called Bundang (outside of Seoul). It was pitch black so I couldn't see any of Seoul on the way but I amused myself by reading all the Hangul signs (I'd practiced more Hangul on the plane). Half the signs are in English too so you can check if you read it right.
The finally to my apartment where the head teacher Matt was waiting. I was so dead tired, called Jon quickly and then collapsed and slept.
It was such a relief to finally be here, I'd been waiting months for this.
6:28 p.m. - saturday, Jul. 26, 2003
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