Wednesday, August 17, 2011

I'm Alive!!!

Hey everybody! Sorry it took so long to post this, but I'm here and I made it and everything is going fine.

Here is a short description of everything, minus the short part.  Unfortunately I left the U.S. without realizing that my digital camera didn't have a memory card.  So....I have no pictures yet.  Sorry!  But they'll be exciting when you see them!

We (me and Mom) got up at 2 am on Sunday morning and drove to Emory, where Dad met us and took me to the airport in Dallas.  We got there at 5 am or so and went through the check-in just fine.  The bag weight limit was 50 pounds each for 2 bags, and I weighed them over and over and over before I left stuffing as much crap as possible in them.  When we got to the airport they weighed 51 pounds each and I almost got charged extra but the lady behind the counter was really nice and let it slide. :)

The flight to San Francisco was awesome because the middle seat was unoccupied.  I felt drugged because I only had 1 hour of sleep, so I listened to music and slept most of the way.

In San Fran, I had a 3 hour layover, where I called a few people and copied down phone numbers into my notepad and had a really good hamburger for the last time.  Up until boarding the flight I didn't know my seat number, but I got really lucky (blessed) again and only 1 person was sitting next to me for the row, so we had an extra seat and I got to sit by the window.

Korea itself when we flew in was beautiful but covered in fog.  When we left the airport the sun was going down and I couldn't even see the sun.  The fog was really dark and the road was really high, so as we drove through it almost looked like a video game.  The buildings were tall and rose above the road, but you couldn't see the bottoms of the buildings because of the fog.  Behind the buildings on both sides were green mountains and trees.  It was all very creepy but beautiful. 

When we got close to where the school is and my apartment is, we drove in among the tall buildings so I couldn't see much anymore.  The neon signs were visible.  Some were in English, some in Korean.  Not far from where I live is the "E-Mart" which is pretty much the Korean equivalent of Wal-Mart.  Yesterday I walked there and bought an alarm clock, a hairdryer, and paper towels.  I used my Korean dictionary to navigate, pointing to what I wanted (a hairdryer), and then the lady wrote down in Korean where I should go.  From there I pointed to the paper asking where it was, and after about 10 minutes I made it.  I made a list of prices of everything, which I'll show in a later post.

Today was teacher orientation day 1, and it all went very well.  My classroom has four large windows, and I will be teaching 9th grade English, 10th grade English, 9th grade honors, 10 grade honors, and a research class on how to write a good paper using the internet without plagiarizing.  My closest co-worker is Annie, and she's teaching the upper-level high school English and she's from Seattle, Washington. 

My apartment is very nice except that it smells a little bit.  The landlady said that's because of the rain and when it stops raining so much it won't smell.  (It's too bad South Korea has all this rain, because if they gave just a little bit to Texas things would be better on both sides of the ocean.)  My closet is VERY BIG!!! I realized it's the best closet I've ever had.  Seriously.  Pics to follow...

I have a washer, a small fridge, a bed with a headboard (made of plastic), a desk, a rolling chair, a small pullout table, a stovetop (no oven), a shower with no entrance (which makes a bit of a mess), and a small cabinet in the bathroom, a normal toilet, and a TV and a small shelf.  The main room is about 12 X 12 I'd guess. 

I will say however that I had a bad experience yesterday morning when I took a shower for the first time.  First of all, I have to turn on the water heater before I want to take a shower.  So I did that and then waited 10 minutes for it to heat up.  Well, it didn't heat up until I turned on the shower.  Then I had to wait 5 more minutes.  THEN, while I was taking a shower I burned my skin on the pipes.

The food so far isn't bad.  I have some pre-cooked meat in my fridge and a little bag of rolls that I make little sandwiches with and a 1/2 gallon of milk.  I can only drink bottled water, but a girl told me about a store that delivers bottled water for free.

Signing off...

1 comment:

  1. Glad to hear you are having so much fun, Julie! Keep the excellent updates coming. -Joey

    ReplyDelete