we had to go to today for orientation and to get our books. we got our class schedules too, i teach 6 classes MWF and 4 classes TTh. whoo. now i have to do lesson plans for all those. eek. that's what sunday's for. hayley and i managed to go to emart on our own (without cindy's help) and i got some hangers, trash can, etc. i love my closets here, i want to steal them, hehe. i'll put pics up soon. i rearranged my apt tonite so that my bed is in the closet room. now it's like i actually have a bedroom. 

i actually met a girl today on the elevator, maybe like 12 or so, who spoke english to me. first time that's happened around here. sometimes koreans say stuff to me, but it's usually in korean or so heavily accented i can't tell what they're saying. a lot of times they just laugh at us when we try to mime stuff. or they just talk away in korean despite the fact that we say we don't speak it, hehe. 

oh, and smoking is big over here i've noticed. the packages are all very pretty looking, enticing or whatever. and there's ash trays all over, even in the bathroom at school. i haven't seen any in restaurants though. so weird. and people spit on the street too, i've seen a few as i've been walking along the sidewalk and they just spit. ick.

after a ton of testing, we headed home along with another new teacher, teresa. after stealing hayley's internet awhile, we decided to investigate downstairs near the dumpster to see if there was any furniture to be had. koreans don't believe in secondhand stuff, so they just chuck stuff out by the dumpster. we ended up grabbing a couch for hayley and a desk, drawers, and a mattress for teresa. we got some looks going up the elevator, but oh well. we managed. the guards downstairs for the parking garage were laughing at us too. we were glad he gestured that it was ok that we could take the stuff.

i'm really surprised that not many of the people in shops here speak English. it's even hard to find people my age that speak English. not what i was expecting at all.

so at school we've done a ton of speaking tests for new kids to place them in a level - we have to ask them a few questions and then rate their responses after. some of them just stare at us blankly or laugh and look around the room. and others understand every single thing we say, hehe. i ended up not having to do my presentation on my lesson plan cause the school was so busy, a ton of kids were coming in for tests. such a long day. 

thursday i went with cindy to see one of her friends (erin) who's leaving next week. she was giving away a bunch of her stuff she didn't want. i was hoping to steal her drapes, but she wanted to leave them for the next person (my apartment doesn't have drapes). but i did get a cup, a blow dryer, an alarm clock (mine got squished on the way over), and other misc things. whoo. she mentioned that one of her friends had an extra couch too i could have. i went to hayley's for internet, and then came back to head to bed. suddenly, i noticed a couch in the "bedroom/closet" room! i was so confused, but i figured they must've dropped it off while i was gone. the key codes to get into rooms are really easy, the ones that avalon sets up. my room is 603 and my code is 0603. i ended up changing mine to a different one after that though.

today we had to get up early to go in for a training session with other new teachers. apparently we missed the first 2 days of training on mon & tues, which sucks. but everyone keeps saying we'll be fine. we listened to some of the other teachers' examples of lesson plans and the director of the school gave us some tips for teaching. they told us we have to prepare 4 lesson plans for friday, which freaked me out. we have to present one to all the teachers too. i'm so lost, i have no idea how to do it! classes start on monday too! i guess i'll just have to learn by doing and hope it gets better. avalon is very structured, kinda too structured cause you have to do a ton of lesson plans. they haven't set up a schedule yet either, so we don't really know what level we'll be teaching. apparently like everything is last min here in korea. eek. and food is soooo spicy! i've already had some meat that about burned my tongue off. not a fan of that. i need to get more groceries so i can fix my own food more, instead of just getting take out. 

everyone is really nice though, even though i'm kinda worried about actually teaching a class. i did find out that a class shouldn't be more than 12 kids. so that isn't too bad. now i just have to try to keep their attention. all  the kids are so cute though. i'm surprised that not many adults seem to speak english, like in most shops. it's really hard to explain what you're trying to find when no one understands you. hopefully i'll get better at that or learn some korean to get by, hehe. i've seen some american food places, like mcdonalds, burger king, kfc, outback, baskin robbins, subway, dunkin' donuts. i think a couple of them are in walking distance but the others i'd have to get to by bus or subway. the area i live in is called migeum, and the school i work at is in the sunae area.

the shower in my apartment leaks a bunch though to a drain under the sink. i found that out the hard way when it leaked on my clothes. i don't have internet yet, i asked about getting it but i dunno when it's actually going to happen. right now i'm at school doing speaking tests for kids. we're in between kids at the moment. i guess i have to get my arc card before i can get internet.

second day

so, tuesday i got up and ventured downstairs to find food. i didn't really have anything cause the box of stuff they gave me just had drinks and some cookies, along with dishes, pots, and toilet paper. there's a lil convenience store in our apt building along with some restaurants and other stores on the first floor. i bought some instant noodles, fruit cocktail, and chips . . . but i couldn't even make the noodles cause i couldn't figure out how to turn on the stove! it's gas, and i've never used that kind. i found out later from cindy that i had to turn on the gas first on a pipe next to the stove. oops, hehe. the apt is really nice though, i'll put up pics soon of it. i'm really sad there isn't a microwave though. just the stove-top and a pull-out grill thing. there is a dishwasher though, and a washer/dryer.

anyways, a TA from the school came to pick me up in the afternoon, and i found out that there's another girl in the building who just got here too to work for avalon. she's down on the 2nd floor and her name is hayley. i'm on the 6th floor. she's from new zealand and she loves flight of the conchords! she talks just like them, it cracks me up. it was great to have someone else who's in the same boat as me. a lot of the other "new" teachers have been here much longer than us, some for a couple weeks. anyways, the TA took us to our school on the subway, only 2 stops from our apt. the school is really colorful inside, like no school i've been in. they threw us right into it though, we had to do speaking tests for new students to see what level they were at. it wasn't too hard, we just had to ask them a few questions then rate their responses depending on the content, articulation, vocab, etc. we got better as we went along. we headed back to our apt after that, stopping to get groceries on the way. that was an adventure, trying to find english on things so we could figure out what stuff was. the money is confusing too, it seems like so much when you buy stuff but it isn't really. we tried to find converters too cause i need them for my plugs, but wandering around to convenience stores got us nowhere. 

i used hayley's internet (she can get it from the businesses on the first floor) to talk to cindy, and we managed to meet up at a subway stop and go to a store where i finally got a converter! but they only had one :( we went to a store called e-mart, it's like a korean walmart. i finally made my noodles once we were back and cindy told me how to use the stove. i felt so proud of my noodles :) we met up with hayley too. 

first nite in korea

so i made it to korea, obviously. the flights took forever, and i barely made the flight to seoul in san francisco. my flight from chicago to san fran was delayed a bunch so when i made it the gate for the seoul flight they were saying last boarding call! i was so happy i made it, and i sat next to a really nice korean businessman. i talked to him about korean life some and my job, and he told me not to drink too much soju (type of alcohol, not sure how to spell it). I slept some on the plane, but I had already slept on the other flights so it was kinda off & on. I watched a couple movies, but not the whole thing cause I started watching them after they'd started, so I just kinda flipped thru the choices. They had xm radio to listen to too on all the united flights, so I did that a lot. On the long flight they gave us pretzels first, then dinner (chicken or beef, i had chicken), then a snack of noodles which i saved, another light dinner which i didn't really eat cause i was feeling kinda sick from the long flight - it was a hot sandwich of some kind that i didn't touch after smelling it made me stomach turn. i just ate the yogurt that came with it. they provided a lot of drinks too. the flight went on forever, and i felt kinda sick, like car sick, from being on planes for so long. my stomach was so pissed by the time i made it to korea. 

i actually made it thru immigration and customs really quick though, and got my baggage right away. Customs wasn't bad at all, I just walked right thru. they gave us a paper to fill out on the plane about whether we had anything bad and you just hand it to them and walk right on thru. i was so happy they had carts to use to put your stuff on, otherwise i would've been screwed. the driver was waiting for me after i went thru customs with a sign with my name. he had a van parked outside and he took me to my apt, about an hr from the airport. drivers here are craaaazy. i tried not to watch.

once we got there, it took the driver awhile to get my door open for me. it has a keypad for the lock, and the code he had wasn't working, but it finally did after he called avalon to ask about it. it was so strange to go in and be entirely alone, especially when i opened my laptop and discovered there was no internet to be had in my apt. i'm up on the 6th floor of the building. so i ventured outside - it was about 10/10:30 by that point. i wandered around the streets a lil while trying to find somewhere with internet. it's so lit up here at night! i feel like i'm in a clean, korean new york city! everything looks the same to me though, so i was really afraid of getting lost. i managed to find a cafe and sorta mimed to the workers what i was looking for. i ended up just opening my laptop to see, and i did pick up signal so i bought a smoothie and stayed there a while. i headed back to my apt around midnite. i was a lil worried about how late it was, but i've heard that south korea is very safe too. i made it back to my apt with no trouble, but i felt so alone, sitting there in the silence. i couldn't even plug my laptop in cause i never thought about getting converters for the plugs. i wanted to listen to music, but i didn't want to run my battery down. i ended up just going to bed cause i was so tired. i didn't even make it up with the comforter set they gave me, i just wrapped the blanket around me after putting down the fitted sheet.

The apartment is pretty nice, not a lot of furniture though. just the bed, desk, and a chair. there's a tv & dvd player though. and there was a comforter set there for me on the bed, and box of some food and dishes. apparently in korea they don't believe in flat sheets, just fitted sheets, blankets, and comforters. weird. 

i might see cindy tomorrow. it's hard to get together when i don't actually know where i am. the address i have for the apt is in korean. someone is supposed to pick me up tomorrow between 2-3 to take me to the school, i guess for training. i don't have a phone in the room, and i've been looking around to see if i can find a pay phone, no luck yet. i would probably need cindy's help to get a phonecard cause everything is pretty much in korean here. i had a hard time finding somewhere with internet cause i couldn't find anyone who spoke english.