I am now offically living in South Korea, are you excited? Because I definatly am! However, the journey over here was anything but easy. In the past 30 hours I have slept maybe 3-4 hours, I always seem to have a hard time falling asleep on planes with my tall ass. The flight in general was not that bad, only about a 13 hours to get from LAX to Incheon (Seoul) airport. Once there I had a short one hour flight to Busan and once there I met up with some random Korean guy who drove me up north for 2 hours to Deagu, without speaking a word of english which was a littloe ackward.
A Little geography lesson:
Daegu is the thrid largest city in Korea located in middle of the country. It is in a basin flanked by mountains on all sides which I heard traps in the heat in the summer and cold in the winter, making it normally one of the worst places in Korea in terms of temperature and humidity. (Koreans in general seem to be very proud that they have all four seasons, unlike the one season of 'sunny' that I have become accutomed to in Santa Barbara )However, after arriving today in Daegu I found the weather to be rather temperant and nice, my coworker assured me this was a rare occasion...
Once in Daegu I was tired and hungry but I driven straight to my school where I met my director who is a nice man and a few of my co-teachers only one of whom actually speak near fluent english. They were nice and bought me lunch at a really tasty Korean buffet and then I was taken to get a korean bank account at Hana Bank. So, now I have a korean debt card which only works in Korea but its convenient, allowing me to to walk around without carrying a lot of cash. They then took me to my new apartment which is about a 10-15 minute walk from my school (which is called Junior Hearld english by the way). The apartment is small but comfortable and cozy. I have a refridgerator, small stove, TV, Internet, and shower basically all the essentials. The only thing I really wish I had was a coffee machine but I can probably just buy one at some point (I brought 2 pounds of my favorite coffee from Auburn, Oh Yeah!).
After this, I immediately took a short nap, and I have the feeling its going to take me at least 1-2 weeks to get over my jetlag. Tomorrow I am supposed to get my medical check and I think my boss is setting up my Korean phone as well so things are looking good. It is a little lonely at this point, only talking in depth with one person so far who is older than me and speaks Korean so I need to meet some expats soon and start establishing my Korean friend base.
Well I think I am going to watch some Korean TV and try to stay up for at least another couple of hours so I can try and fall asleep at a normal time and wake up on time to go take care of some things with my boss tomorrow...
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