Arrive Finals

This is the last of the arrival series and should bring us up to current day Korea.

Stella and Paul came over to my apartment after they got off for the day. They showed me around the town which I had already gotten lost in a few times since. We went to get my fist real meal in Korea right off the bat and thank god because I was starving at this point for something else besides candy from the local 7-11. Luckily for me this restaurant had a picture menu so I chose the most familiar item on the menu…sushi. For 2,000 Won (or 2 dollars) I had 8 of the best California rolls I have ever had! I don’t quite remember what everyone else got so I will move on. We continued to walk around town with them showing me some places to remember. One of these places is the family mart. Family Marts are basically mini full grocery shops. They are usually a few isles with smaller cooler sections and everything is very compact in them. There is a Family Mart brand name strand but much more that resemble this basic structure. Some of them have more items and others better fruits and so on. I have one literally right across the street from me that has fantastic red apples. 

And a man we call lurch.

We parted ways and I went back to the family mart to do a little grocery shopping.  The next few days were spent me sleeping still trying to get my full body back on track here. Also with no phone or internet in my apartment yet I felt very isolated. I mean I have always felt this way a little bit but this was unlike anything I had experienced before. Sure I had the PC rooms but by the time I went to go get on them everyone in the states were asleep. I remember there was a point in this three day haze that I really thought I had made a huge mistake. I would never be happy here nor did I belong here. If I had money at that point I might have fled the country.

However I stuck it out and Sunday rolled around. Around 6 o’clock my native Korean co-teacher arrived to do a quick inspection of the apartment. We met and made brief small talk. After the inspection was done she told me she would pick me up on Monday for my first day of classes.

My arrival to the school on my first day was an eye opening experience. The drive there alone left me so awestruck I forgot to take pictures of it (this was the pace of the whole day.) I am use to mountains visiting family in the hills of Virginia but for some reason these mountains seemed so much more to me. The valleys were very small as were the houses in them. Every once and a while you would see a bigger house on stilts on the side of the mountain but the farther North I went the rarer those got. I asked my teacher about this and she said that these small little towns have been here since before the war and at one time the whole country was full of them. Only lately have the bigger cities started to build north again. The mountains are nearly impossible to describe let alone driving through them. The pictures do them little justice but they give you an idea.

On a note to myself; this is a much better place to do the scarewolf video I have been planning for a while now.

Arrival at the school was the perfect timing. All the kids were in their homeroom classes so my entry was still unknown to them.  I arrived to meet the faculty (none of which speak English besides my co-teacher) and the Principle. With a warm smile he greeted me with a handshake. I greeted him with a very low bow while shaking his hand.

In Korea it is customary to bow to your superiors when meeting or saying hello. The principle of course deserves a very deep bow whereas a middle aged woman who gives me someone deserves a bow but not so low. With this said you never want to substitute a head nod for a bow as most people will see this as rude. These see it as being lazy and you might as well not bother. Now when someone who is not of your level greets or says goodbye to you they bow but you do not. Example: my students bow when I give them candy for doing an extra goof job but I do not bow to them. I cannot intenerate this enough but it is all about respect in Korea. So much so it is embedded into their language.

Anyways, back to the school. I walked into the office to see that all the teachers share an office.  I got my own desk and school laptop. While waiting for my first class to begin a few students came into the office for one reason or another but when they spotted a new teacher their eyes got as big as dinner plates. The boys and girls alike seemed very shocked and shy once they saw I was in the office. I do not blame them for the simple fact that these are very small town kids who see maybe one American every two years or so let alone someone to tall and big as me. The girls were the funniest first reactions for the sheer fact of how shy they are. One would come in and see me, give a quick startled cry and shimmy out of the office. She would tell her friends and they would come stare as me through the crack in the quarter opened door. They would all giggle and whisper to themselves but when I would look at the looking at me they would all bashfully run off.  A few of the bold ones came in and tried to talk to me in English but it was very simple greeting stuff (these kids level of English is below that of the average middle schooler, for now.)  One kid, who is quickly becoming my favorite student, came in and wanted a very gangster handshake. He is a good student but he LOVES to do weird handshakes, high fives and shoulder pounds.

I had all of my three grade levels that day so I got to do introductions to all the students. I made a powerpoint telling them a little bit about myself with my hobbies, family and photos of said things.  Then they got to ask me questions. The most common questions I got were: are you single, are you married, do you have kids, how big is your shoes and one class clown was asking me for my sister’s number. After the day of introductions my co-teacher took me to the hospital for my initial checkup. Without going into great detail I will say that socialized medicine is the way to go; dirt cheap, clean services and very quick and efficient.

For the remainder of the week I got my feet on the ground and started meeting other teachers in my town. Come to find out there are around 12 teachers in this town and they are all wonderful people. We had a going away dinner on Thursday for the man who gave me lesions on being a good teacher on Wednesday. 90% of the teachers got together for this as he is the leader of the group of teachers, so to say. There was not one teacher who was from the same area or state and half of them are from other countries. I will save talking about food for later entries but as you can see they know how to eat. By the end of the night and a half bottle of Soju later I was crying from laughing so hard at some of the jokes being told.

This weekend I wanted to see Clash of the Titans (or Titan as its known here) so we took a bus to a town called Bosan. Bosan is where the big American base is in the North. The second I got off the bus and started walked around I started feeling sick to my stomach. I couldn’t figure it out at first but then I started to notice why. That whole town has been catered to the American solders coming to party off base. From all the Pilipino in town (Pilipino women are the primary hookers in town, I am not joking. Red light and call girls all over) to all the Pawn shops I felt sick from seeing the worse parts of America collected into one town. I’ll save a movie review but know while I was waiting for the bus that night I had plenty of time to open my ears to the solders around me parting. Men talking about big dicks, fighting, getting laid, how drunk they are and screaming at anything they don’t like. I got on the bus light night with utter disgust in my heart at this portrayal of Americans. Now I think it was just too soon for me to enter an area which is such a surreal American dream to these people. I got off at my town where barley any English spoken thanking god I was living here and not there.

As I write this now I am sitting on my bed with a pink bed sheet thanking the heavens for the opportunity that has presented itself to me. I have been to Seoul twice (once again entries based only on this will come later), found some good sources of friends and good food and finally have my feet dug in firmly in this place.

The next year should prove to be quite interesting, to say the least.