Year One: The Adventure Begins

I have travelled a lot in my life. Mainly around the eastern half of Canada and the U.S. I even lived in the US for a while. Some of my experiences would help me when I came to Korea, most wouldn't.

In 2000 I hurt my right elbow. It would require surgery and amost a year before I could use my right arm again. My job sucked, working at an incoming call center. I wanted a change. A friend, Hilda, was working in Korea and suggested I come there.

To hear her talk about Korea it was great. She did warn me about some things. The weather, the work hours at the school. To hear her talk about crime you would think it didn't happen in Korea. Unless a foreigner committed it.

On the spot I decided I would do it.

I looked things up on the net and even bought Lonely Planet Korea. Some of the differences I read about seemed interesting. The differences in customs ... unusual. Don't blow your nose in public etc...strange but what they hey, it is another country. So I left for Korea thinking I was prepared.

Most people who know me couldn't believe it. I hate change on a good day. On a bad day I fear it. A vacation they could have believed but not moving halfway around the world to work. Also, this was just after 9-11. People couldn't believe I was flying that far.There were the standard questions about North Korea. Some of my friends couldn't believe I had really gone to Korea until they heard from me via the net that I had landed.

The flight to Korea was LONG. I arrived late afternoon and would love to have just gone to sleep. As I left immigration with my luggage there were throngs of people waiting to meet passengers disembarking. I was told someone would meet me, look for a sign.

A sign? Lightning striking? Dancing girls? Then I saw it ... a piece of A4 paper with my surname on it being held by a nice looking Korean woman. I walked up and introduced myself and had no idea what she said in reply.

I pointed to the sign and then myself. Something registered in her eyes. She said something and pointed down the hallway. I thought I heard Busuh. I pointed to the bathroom and said "1st."

While she watched my luggage I hit the head. Bathroom break and a change of clothes. It was November here but it was hot in the airport. Add to that I had been travelling umpteen hours in the same clothes. I felt better when I got out.

She had 2 bottles of water when I got back. How she got it while watching my bags I don't know and didn't actually think about. We headed for the bus and lucked out. It was loading, and there weren't many people on it. I sat on a side ways row of 4 seats. No one, including my keeper, sat near me. She sat a couple of rows up. I tried to talk to her again but she didn't seem to understand any English. They sent someone to meet me who couldn't talk to me? WTF? Not exactly what I was told to expect but oh well. (In fact I was told by Hilda that all the desk staff spoke English and they would send one of them to meet me.)

My first "culture shocks" of a sort hit me at the airport and on the drive to Cheongju. (The bathroom was a surprise, I had expected squatties and there were none at the airport. ;))

First was the number of people. I come from a small city by our standards. By Korean standards I don't know if they would consider it a city. I am not comfortable with crowds, especially being jostled, on a good day. There were so many people it was mind boggling. The people, the cars, coming and going. It was like a constantly moving sea of humanity. (Or a better analogy, something a foreigner from the US I met yesterday said. It is like a school of fish darting around, almost hitting each other but veering off at the last second.)

Second was the mountains. I have lived most of my life by the ocean. To be surrounded by so many mountains was strange. To make it stranger I ended up at a city pretty much in the middle of the country, surrounded by mountains.

After pondering this for a little while, and having no one to talk to, I ended up sleeping most of the way to Cheongju. Or was it Jeonju? Or Chunju. I had seen it spelled so many different ways I was actually thinking I was going to Jeonju and not Cheongju. :)

When we pulled into the bus terminal it was dark. We got out and the woman was nattering on her phone.

The first thing that struck me was the smells. I couldn't place it. Garbage and something. Later I would find out it was some kind of sour or rotting kimchi smell. It was a little revolting.

I didn't see any familiar faces. Hilda and the others were teaching still so they couldn't come. All the woman would tell me is wait. Ok she didn't actually TELL me that. She said someting that ended "meetuh minutesuh." A few minutes later we went into the bus terminal. We lost the sewage smell. Instead it smelled like kimchi, alcohol, and lots of people. It was kind of disconcerting. People were staring, saying things I didn't yet understand. Some pointing. I felt like a turd in a punch bowl.

Finally the woman gestured to go out some other doors. A car was there. An Asian (ok Korean) guy, looked to be in his early 20's was there. His hair was dyed and spikey. He spoke English. Yes!

His parents run the school. They sent him to get me. The woman who met me had vanished. he said she took the a bus home. I asked him if any of the staff spoke English. He told me they do, and he didn't know why they sent her. She had the worst English. (Little did I know how common places stupid things like that would be.)

We drove ... in some direction. He dropped me off at the school and I met his parents. His mother was the director. She looked kind of frumpy. I hadn't learned the word Adjumma yet, but it kind of fit.

Quick introductions were made. Still no sign of Hilda, she was in class. Then I was rushed off to my apartment. Except it wasn't my apartment. It was my temporary apartment for a week. The parents of the teacher I was replacing were using my apartment. (Why they didn't put them up in this one I don't know. It was actually bigger.) I hate moving. It meant that just as I would get settled in this apartment I would have move to another one. This apartment was actually not bad. Smaller than I was used to but not as small as I was led to expect.

I was SO damn tired it wasn't funny. Of course I had to check out the apartment. There was some food in the fridge. Some books. A balcony with a washing machine with strange writing. (Turns out the teacher who lived here pulled a runner....but worked for a different, affiliated, school.) By the time I finished looking around the apartment there was knocking on the door. School was done so Hilda had dropped by with some friends.

She introduced me to Matt and Dave. There were 2 other co-workers, South Africans, but they didn't come to say hi. Dave could speak Korean and ordered a pizza for me. I had enough of airline food. They were going home after seeing me and would come by in the morning. My first food in Korea ... pepperoni pizza. I ate some pizza and went to sleep. It would be a quiet first night in Korea.

Yeah right!