I got to the airport yesterday about 2 hours before my flight. I was a little bit sad on the inside on the way there, but I held back my tears. “It will be a great experience,” I told myself. Once I got to the airport and was waiting in line to check in, a lot of emotions were running through my brain. “I’m gonna be gone for a whole entire year. That’s a long time. I’m gonna miss my mommy! I don’t speak Korean! What am I doing????” Since I had such ample to think of these ominous things, I lost it – I started to cry. The people in line were staring at me like, why is this girl crying suddenly? out of nowhere! I told myself to breathe and just to calm down. Everything will be fine. I needed someone to console me, so I called one of my best buds. She helped tons!!
I arrived in Seoul yesterday about a half hour before expected, which was nice. I had a nonstop 12-hour flight from LAX and it was the worst flight I’ve ever experienced. I sat near the back; there were about 2 or 3 more rows behind me. My row only had two seats, so I had a lot of space between me and the window. I don’t even know why it was so bad, but I had a headache, my stomach was queasy, and I wanted to throw up. The guy sitting next to me actually DID throw up. It was his first time doing that on a flight. Speaking of the guy sitting next to me, he was AWESOME. He has such an amazing life story; he was very fascinating and easy to talk to. He was en route to Cambodia and I asked him why he was heading there. He said his girlfriend lives there and I poked and prodded about their relationship-how they met, etc. It turns out that he was going there to get married because his parents had arranged his marriage! This guy is 22 years old and on I believe on his 21st birthday, he and his family went on vacation to Cambodia. Upon their arrival at the airport there was a girl waiting for them and this new friend of mine asked his parents, “Who’s that?” and they said, “Don’t you know her?” and he said, “No, should I? Is that my cousin?” Nope, sorry, buddy, this is your fiancé! He already had a girlfriend too. Poor guy had to break up with her. Such a sad sad story. But he said he’s starting to kinda like her a little bit. It’s crazy though. He was saying to me, “We’re both doing life changing things.”, “I can’t believe I’m coming here single and leaving married.”, “There’s no turning back now.” I felt so bad for him, but I have a good feeling that it’ll work out for him. He has such a kind heart, but it wasn’t always that way. He has a tattoo on his forearm and I asked him what it means and he told me that it wasn’t something he wasn’t proud of and that it stood for the gang that he used to be in. He told me that he was up there in the hierarchy but not quite an OG. He joined the gang when he was 12 years and got out when he was 20. He did a lot of “work” for the gang, but I won’t go into the details. He decided to leave the gang after doing about 4 years total in juvi and state penitentiary. He wanted to turn his life around and from what he has told me, he is definitely on the right track. I got a really good vibe from him and he seemed like a really genuine person. But anyways, he was definitely a great neighbor to be sitting next to. I always sit next to old people, boring people, crying babies, or unfriendly people. It was nice to sit next to someone my own age.
After the flight, I proceeded to gather my two suitcases to add to my duffel bag and “personal item” aka purse/laptop bag. Then I went to find out where I could get a bus ticket. I asked just about everybody on the way out of the airport. I got outside and the cold didn’t feel so bad. Then after about 1.5 seconds, I was FREEZING so I had to put on my puffy jacket. Thank goodness I had it! I instantly warmed up! I bought my bus ticket (my first Korean purchase!) for 9000 KRW. Then I got on the bus and sat next to some guy who smelled of cigarettes. I was happy he got off after several stops. Then he knocked on the bus to get back in for some reason. Soon enough, I found out why. He got back on the bus to yell at some girl in the back of the bus for breaking his suitcase (or something?). “Be careful! TERRIBLE! TERRIBLE! It’s broken now! Be careful!” I had come to Korea reading about how nice Korean people are, and this guy did not seem nice at all. ANYWAYS, I got off the bus and it was FREEEEEEEEEZING, more than when I was at the airport 1.5 hours ago. I proceeded to hail a taxi, but NONE of them would stop for me! I did not want to wait anymore because it was soo cold so I decided to walk. Obviously I walked in the wrong direction so I decided to go back to where I got off the bus and ask this nice looking Korean man. I showed him the Korean words of where I was going and I asked “How do you get a taxi? They won’t stop for me!” This guy didn’t speak much Korean, but I guess he understood “taxi” so he steps out onto the street and just sticks his hand out and a taxi almost immediately stops for him. What the heezy!? I tried that for like 5 minutes and NOTHING. This guy does it for 5 seconds and poof! a taxi halts. Then he told the taxi driver where I was going and helped me put my heavy suitcases into the back seat. This fellow was quite helpful. Kamsahamnida, mister. The taxi driver was also very nice and his English was really good! He had actually spent about 7 months in North Carolina working. He drove kinda slow and he took me down a one-way alley, going the wrong way, but I arrived safely at the university dorm, so I didn’t care. I checked in and even got gifts! EPIK (English Program in Korea) must be super rich or something because they gave us EPIK clocks, EPIK towels, multi-colored EPIK pen, a sandwich, a water bottle with some Korean guy on it, an orientation booklet, and an EPIK sweater. I’m sure they spent billions of won on this stuff. So crazy how well they’re taking care of us. They seriously feed us every 5 seconds, or so it feels like it. We, of course, have 3 meals a day and then out of nowhere, they’ll have snacks and drinks for us (e.g., after we get out of class at 9pm). It’s great!
I’m sharing a room with an awesome girl named Shirlen. Isn’t that a pretty name? She’s from TEXAS. When she told me that, I thought to myself, oh no. A Texan. But shortly thereafter, she clarified that she is not a republican. Needless to say, I took a sigh of relief. She is very talkative, social, nice, and friendly. I’ve met a lot of other people too, from all over the world—South Africa, Australia, Ireland, and of course America. Talking to some of these people makes me feel really uncultured. They seem know so much about a lot of places and have traveled way more than I have and have lived in countries I’ve never been to. That being said, I also think I’m the youngest person here. There may be other 23 year olds, but I haven’t met any. The youngest I’ve met so far is 24. Not that much older than me, but still older. But talking to these people reminds me why I’m here- to have this amazing experience living in another country, learning a new culture, a new language, and to improve the English abilities of Korean kids. I have to remind myself of that everyday because it is fairly overwhelming to be here, but I know I won’t regret this in the end.
Anywho, I just finished my first full day of orientation. We first had an opening ceremony which started off with a high school sulmoni “band”. Not sure if band is the right word, but it’s a group of these boys who play percussion instruments: drums, gongs, etc. It was AMAZING! I wish I brought my camera to the orientation! I’ll try to find someone with video or a photo or something, but they played with so much energy and passion. it was so great to watch. They were rocking out on those drums! They were shaking their little Korean heads like crazy. I loved it. Then there were some speakers. One notable one was Hyunwoo Sun. He’s a Korean who speaks impeccable English, of course with a little bit of an accent. He taught himself how to speak English. How amazing is that? That is one smart guy. I was pretty inspired. He talked about Korean history and culture. Some things he spoke about were why Koreans hate the Japanese, and why Koreans are interested in whether or not you’ve eaten and how old you are. It was nice to hear what he knows about his culture, which is quite a lot!
After that, I opened up a Korean bank account! Can’t wait to fill that baby up with some won! It was a fairly easy process, but the lady helping us with the application was saying that it’s very confusing and even she doesn’t understand the form. Even when she was explaining it, the examples didn’t match what she was saying, but overall it was easy. Just print your name (last name, first name) and sign. There’s practically no room for me to write my name and sign, but she assured us that we could just write over the Korean characters. It was weird. I didn’t understand a thing. for all I knew, I could’ve been signing my life over to North Korea. We filled out our forms and they collected them to give to the bank for us. See? Easy process. I don’t even have to go to the bank to get an account. They do it all for us.
Then there was a lecture on classroom management and how to dole out punishments and how to keep control of a classroom. There was one section on “Techniques that don’t work”. I am definitely guilty of some of those techniques, such as "Don't smile on the first day. Be stern first and then have fun later." I hope I can be a good teacher!
At the end of the day, we had Korean lessons! this was the highlight of my day. Obviously, I’m in the beginner course, so we were learning the Korean alphabet. It’s so confusing and things sound the same with a very slight difference. I hear the difference but I can’t retain the difference. I think I have most of it down though. We’ve learned most of the alphabet and tomorrow, we have a quiz. eek! we even had homework tonight too. Just a few pages. I haven’t had homework in a looong time. I even studied a little bit! But just after a couple hours of lessons, I can already read some Korean! It’s very exciting!
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