Not sure I'm much for blogging. Seeing as we are across the universe I hope it will be humorous and informative for readers back home.
Let me start with our travel agent.... Some time in late January I think, we are contacted by a random travel agent, still not sure who "sent" him our way but he was trying to help us out. We inform him we would like to fly our of Charleston WV if possible, so he books us flights out of Charleston SC. We inform Mr. Travel agent this is quite inconvenient and the short story is we fly out of Norfolk VA which was nice because we were able to stay with Deborah, E.Lee and Cameron before we left. Now to Chicago, waiting in the airport in Chicago, meet a guy who looks way to much like a friend of ours, we ask him if he is part of an identity theft scam. He says "no"! We get into conversation long story short he is going to be working with us at the same school, one of only 4 American Teachers. In what seems to be a typical Korean fashion we are hurried on to the jumbo jet in the middle of an insane blizzard only to wait motionless inside the packed jumbo jet for 2 hours while they de-iced our vessel of flight and did whatever else!
Fast forward, now we are in Seoul Korea (short story) we arrive considerably late and must switch flights, get our baggage which comes out dead last, get through customs find our terminal get our boarding passes and board the plane all without direction in 50 minutes. This impossible feet was as it turns out impossible.
Eventually figure out how to using a calling card that we bought, get in touch with our recruiter, he pulls some strings, we get on a train go to a different airport grab a plane we just barely make it on and head to Busan. We arrive not knowing who is picking us up and praying for something to go "right". Short Story, we are met by a man who was looking inquisitively at us and "rescued" by our "to be co-worker" who was near by. Ok not bad, we have found the party in question, just wait - the guy we met in Chicago (leaving his name out to protect his privacy) was still with us. The man picking us up (turns out to be our boss) just hands "our companion" a cell phone, minutes later he looks like he has been punched in the stomach, as he has just found out he is not going to be working with us and his recruiter got another job for him a few hours away in a location and school he knew zero about. We regretfully parted as he was quickly ushered onto a bus and shipped off.
We made it to Geoje a couple hours later, were shown our school, and our apartments and really the next two days were a blur. The teachers we were replacing showed us around and tried to show us the ropes so to speak but we were mental moosh and jet lagged for sure. Thanks to them though, they really tried to be nice. Our first Sunday, again short story... we are offered a ride to the only English Speaking Church Service in our city, we happily accepted, thinking that the offer to a place, included an offer back from a place we did not pay close attention to our across the city journey... As you may have guessed, after the service the same person asked us how we were getting home, not wanting to be rude we said we are not sure, I guess we'll have to figure it out, response "ok, nice to see you, good bye". We eventually managed to make it home.... (It's a 45 minute walk if you know the way)
Jump ahead (I'll try to speed this up) First week of work, just days after our arrival, it snows for the first time in ten years on the island, classes are canceled for maybe 1/4 an inch of snow. We worked and tried to get acquainted with our curriculum etc. The end of the week held a trip to Seoul ("teacher training") a 4 hour bus ride, we boarded the bus I think around 5am, at 7am the bus stopped at some type of rest stop we were rushed inside by our bosses, they bought us a hardy Korean breakfast of rice and an extremely hot and spicy shrimp stew, the fun part was the little shrimp heads were looking up at you with their beady little eyes. Having to choke down the shrimp eye ball spicy soup of doom at 7am in about 5 minutes to get back on the bus was just a little way in which we were welcomed into this country... Many more warm welcomes like this would follow...
PS. Please excuse my English as it has gone down hill as is quite easy when English Conversations at adult levels are not common.
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