Week 1

Hello everyone, this is our first blog from Seoul, we have now been here almost a week. We are currently living in a small motel room in the Eungpyong district (gu) of Seoul. We will probably get to move into an apartment at the end of this month.

Our Motel room

Washroom

Flights

We flew out of Sudbury at around 5:50 pm on Saturday August 8^th. By sheer coincidence we were on the same flight as two Don’s, Al and Ashley relatives who had been up at their camp in Spanish and were heading home to California. We actually ended up sitting in the same row as them, very weird! We had a nice flight to Toronto even though it was raining the whole way. Once in Toronto Al and Ashley treated us to dinner at the Swiss Chalet in terminal 3 to celebrate our one year anniversary, which was wonderful, thank you again guys.

Our Korean Air flight left Toronto at around 11:50 pm. We flew on a Boeing 777, the biggest plane that Don and I had flown on. It was a smooth flight that lasted thirteen and a half hours. We were served two very good meals and some snacks. We had dinner shortly after take off and we had the choice of a couple different Korean dishes, it was very good. We had breakfast four hours before landing and we had the option of either Korean porridge or an omelette with tatter tots, we both had the omelette and it was good. We also managed to get some sleep which made the flight feel a lot shorter. It was much better than we had both anticipated.

Package we received on board containing slippers/socks, a toothbrush and toothpaste, a lanyard, and a mask.

Arrival

We landed in Seoul at 2 am the local time on Monday August 10^th (1 pm EST the day before) and were greeted very warmly by our employer’s sister and her husband. We managed to communicate using hand motions and body language since we don’t speak any Korean and their English is also limited. They drove us and our mountain of luggage to our motel and wished us a good night.

We managed to get some sleep after settling in a bit. The next day we decided to go out and explore the neighbourhood. We walked around for a couple of hours and culture shock started to settle in. It is hard to walk around and not be able to read anything or understand anyone and know that they will not understand you. Something else that was hard to adjust to was the weather, it reached 38 degrees Celsius on our first day and it cooled down the next day only a bit due to the remnants of a typhoon that brought a couple days worth of rain. We enjoy walking around, but it can get very hot even in the shade.

One the evening of our first day here we met with our employer, who treated us to a Korean meal (dolsot bibimbap) which was delicious. She shared her pride in the school and told us that we will have all the support that we need and not to hesitate to ask for anything.

We continued to look around on our second day and found a pc room where we could check our email and facebook. We also found some great bakeries, which are everywhere here and some convenience stores.

On Wednesday we met with a guy named DK, this is someone that Young Sook told us about who did an exchange at Laurentian University in Sudbury. We had to take the subway to meet up with him and found them to be super clean, but also very deep, it feels like you walk down (and then up) forever, thank goodness for escalators! We met up with DK and we walked around an area of Seoul that has many Universities and therefore has a lot of young people. We were to a Pizza Hut for supper, which was yummy, but different from our Pizza Huts back home. It was also pretty pricy compared to other places we have eaten at here. One funny note, we were scolded (well only DK understood it) for using more than one salad plate since it is the custom for everyone to eat off of one dish. DK explained that we didn’t know but that we would make sure to follow this custom next time. We had a great time with DK; he helped us get subway passes and then took us by bus down to the Han River (Hangang) where we walked through a park and across some nice bridges. He got us back to the subway station and made sure that we knew where we were going before he headed home.

DK, Don and I near the Han River

DK wrote this on the binocular machine on the bridge, there was writing all over it.

On a bridge over the Han River

Entering a covered bridge

We have also managed to find a McDonalds nearby where we have been able to access wifi. We have gone there a couple times to check email and we managed to talk to Dad and Susan briefly one evening. It will be much nicer when we have an apartment with internet where we can communicate privately. I think that we will have to find some other hotspots because McDonalds gets old really fast

We have spoken to an old friend who lives here but used to live in Sudbury, Eric. His family is going to take us to church Sunday morning and then out for lunch.

We start our training at the school on Monday and we are both looking forward to meeting all of the teachers and learning from them.

Some shots taken near the school