Seoul

I am in Seoul for three days for my foreign teacher orientation. My school is run by YBM, a big company in Korea, so they bring all their new teachers to Seoul before our start date. A lot of the material is pretty dry - it's a lot of going over the textbooks we use and company policy. The bonus is that it's taught by an American guy who taught for ECC just last year so he has given us a bunch of information on Korean culture, good spots to see in our various cities, tips on culture shock, etc. I was able to get most of my questions about banking, going to the doctor, etc. All the little things they don't really tell you much about before you get here.

There are thirteen new foreign teachers from around the country. Eleven of them are in Seoul. It has been really nice meeting new people and now I know I will have a place to stay when I come back to do the tourist thing. Apparently I will be pretty popular too - Busan has the best beaches in the country so I will likely have some couch surfers in my future. One of the girls, Valerie, is from Sudbury and we have bonded over Northern Ontario chat. All of the others have been in Korea since at least Friday (some as long as two weeks). That being said, some still haven't been to their schools yet. Apparently all the ECC schools are supposed to put their teachers under a 10 day quarantine because of H1N1. Mine didn't, obviously. I am really grateful for that. I'm going stir crazy enough as it is.

Seoul seems pretty interesting. I haven't seen much as training keeps us occupied all day. A few of us took a walk after class to check out this beautiful stream that runs across the city. Apparently women used to come do their washing in the stream many years ago and it became a bit of a historical place. They did a complete remodel a few years back and it now has nice stone walkways, lights and trees all the way down. It's really pretty, especially at night. I walked back to the hotel on my own (everyone else takes a subway back to their parts of the city). It was kind of neat walking alone after dark (not too late, it was only 6PM). It is very common for women to walk alone in the evenings in the city here. Korea seems incredibly safe. It is a huge dishonour to one's friends and family to break the law here and you can tell people really believe that. For example, along the stream is an outdoor portrait gallery that is completely unsupervised. Anything like that at home would be vandalized in a second.

I've been eating mostly Korean food. All of us go out to lunch together. We have been looking for the restaurants with the most pictures on the menu and point at whatever looks good/not too strange. It's worked so far. We had one incident today where the meal we ordered (we tend to order the same thing and share) had a raw egg on it, but we ate it anyway and it turned out okay. Bring on the salmonella. I did cave tonight and grab McDonalds. The other teacher staying at my hotel is meeting friends, so I was on my own for dinner. It's a big faux-pas to eat alone in Korea and I'm not brave enough to try street vendors yet -we were recommended to give our stomachs time to adjust before delving in to non-restaurant food, plus I want to learn the words for chicken, beef, pork, etc. first.

It'll be nice to be back in Busan for the weekend. I am going to stay with my friend Katie on Saturday, which I am very excited about. Busan is a little lonely right now, not really knowing anyone yet. I should be moving into my apartment around Tuesday, which will be much better. I can unpack at last and be close to the other teachers in my school. I'm anxious to get back to my own school on Monday. I had a chance to take a tour and meet the other teachers briefly on Tuesday. They all seem really nice. I am the only Canadian at my school, the rest are American. I am sure the eh? jokes aren't far away.

Tonight is a quiet night in. I found a channel that plays English movies (with Korean subtitles, of course) and I am going to force myself to stay awake until at least 10PM. I made it to 9:30 last night and was able to sleep until around 5:30ish. It's not great, but it's progress. Love you all.