I"ve Arrived!!

After leaving my house at 10am CST Monday February 22nd to catch a 3:30pm EST flight out of Tallahassee, 6:10pm EST flight out of Charlotte, & 12:30am PST out of Los Angeles, I finally arrived in Seoul/Incheon International Airport at 6:10am Wednesday February 24th. The seats next to me on the first two flights were vacant, and since my mom had prayed for the people that sat next to me on the plane, I was starting to get supicious of why God hadn't placed anyone there. However, on my flight to Seoul, God placed an amazing Korean women on the aisle seat of my row. She walked with me through customs and immigration, helped me get my baggage, bought me some apple juice, called my boss to let him know I had arrived, and stayed with me until he came to pick me up. I will probably never see her again, but I am incredibly grateful for her kindness. Mr. You speaks little English and I speak hardly any Korean, so our car ride was special.

I was taken straight to the school where I would sit around until 9:45pm when the supervisor arrived. He is Canadian, so I was able to understand his explanations no problem. He helped me understand how things were run and gave me a tour of the school. Soon afterwards, I met Sarah, another Canadian who interviewed me for the job in October 2009. Next, Nashly, yet another Canadian who I had been chatting with since October via the internet, arrived. I observed many teachers today; all foreign. There is one American, Mike, who believe it or not is from Florida, but he is leaving soon. Three of the foreign teachers are leaving because their contracts are up, and three new ones are coming to take their place. Graduation is on Saturday, so things were kind of hectic today at school.

Mr. You brought me to my temporary housing about 2pm. It's a fairly decent sized room. It has a bed, comforter, pillow, washing machine, refrigerator that is not working or clean, TV with broken buttons and no remote, heating/air-conditioning in Celsius, and a two-range stove with no accompanying pots, pans, or utensils. There is one bathroom (with no toilet paper), two showers, and one sink (with no soap) down the hall. Apparently this floor used to be an old ECC, and my bedroom, along with the ones next to me, used to be classrooms. I was blessed with an open wireless network in the area, and the sense to charge my computer before I left home. But I will need to buy a converter in order to use the one plug I have that is by the door.

There is supposed to be a girl by the name of Beth moving into the room next to mine tonight. She is coming to Seoul around 10 or 11pm, and is also here to teach at YBM ECC. I will be excited to meet and teach with her.

Food has been great so far. To my surprise, I was fed both dinner and breakfast on the plane. Dinner was cold Bim Bim Bahp (vegetables, rice, and beef), I think pumpkin or something like it, fruit, some kind of fishy egg soup, kimchee, and dried fish something or other (which I didn't eat). I would have to say that my favorite was the squash/pumpkin thing. They looked like pieces of cantaloupe until I bit into them and got a nice, sweet, warm, starchy surprise. I'm not sure it was pumpkin, but I couldn't make any other guesses. Then for breakfast we had a egg omelet, slice of ham, hash browns, fruit, yogurt, roll, jelly, and tea....and boy did I eat all of it!! I hadn't had a hot meal since Sunday night, and this was Wednesday morning. For lunch at the school I had gim (my FAVORITE!!), which is toasted nori seaweed with sesame oil and salt, rice, and some rice ball - seaweed soup.

There has been so many new things that I have experienced, even before I left LA, so I am sure I didn't capture them all in this one blog post, but I will get to them I'm sure. For right now, I am going to lay out my clothes for tomorrow, go to the store in hopes that I can return home without getting lost, take a shower, and go to bed. I am to meet my boss outside the first floor of this building tomorrow morning at 10am. It is currently 3:33pm here, but goodnight to all, and I will talk with yo all later.