Alright, so Friday night: got driven to Yeonsu, Incheon, Yeonsu being a district of Incheon, which is a suburb of Seoul (analogy: a chinatown in a suburb of chicago) where I will be teaching starting tomorrow. Got taken straight to my school, luggage and all, and met my director (principal and COO...its a private school so a business as well) and the other teachers I will be working with. There are about 12 at my school, and 2 of them are even from Indiana...pretty cool. While they were finishingu p teaching (we teach from 4:30-10:30 PM) I got driven to my apartment by someone who honestly seems to be a mafioso driver. He doesn't speak any English and he showed up in a suit just to help me with my luggage and take me to my apt. Pretty nice guy though. My apartment is...interesting. I thought it was small, but compared to some of the others i've seen its actually pretty spacious.
sucky part is, there is like no furniture. My mattress and a small desk...thats about it. So i'll have to acquire some of that
Another interesting part; the bathrooms.
They consist of a toilet, sink, shower, and in some instances (such as mine), the washing machine. At first I was like, what the fuck, but apparently almost all korean bathrooms are like this in the apartments similar to mine. There is a drain in the floor that the sink, washing machine, and obviously shower drain into. That hose looking thing on the wall is the showerhead. Its actually not bad, not like I spend tons of time in the bathroom anyways...just...different.
Anyways, after I changed and got settled in a bit, I walked back to my school which is only about a 15 minute walk away, and met up with my teachers again who were leaving. They said something about some St. Patty's Day festival in downtown Seoul they were going to tomorrow, and I figured it was either go to that and get drunk or stay in my apartment all weekend with no friends, no cell phone and bored. Obviously I opted for the festival.
It was very fun, but not very Korean. I took a bunch of pictures and have caught some heat from some of my friends already (cause its basically getting drunk with a bunch of other white people), but it was also a great friend-building day. I'm definitely here to experience the culture, but everybody in our group of about 20 people that day are all teaching at schools in my area of Incheon, Yeonsu...which means that for the next year i'll have people to hang out with, or call, or whatever here.
The good news is that it seems that most of the people who were out yesterday are fucking
awesome, and not crybaby fuckup bitches that about half of my training group was. By the way, the 35 year old ex mil guy ended up going home. The girls in the group are cool, but no real talent as far as i'm concerned, plus its probably better not to shit where I eat anyways. The guys are all very fucking cool, a good mix of American/Canadian/English. These two British guys, Ricky and Richard, like best friends since they were kids, are fucking hilarious, and some of the Canadians are some of the biggest partiers i've ever seen. So it was a good day to make friends for sure. A lot of them basically told me "this will be your life over the next year"...which I don't know what to think about yet. Some of them were like, "it's basically like extended college, except you have more free time, more money and don't have to worry about tests"
We'll see I guess. I didn't really come here to party 24/7, but some of them seem like they'd be easy to talk into going to some temples in Southern South Korea or Japan for the weekend instead of spending the whole thing binging. Seems to me that most of us really only party when there isn't shit else to do.
EDIT: Also, It seems a few of the teachers I work with have dogs...or cat...or, as you can see here:
You can even buy bunnies in the subway. She wouldn't sell for 10,000 won though, so we went elsewhere. I guess one of the brits is buying one as we speak. Anyways, point is, is that I'll probably get a dog while i'm out here. Apparently its not a big deal at all to have them in your house...I will probably wait a month or two to get comfortable though before I start doing that. Would be pretty cool to have a dog or hell even cat out here though.
Also, here is a picture of the view of my room...its weird though, I have a "balcony" so to speak...but you have to go outside through the window to get to it...and theres not very much space. So basically from the outside in, its window, about a 2 foot wide balcony, then a frosted window, then my apartment. Here is the weird window thing:
And here is the view. Not horrible...but I'd have to open up the frosted window first to see it. So I probably won't be looking out here much.
