I AM alive :)

Top: The Food Mart - they are everywhere. This was Day 1 walking the streets for the first time.

Middle: My apartment building. I'm on the 7th floor.

Bottom: I miss me some American Food! yes, already :)




I have not had time nor internet access for the past few days, so hence the late blog start.

FLIGHT : cleveland - detroit - tokyo - seoul

It went smooth. I was in the air totaling something like 18 hrs, but it really wasn't too bad. During the 13 hr (detroit to tokyo), I did some sleeping, eating, and movie watching. The menu was RICE&chicken for dinner and RICE for breakfast - ha. Yeah, welcome to Korea! I was also given sushi, but I passed on that one. On the flight to Seoul, I sat by a man from OHIO, so he helped me out with custums, immigration, ect.

THE ARRIVAL:

The school had a korean man waiting for me holding a sign saying "Abbey Zellers". I introduced myself and asked his name - he informed me that he knew very little English, so needless to say it was a quite hour long drive to my apartment - but I was SUPER tired so it was okay. The drive was right along the Han River, which runs through the middle of Seoul. It seemed as though we had gone 20 miles or so and we were still in the city!?! It is true - Seoul is HUGE. He got a little lost finding my apartment, but eventually we made it and I collapsed after making sure I at least had a stable roof over my head :)

DAY 1:

I woke up and actually slept through the whole night - unpacked my stuff. Then I showered with the interesting shower system - I will take a pic soon. Then went down to the food mart on the corner - yep I was thee ONLY foreigner around. The neighborhood I'm in consists of all Koreans, so I stick out pretty bad and often get some stares. I played it safe and bought a bagel and water for a quick breakfast - so American, I know. For the rest of the day, I met the school staff and went through part 1 of the training manual. The staff seems great. There are about 25 American teachers on staff and I will be working in an office of about 10 of them. We are the PM teachers.




DAY 2:

Today, I finally got a phone card so I was able to talk with family shortly last night. I was super tired, but the jetlag hasn't been too bad. I've been able to sleep through the night, but usually get really tired around 7 each night. This morning a lady came to wallpaper my apartment because it was looking pretty sad from the last person living here. She didn't speak any english (not many people do around here) but I so badly wanted to make conversation with her - bah to language barriers! While she wallpapered I studied through my book of
Korean. I have a few basic phrases down like "hello" and "thank you" and I hope to increase my korean vocab as my time progresses here.

Later, I got to the school and was informed that I had missed a rather american lunch today - chicken nuggets and potato soup!?! Shoot - I was so bummed because sadly, I miss American food already. The food is going to be a MAJOR adjustment for me.
So yeah, all day consisted of more training - reading through the manual and observing vocab and science classes. Of course, I was tired again - so sleeep :)

Top: easing into the Korean style food - many dishes always.

Bottom: a street near my apartment building.