Made it to Korea!

---

Hello, hello,
Well, here's the promised blog detailing my current living situation. It took me a while to get settled in and force myself to sit down and start writing it. But here I am! Let's start at the beginning.

So, I flew into Incheon international airport on September 17th in the evening, after a very long and sleepless flight. After collecting my luggage, I headed toward the exit doors and tried to find someone holding a sign with my name on it. I was really looking forward to that but no luck! So there I was, standing in the airport arrival area, without my recruiter or my boss' phone number because I didn't think to write that stuff down! Smart move. So I walked in circles for a while and started looking for internet while still keeping an eye open for my name. AH! There she is! This girl doesn't speak a word of English but she has my name mispelt on a piece of cardboard so I decide to follow her, what else am I supposed to do?

We drove for a while, towards Ilsan, the suburb of Seoul where I am to live for a year and I could barely keep my eyes open. What I saw of Korea on the way were lush green hills, constant haze and a hell of a lot of neon! I got dropped off at a street corner and picked up by my bosses, Julia and Steve. We went to visit my school, Genesis Language School, in order to settle a few things and show me around. Then we headed for some well-deserved and very spicy Korean food and some grocery shopping. Let me tell you, a Korean department store (ie. a multi-storey store that sells literally everything!) is quite an overwhelming place when one is rested and knows the odd Korean word so imagine when sleep-deprived on my first night in Korea!

I finally got dropped off at my OfficeTel (ie. small apartment) after 11:30pm and I had to be ready to teach at school at 9:30 the next morning. My first week was absolute hell and I was ready to head home after only a couple of days but I am now getting used to live out here. More will follow...

---

Photos

sightseeing
Seoul from the bottom of Seoul tower, on top of Namsan mountain

sightseeing
A gate which was the entrance to the city hundreds of years ago but is now smack in the middle of it and totally out of place it seems

field trip
We went to visit rice fields on the second week I was in town...love field trips!

Comments

[Justin]

Hi
Hi! My name's justin - I've just arrived in Ilsan 2 weeks ago and I was looking for information about Ilsan when I came across your blog - wondered if you'd want to exchange advice/info etc about Ilsan. In particular I was trying to find out how I could go about getting Korean lessons - no-one that I know seems to know anything about how or where in Ilsan you can get them. I have to admit that I don't really have much info to exchange with you but if there is anything you are trying to find out about you can ask me - just don't hold your breath for a decent answer! Anyway, if you want to contact me my email is [e-mail]. hope you're enjoying yourself here, annyonghi