Post from Day 1 (posted late)

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The original date that I made this post was the day of my arrival, Dec 22. However, I am only able to post it online now.

A new post will follow shortly - and from now on I hope to make many more posts to keep in touch with all of you fans back at home.

And so - my post from Dec 22:


wow. 2 plane rides and a grand total of 24 travel hours later, and I'm in Korea. After arriving in my travel-worn state, I was picked up by two mostly non personable TLBU transporters, I arrived to the TLBU campus and was greeted by a very friendly and welcoming staff person that had been my main contact point prior to arriving in Korea. Her smile made me feel much at ease, even when entering my dorm room of consisting of 4 peptobismal colored beds, and a small bathroom with a shower (minus shower stall) which easily gets yourself, along with the rest of the room drenched upon usage.

At present I have the room to myself, which I appreciated since that meant I could claim the bed I wanted and put away my belongings in peace. Tomorrow morning however I will be joined by 3 more native English speakers (who arrive at the luck times of 3 and 4am) who may or may not be staying in the same room as me. I’m looking forward to meeting them, though I hope that not all 3 of them will be in the same room with me. The more the merrier I suppose.

Speaking of the merrier – the best part by far about my arrival here has been the TLBU students I've encountered so far. TLBU students attend the law school here, and thus are about my age. I was quite taken when I arrived at the cafeteria, and had no idea how to go about serving myself, when this friendly Cambodian law graduate student helped me out. Once we sat down I met his classmates – a person from Laos, Myanmar, and several Chinese. After talking with a few of them, I discovered that ALL TLBU grad students are required to teach at the same camp I’ll be starting tomorrow!
This required teaching basically means that when any TLBU students see me, they think 'oh, a new teacher' and immediately ask my name and where I'm from. This is awesome because I had no idea the place I would be teaching at would be filled with such friendly and curious young professionals like myself. The most extreme example of this was when I entered the library and was embarrassed to see that each and every single student stopped what they were doing, looked up at expectantly at me. One student took the lead to ask me where I was from, and if I was a new teacher, and all of the others were clearly interested in my answer. I blushed and answered, and then quickly left, not accustomed to so much attention.

The welcoming that I’ve received has really left me feeling a lot better about being here.

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