Oops..

Forgot to mention these things:

- They walk so close together that most of the time someone's arm is behind the other person's

- At E-mart, if you don't have your own bag to carry your stuff, and you have too much to carry in just your hands, you must buy plastic bags for 500 won each (roughly 50 cents). I think this is great...an extra incentive to bring your own instead of wasting all those plastic bags...

-Most Koreans hate Apollo Ohno

-Their mistakes are very different than the mistakes Spanish-speakers make. Interesting...

This is unrelated, but I had a dream about Mexican food last night...withdrawal already?!!?

It's raining today...started yesterday and went through the night. Today is a national holiday. Heading to E-mart again...

psych...it's snowing. at least up here on my level...

Sunday, Day #2

Today I was lucky enough to meet up with Andy, a friend of a friend who is Korean. We went to lunch in the Hundai department store's food court (the menu was in Korean on a lit up white board, all in Korean) and had spicy noodles with beef. Pretty good I must say. The beef looked pretty gross and wasn't the best, but I've had worse.

After lunch we went to Holly's Coffee. There's one at the bottom of my building, had lunch, and talked there. He came up to my apt after to help me with my hot water situation (it only stays hot for a few seconds before going back to lukewarm...) which he says is maintenance related...meaning I'll have to somehow communicate to the people downstairs this situation using charades...

History I learned from Andy:

Back in the 1500's, there was a king whose name I don't recall. Anyways, King Sejong (name according to Wikipedia) decided that the Chinese language they were speaking was "uncomfortable", so he hired intellectuals of the era to devise a new language and then teach it to the people and thus was born the Korean we know today; Hangul.

He also helped me buy water and toilet paper online at gmarket.com. They deliver it for free to your house and it's pretty darn cheap. If you don't have your ARC, your foreign registration number, yet, you can't buy anything. We used his account and bought 12 2 liter water bottles and 30 rolls of toilet paper for about 25 dollars.

Trash or garbage bags are specifically marked according to neighborhood and the trash men will not pick up the trash unless it is in your neighborhood's bag. The bags for mine are white with orange writing and you supposedly have a place to put them at the bottom of your building though I have not done this yet. You can buy the bags at E-mart or a convenience store and they are 100L or 50L. I of course had no idea what they were asking me, so I stared blankly at them until the one guy wrote down 50L / 100L. I wanted one of each but bought 2 of each. Actually I only bought 1 50L because they didn't have another one. Recycling is a different issue and they seem to have pretty strict rules about that so I'm going to have to ask a fellow teacher and get back to you on that.

I rearranged my room and it feels weird, but I didn't like how they put my bed behind the kitchen counter...my pillow went underneath it and I was afraid of bumping my head all the time.

Night #2

Well I went to meet up with some people from Couchsurfing.com and I got there bit late so no one was there. So I just walked around that area for a few minutes, bought a green tea that tasted like water flavored with wheat, and headed back home. I hadn't eaten, so when I got back to my neighborhood, after going to E-mart (I found butter! I was hidden between the cheese and flan...) I walked a bit and found a couple of stands selling sausages. 2,000 won for one on a stick, 2,500 for one with a bun. I went for the sausage-on-a-stick approach and it was very yummy. I was afraid to try any of the fried street food I saw because I don't eat fish, but it seemed as though everyone else was enjoying it.

Bars are open 24 hours. I can hear the woo-wooing in the early morning.

The metro card:

What I found on my door when I got home:

Night/Day #1

I just had my first awkward moment...I google translated "I don't have hot water", "shower", "water", and maybe "cold" and put it on a sticky note and went downstairs to the guard booth. They sort of passed it around and then one guy beckoned me and we came up and he immediately reprimanded me (in a grandfatherly way) about my shoes...whoops! guess ill have to remember to take them off at the door next time...

The point being, thanks google translate!

And, thank God I brought my own towel. I saw two clothes on the kitchen counter and put on in the bathroom as a bathmat before I realized it was a towel...

My next adventure was when the power went out. Well, not really out, but all of the power (excluding the lights) in the main room wasn't working. So I tried the sticky note technique and this time I wasn't so lucky. A bit later I figured out that the outlets in the bathroom worked as well as the ones in the kitchen area. So I skyped the school and she called someone for me to come up here and fix it. Turns out it was just a breaker that needed to be switched.

Nhi (pronounced knee), a Canadian and fellow teacher at Yes Youngdo, dropped by unexpectedly (and thank goodness she did!) and explained some things. Then she showed me how to get to the E-Mart, a 5 storey grocery store/clothing store. Before that I took out some money at the ATM (it will only let you extract $100...bad for me, I wanted to take out more. I will investigate this to see if it was just that ATM or all of them), which was in a little convenience store, and bought my T-money card for the metro.

Couldn't find butter at the e-mart and it seems I could only by a pack of 24 toilet paper rolls, something else I will be investigating...

First impressions

Ok so apart from the obvious everything is written in symbols thing, here's what I noticed since landing, taking a van to my apartment, and coming inside my new place:

If you don't have a GPS in your car the size of your face, you don't have one. Go big or go home.

The fashion is way better than what I experienced in South America...

Everything is lit up with bright lights.

There are red and blue police lights on poles on the side of the expressway.

Not many people speak English. This is going to be interesting...

I will have to learn how to cook everything on a 2 burner stove...could be worse.

Not an observation, but I can't get a cell phone until I get my ARC.

This city is big.

Flight

Well tomorrow I head out with a connecting flight from San Francisco to Incheon with Singapore Airlines. My advice: be very certain of the baggage policy. I called and it turns out they have a much more severe policy than American...you are allowed 2 50lb bags and if they exceed this weight you will have to pay three times the amount of an extra bag ($115), $445! as for a carry-on, you are allowed one 15lb bag....so, we'll see. My backpack is pretty stuffed and my purse will be carrying some miscellaneous items as well...I hope I'll fit everything in the car when I get there!

Visa

Today I flew to Houston from Dallas to have my 2:30 interview at the Korean Consulate. I get there and tell the woman that I'm there for my 2:30 interview. "Have a seat" she says. So I sit down and a couple comes in and they are also there for a 2:30 interview. Interesting. 

About 5 minutes later: enter guy #3. 5 after that, enter guy #4. That makes 5 of us. All for the 2:30 interview slot. 

A man calls guy 3 through the door. He comes back. Then the couple. Then guy 5. He sees me sitting there...asks "are you here to interview too? I don't have your paperwork" So I approach the window and she tells me "Oh, I didn't know you were here" "I was the first one to get here" "Oh really? I'm sorry"

So I have my less-than-five-minute-long interview (he asked questions that were on my paper: Where did you go to school. What did you graduate in. Where have you visited...) and it turns out we have to wait until 4. Which I can't do because I have a flight at 5. Anyways, I paid an extra 25 and they're gonna FedEx it to me. So I should have it tomorrow....we'll see...

I leave the 24th. Fly to California then Incheon. I'll update when I get there I guess.

peace.

Seoul

Ok, so I officially failed at my Santiago blog, but I think I've discovered why...I didn't know what to be posting. Now that I've lived there and had people ask me things about my stay, things so inane I wouldn't have even considered to mention them, I think I have a new and better direction.

First of all, to start off this blog, I will tell you that my intention is not to discuss my personal life, but rather the life of a foreigner from the US living in Seoul, working at my company. I will be working at Yes Youngdo Education Corporation at the Gangdong-gu campus.

I had an interview, we discussed salary, location, etc., and I received a job offer via email. I read the contract sent as an attachment, sent back my confirmation of acceptance, and thus began my journey with this institute. The director, Christina Kim, is very helpful and answers most of my emails in a timely matter. However, I did encounter a bit of a hiccup in communication...She sent me an email and I hit the reply button, typed up my email, and sent it. About half a second later, I received an email from mailerdaemon. My email was rejected by their server and delivery permanently failed. Luckily, I did have the email address of another man working there. So I emailed him.

When he emailed me back, I again hit reply and the same thing happened. Permanently failed. So I called the school. Someone picked up and we got everything settled. The next time she gave me a different email address, with gmail.com.

This was slightly stressful for me because we were emailing about my visa information. They first have to apply for a visa issuance number for you and then when they get that you are then allowed to apply at the closest Korean consulate. They needed a certain letter from my university regarding my diploma (the original is in Latin and they needed a translation to English) to be able to submit my application. After that, I sent in my paperwork to the Houston Korean consulate on Wednesday or Thursday and they called me and I have my interview at the consulate on Tuesday.

Lesson: get multiple email addresses and contact information from your Korean as their communication may sometimes be blocked.

Information: if you need to know about the visa process (their website walks you through the documents, etc. you will need) for someone who will teach English in Korea, here is a link to the Houston consulate:

http://koreahouston.org/english/affair_index.htm

if the Houston consulate does not serve you (http://koreahouston.org/english/affair_index_where.htm), here is a list of the consulates and embassies in Canada and the US, with a Worldwide section at the bottom:

http://www.asia-pacific-connections.com/korean_diplomatic_offices.html

I hope this blog will serve as a reliable source of information. I plan to post pictures and specific information upon my arrival. For more information, contact me. I have a list of a few websites that can provide a TON of information from a simple neighborhood map to how to cook certain Korean dishes.

Comment with any questions/gripes/grievances...

Edit: I forgot to mention my experience with YBM. I was emailing with Hannah, the one to whom you send your resume, application, etc. and had quite an interesting run. I was set up for a phone interview with one of the schools, with a woman named Michelle. We had our phone interview and she said she was very interested in having me as a teacher at her school. I asked when she would let me know if they had a position available for me, a job offer. She said in a week (this would have been the Saturday after Christmas). I was impressed and said thank you, hung up, went on my way. That Saturday I received no phone call, no information. So I emailed Hannah (I was not privy to Michelle's information) about the situation. Long story short, basically to every 4 emails I sent she sent me one reply. Most of the time with vague or false information.

A month later, when I was offered the job by Yes Youngdo, I emailed Hannah. "Hannah, please withdraw my application". After hearing nothing from her or her co-workers for about two weeks, about 20 minutes after sending this email I received a call from Michelle offering me a job. "Sorry," I said, "I've already accepted a position elsewhere." This was not what she wanted to hear and wondered if I could get out of it. "No, I already gave my word. Good luck with your search."

I don't know if this is common for that organization, but I thought I'd share my experience.

Also, if you're looking for information on who to apply with and how, let me know. I have some sources I could send your way. Good luck!