Home Plus

      Thanks to my neighbor Emily, who is also a teacher at Avalon, I managed to find the Korean equivalent to Target, which is Home Plus. It's not within walking distance of where I live, so we took the bus to get there. This particular bus route was actually pretty easy to navigate, unlike the subway system in Seoul will be. Anyway, Home Plus is very comparable to a Super Target actually because they have groceries, clothes, electronics, home good and pretty much everything you could ever desire. I believe the store had three or four different levels with escalators connecting each of them. The escalators were really cool because you took your cart on them and it instantly stayed in place. Home Plus even had it's own food court on the very lower level.
     Some of the groceries were pretty cheap and some things were not. My most expensive purchases(compared to prices back home) were actually cheese and peanut butter. I haven't tried either of them yet but I hope they are pretty decent considering what I paid for them. Because Home Plus is a large chain in Korea most of the groceries they had were things that I recognized and could tell what they were from either the packaging itself or the pictures on the packaging. Once I venture out into my neighborhood more and find the local markets perhaps I will start discovering some of the more eccentric Korean foods.

First Day of Work

          I arrived in Korea on Sunday night and Monday afternoon I started work. Not only did I start work on Monday, I literally started teaching on Monday. I had a brief meeting with my new boss and the other new elementary school teacher that covered some basic information. I then did a mock classroom role play for about then minutes. After this though I was in a classroom with about 10 children staring at me. Luckily it was the last day of the semester so we were just doing review. Teaching is definitely not going to be as easy as I hoped it would be. It's going to be a lot of hard work and there will probably be a lot of stressful and frustrating days. I am just hoping that the fun days outnumber the bad ones.
       The school, since it's a private academy, is not divided by grades but by levels. I will be teaching Little Avalon, which is the most basic level and consists of mainly first and second graders. This class will probably be the most challenging for me. I also am going to be teaching at least two other classes, which are going to be higher levels.  In a normal week, when I don't have to sub anyone's classes, I will work from 1:30-9:30 p.m. and teach three classes per day five days a week. Ideally this schedule will give me plenty of time to grade essays and to prep.
       The classes that I taught are not going to be my classes for the semester. I was just subbing for one of the foreign teachers who had already gone back to the states. Starting on Thursday and Friday I will get my classes that I have for the entire semester. Cross your fingers that they are all angelic!

Apartment Pictures

My bed is as hard as a rock.

My kitchen is quite efficient. The only MAJOR downside is that I only have a stove top. That means no oven and no microwave. I might actually have to learn how to cook.

Behind the class is my laundry room. I have my own washer but I will have to hang my clothes up to dry. There are lines in this back room for drying though.

This is my shower. It looks worse than it actually is. It does however minimize the amount of stuff you can store in your bathroom.

First Impressions

      After a fairly uneventful 12 hour flight I arrived in Incheon Airport in Seoul.  Thirty minutes later myself and the other two teachers that I have flown out with arrived in Suwon. The cab driver who picked us up was hired by the school and "knew" where he was taking us. He initially took us to a golf pro shop and then looked at us questioningly, as if he was asking us if that was the right spot. I went in and investigating and indeed verified that it was a golf shop and certainly not an English school. After about ten minutes of confusion we realized that the school was right around the corner. Thank goodness.
      We were met by the elementary and middle school head foreign teachers and after being shown to our new apartments, they took us out for Korean barbecue.   Korean barbecue was delicious and was followed by a night of bar hopping, which is apparently tradition. Normally I am fine with bar hopping, but the jet lag and time difference was killing me. I left the third bar we went to at around 2:30 a.m Korean time, and by the time I got back to my place I think it was around 10 a.m in California. Long story short I basically pulled an all nighter and then had to work the next day. But we kept the tradition alive!
       The only thing about Korean that surprised and disgusted me is that they smoke EVERYWHERE. They smoke in restaurants and they definitely smoke in bars. I came home from my fun night out stinking of  cigarettes. Being a California girl this is definitely going to take me a while to get used to.
        When my fairly inebriated self got back to my place I took a vitamin and drank some tap water(to try and minimize my inevitable hangover). The next morning I opened my fridge and saw the large bottle of water in it. I thought back about the previous night and realize that I had only drank bottled water. Crap! Luckily I asked my neighbor, who is also a teacher at the school, and apparently Suwon has a pretty decent filtration system. Just to be safe though, I think I'm going to stick with bottled water from now on.
        Well, I have to take a shower and get ready to go to the grocery store before work. My neighbor is thankfully going to go with me and show me around a bit. Later, I will take some pictures of my new apartment and figure out how to post those so that you all can see my new digs!

Last night in the USA

     I had intended to start blogging about this adventure earlier. I wanted to write about all of the prep work it takes to not only land a job as an English teacher, but to prepare to depart on such an epic adventure. But then I got asked to come out to South Korea in a mere three weeks rather than the three months that I thought I had to prepare, so blogging quickly fell by the way side.
     Anyway, tomorrow afternoon I jump on a plane at SFO and leave for Suwon South Korea. I have said goodbye to all my family and friends and am honestly not as anxious as I probably should be. I am just excited that I am finally getting to have my adventure.  This evening I am calm and relaxed, yet I'm sure that tomorrow I will be more nervous than excited.  I have just been focusing on making it to the 28th and having everything ready to get on the plane and leave. Now that the 28th is practically here I'm not entirely sure how I should be feeling. I'm oddly calm and not worried, but perhaps this is just the calm before the storm that tomorrow might bring.

Mantra

"The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page. 

-Saint Augustine