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!