Two Weeks in Korea (Part 1 - Orientation)

So, I apologize for my lack of blogging. But let’s be honest. You all knew I would be terrible at this anyways. But I’m determined to keep at it!! I need some way to remember all the craziness I’ve experienced in just my first two weeks in Southeast Asia.

I took some detailed notes of the first few days in South Korea, including the hotel and trip to orientation, but I was unable to post it due to lack of stable Wi-Fi at orientation. Then, once I caught on to the repetition of our days in orientation… I stopped caring to document it all, haha. But here's what I had written thus far:

TUESDAY, February 17th

I left Tucson at 5am to make it to Phoenix in time to make my flight. Everything went really smoothly in through security and I made it with plenty of time to spare and for me to spam all social media outlets available that I was officially leaving the country. I noticed that there were a lot of Asians gathering for my flight to San Francisco… Hmmm, suspicious? I actually got to sit next to cute old Asian man on that flight. He slept the whole way, haha.

I landed in SFO and we'd been on such a tiny little plane they let us off on the… place where the airplanes are. I cannot for the life of me remember an actual word for this, haha. Anyways. I literally felt like a rapper walking down the steps, haha. I picked up my other carry-on and booked it to the international terminal for my flight to KOREA! I arrived at the gate for my flight (surprise!) It was super easy to pick out the people that were going to Korea as EPIK participants, haha. A sweet girl Roxanne (Rox) is the quick friend I made before this flight. As I walked on the flight so many people stared at me, haha. All preparation for standing out for the next year in my assigned city!! The flight itself was long but relatively painless. They fed us a CRAP ton of food (after every meal I thought, "and that's the last time I'll see a fork for a year…") and I sat next to the most all-up-onz engaged couple, so I was really super glad I had a window seat and my Bullseye pillow pet to be both my friend and my comfort. I "slept" for "a lot" of the flight. I really had no way to gauge the time as I forgot to wear a watch and I never felt like I slept well anyways… So who knows what really happened. I don't…

AND THEN I LANDED IN KOREA!! Crazy, right?? They made the announcement that they were going to start the decent to Incheon and I was taken aback by how calm I was. I wasn't scared, I wasn't sad, I was just flat-out EXCITED. (No tears? That's weird… I think I'm broken…) I waited for most of the Asians to get off the plane first since I didn't have anywhere to rush off to, haha. Once off the plane, I made my way to immigration where all of the EPIK teachers on my flight had so obviously gathered together. So I was able to meet a few people then (and meet up again with Rox!) We made it through immigration and headed to baggage claim and customs. (This is the part where we all began to regret just how much we'd all packed, yet we all felt justified in what we bought with us, haha). A quick pit stop at the bathroom and at the currency exchange booth and we were all on our way to our respective destinations.

I had gotten a hotel with a girl named Maria that had been assigned to my region, but her plane wasn't going to land for 2  more hours. So I wandered the airport with Rox until she met up with her recruiter and the group that she was going to be staying with that night. So I was able to meet even more people! Huzzah! I talked with them for almost 2hrs until it was time for me to go find Maria and make our way to the hotel. I headed back to the area that Maria and I had decided to meet at beforehand and she was already there!! I felt bad for making her wait, even though it had only been a few minutes, haha. We called our hotel who let our shuttle know that we were there, and then we were off to find our shuttle!

The shuttle ride was interesting, almost terrifying. But also very educational. I quickly learned why Asians are stereotyped as "bad drivers" and that roads are not the only surface available for driving/parking on. Its basically free game, haha. Left turns on a red light? No biggie. Switching lanes so that we're literally inches from hitting the other person? I do this every day. Roads that are only wide enough to be a one-way road but people go both directions anyways? That's a thing. A REAL THING. (Keep in mind that this was all in about 10min of driving from the airport and another hotel before getting to ours. I almost kissed the ground when I got off that shuttle, haha.) We checked into the room and took our stuff upstairs. There was a guy that was helping us take our luggage up who looked way too young to be working there (let alone up that late) but Asians mysteriously don't appear to age so… I was probably wrong. Anywho, Maria and I were rearranging things in our room to make all our luggage fit and the kid helping with our luggage kept asking for our room key for some reason. After scrambling in the dark to find it, we hand it to him and he puts it in this thing in the wall and the light magically turned on!! Marian and I simultaneously gasp and say, "oooohhhhhhhhhhhhh!" and the kid just could not stop laughing at us!! Haha. I quickly said "kamsahamnida" and he bowed his way out of the hallway with the biggest smile on his face. Glad we could make his night, haha.

We settled into our rooms and took turns showering to get the airplane/airport smell off of us. We decided we'd rather take some time to talk to loved ones back home and let them know we were safe than call a taxi and have them take us for food. We waited up for a little for a response from friends/family, but all we wanted to do was sleep. The mattresses were basically wood pallets with sheets on them (welcome to Korea!) and the room temperature was in Celcius. (Thankfully Maria is from Canada, but I had to trust her that the room was at a good temperature, haha.) I slept until about 2:30 am when I shot awake. I fell asleep again around 4am and kinda slept until the wake-up call at 8.

We were shocked when we woke up to discover the floors were heated. Like, CRAZY heated. Like, had-to-wear-socks/slippers-or-your-feet-burned heated. Maybe we're just pansies, but it hurt, dangit! (ALSO! Just a note for future reference: don’t put chocolate on the bottom of your bag and then leave your bag on the floor because your chocolate WILL MELT. I now know this from first-hand experience…) We took a look out on our balcony to see the "ocean view" that the hotel was named for and… were disappointed, haha. But the sunrise was still beautiful and refreshing! :) We packed up and were ready for our shuttle to take us back to the airport at 9:30. We made it to the orientation check-in at the airport by 10:30 and we were all registered and set to take the 11:30 bus to Daejeon for the start of orientation!

Because of Lunar/Chinese New Year (a big Korean Holiday happening now) there was a lot of traffic, so it took us over 3hrs to make it to Daejeon from the airport. Maria and I met more EPIK teachers and got to talk a lot on this bus ride. We enjoyed seeing the Korean architecture of the cities and the different landscape from the desert I call home. Once at the campus where orientation is, we checked in and moved in to the rooms where we'll be until the 27th when we head to our separate areas. They serve us breakfast, lunch, and dinner on campus (complete with kimchi - always!) between orientation classes. Orientation starts first thing tomorrow, on the 20th. The classes range from teaching prep to Korean lessons, to Taekwodo lessons. I can't wait to get started!!

Right now, I'm chilling in my room enjoying some semi-peace and quiet. This introvert severely needs to re-charge! Haha. I'm seriously exhausted… My roommate hasn't arrived yet so its quieter despite the crazy kids in the lobby. I found a kpop channel on tv (hey, it’s the only thing where I semi-understand what's going on…) and I'm trying to drown out the noise from the crazy kids in the hallways.

DAY 2 - Friday, Feb 20th (I lost a day, say whaaaa??!)

My roommate and I were both awake by 6am even though our group wasn't scheduled to do our campus tour until 11:15. We tried so hard to kill as much time as possible… but we were still pretty bored, haha. We went to the cafeteria  for breakfast at 8am where we had scrambled eggs, potato wedges, plain rice, mushroom soup, and my favorite combination: frosted flakes and kimchi!! (People weren't kidding when they said they had kimchi for every meal here. I figure I probably won't eat it when I'm on my own, so I'll embrace it while at orientation, haha. It actually not bad for breakfast! It definitely gives your palette a kick-start, haha.) My favorite part was at the end of the meal when I asked my roommate what sauce I'd put on the rice, because I really liked it. She looked at me weird and said, "that was ketchup…" I tried the sauce again and - yup. Ketchup. They fooled me! Had me thinkin' it was something else, haha.

After breakfast, I came back to the dorms and called home to let them know I was alive (tada!) and then went back upstairs with my roommate, Chunpreet, where we watched Mean Girls while we waited for our tour to start. I felt like all of my energy and excitement for the day kinda drained while waiting so long… but that's the story of my life, haha. When you're tall, you're always in the back. When you're assigned to Gyeongbuk, you're put in group 6. THE LAST GROUP FOR EVERYTHING, ALWAYS. What can I say, I'm used to it! Haha

The tour was very basic, and we'd all been able to explore on our own already so this was mostly just a review and reminder of important rooms for orientation. But our tour guide/teacher, Harah, is so stinkin' cute, I just want to carry her in my pocket everywhere I go!! She's mayyybe 5 feet tall, and glides/waddles with little tiny steps everywhere she goes. All of her movements seem like she's dancing! Our other teacher, DongJoon is the exact opposite. Just a nice and funny, but he's tall and bigger, and endearingly awkward. The two of them together just crack me up! I'm excited to work with them for the next week :)

Lunch was after the tour. We ate fast so that we could go back to our room and change into nicer clothes for the welcome to orientation celebration/performance/thing. It started off with introductions of the EPIK staff and then performances from middle school kids on traditional Korean drums and another traditional dance done about kings and queens. The folk dancer in me geeked out a lot (okay, a lot) when these performances were happening. I loved them!! Then we had our first lecture talking a little bit about Korean history, culture, and expectations.

After the lecture, we headed to the "celebration dinner" which was basically another way of saying "stuff yourself silly before you can't eat again until after your medical exam tomorrow". The meal consisted of Korean-ified Chinese food, fried broccoli, french fries (!!!!), peanut butter sandwiches, jelly sandwiches (separate sandwiches - not on the same bread, haha) aaaaannnd… you guessed it, kimchi! :)

After dinner my roommate and I walked up and down the street to the nearby 7-11 to try and find a card to have internet in our rooms. All of the other EPIK-ers had beat us here, because they were all gone, haha. Chunpreet and I both weren't feeling good (she got a cold from the plane and I think I got it from her) so we went back to our room and found the Mnet channel and fell asleep watching kpop performances on the tv, haha. We can't take any kind of medication for our… cold/whatever we have… because of the medical exam. We can't even eat after 10pm or drink water after midnight. Thank goodness I brought my oils! OnGuard has been my friend, but I still don't have anything for my sore throat. But dangit, Imma get something after this dang medical exam! I'm sure lots of people will be glad to take certain medications after this medical exam. Especially those that will help with jet lag :)

Day 3 - Saturday, February 21st - Medical Exam Day!

MEDICAL EXAM DAY! Yyaaayyyy… Chunpreet and I were up at 6am again. Medical exam scheduled for 10:40. Group 6 is last to go… again. ALWAYS. This whole fasting-and-not-allowed-o-take-medicine-while-sick-and-oh-I'm-also-jet-lagged thing is really not ideal. Haha. But I can take ALL OF THE MEDICINE WHEN ITS DONE!! Imma sleep good tonight :)

Medical exam was easy-peasy. Check height, weight, eyesight, hearing (lamest hearing test EVER coming from a former CommD student who took entire semester class(es) on what all a hearing test truly entails) and then the blood test and a urine test (which is REALLY hard to do when they haven't let you drink for almost 12hrs, juuuust sayin'…) Then on to the weirdest part of the exam - the chest x-ray for TB… ON A BUS.  Literally. On this bus was an x-ray machine, a tiiiiny little waiting room, and an Asian man to keep it all in order. Weird. Yes.

They fed us snacks afterward and then shoved more lunch down us a few minutes later. What an unfortunate combination of being in Group 6/always going last and the Korean mentality that humans must always be hungry.

… … …

Aaannd… that's where I stopped keeping track, haha. After that is when all the madness began. People didn't have to stay sober now since the medical exam was over, so the invites to go out every night kept coming. And thus began the internal battle of deciding to be an introvert or an extrovert and if I should make friends/memories or if I should really try to sleep and get over my dang cold. I'd say I ended at a 50/50 for all of it, haha.

Some classes were more interesting than others. Taekwondo was exhausting followed by a storytelling class… Don't remember much of that one. I was so tired. I received a lot of good websites for class ideas and websites and continued to learn great things from teachers that have been through all of this before. I think my favorite class was the one on classroom management, and probably for many reasons: 1) it was our very last class at orientation 2) the teacher had some HILARIOUS stories about students and their (mis)behaviors and 3) she began the class with a bunch of Kpop videos. Please and thank you.

Oh! And we did go on a short field trip one day to a city called Jeonju that has a lot of history preserved as well as a lot of delicious-looking street food. Silly me forgot all her money, but I was able to see the history for cheap and take some pictures with cute Korean girls!!

The big assignment for orientation was the presentation of our lesson plans. We were all split into groups of three and asked to prepare a lesson on an assigned topic. This was to be presented on our very last day at orientation and we would receive feedback on our lesson plans. I was assigned to work with two hilarious humans, Cady and Joseph/Johnathan. We were probably the most chill group ever because we were all competent humans that didn't want to make the project harder than it was supposed to be. (Also, its not like they were going to send us home if we did terribly, right? Its more of those "there's always room for improvement" scenarios regardless of how well you do, haha.) One night we decided to all be only-be-social-to-the-extent-required introverts and work on our lesson plans in one of the lobbies on in the dorms. We found a quiet lobby with two Korean men talking and so we sat on the other side, just wanting to hash out a few details and then call it a night. However, one of the Korean men started talking to us - he went to school in Texas and spoke very good English (and was very cocky about it, too). He chatted us up for a bit while his friend disappeared… and came back with more Koreans. More DRUNK Koreans. Needless to say, I cried laughing multiple times while the drunk men (actually, man) peeped his head around the corner, offered us ice cream (ALWAYS EATING), tried to drink from the water dispenser by removing the entire water jug, took pictures with us, not-so-randomly and 100% racist-ly shouted I LOVE SOUTH AFRICAAAA! and then left - but not without one asking me for my number first, haha. Thank goodness I didn't have a number at this point so I didn't have to lie to him, haha.

THAT. Was a good night, haha.

I went out in Daejeon only twice during orientation. The first time was the night after the medical exam when a large group from our region went to "the lighty place" where all the bars were and had a few drinks/got pretttyyyy wasted. Rox and I were content with walking around the city, just seeing what was there and enjoying each other's company. A few nights later we took a taxi to an "even more lighty place" with tons of everything and went to a noraebang (karaoke/music room). That night was just a small group, but we had fun trying to sing songs in Korean… and trying to dance songs in Korean as well, haha. (**Video of this night was taken, but many have asked for it not to be posted. Unfortunately, I have to respect their wishes. I do have a few pictures though..!) Curfew was at midnight every night (though that didn't stop some from being carried in at 2am, haha). Most other nights I was exhausted and just wanted to sleep/get over my cold that was taking everything out of me.

Anywho, a few days later Cadi, Joseph and I nailed out presentation!! (Seriously though. Why doesn't EVERYONE end their lessons with a dance party??!) After this was over, we FINALLY found out exactly what city we had been placed in and what ages we would be teaching. I was given the assignment to live in Mungyeong and teach at two middle schools one in Mungyeong and another in neighboring Jeomchon. Google told me that one was an all-girls middle school and another was an all-girls high school (good thing my last 10 days of orientation/training were all for elementary-age students). There were two others from my orientation coming to the same area as me, an adorable couple from South Africa/New Zealand. I had no idea what was ahead for me, as I could find very little information on my city on Google. All I knew is that it had about 77,000 people in the city (for Korea, that is VERY small, like, CRAZY SMALL) and… yeah. That's about all I knew, haha.

Once I arrived it was a whirlwind. I'll save that for another post as this one is already obscenely long…!

Also, I'm sorry for the lack of pics. I had a ton to add but... my webpage won't translate to English from Korean for some reason. And I just KNOW I will push the wrong thing and break the internet. So. I'll wait until I can get it in English and then come back and add the pics, haha.

Until then, I'll be working on Part 2 - more details of my first days in Mungyeong :)