Greetings from Seoul!

Well I've finally made it to South Korea. It's been a long road but I am here. Right now it is 5 am Tuesday morning, and I am writing from my motel room. At 9am I will be going across the street to begin two days of orientation and training. Wednesday night, I will take the 2 hour bus ride to Gangneung to begin my Korean teaching experience.

This motel is quite nice: internet, lights controlled via remote, heated floors, hot/cold water dispenser, and....oh yes, condoms at the bedside and a huge flat screen preset to the adult channel. Lovely! I won't get into great detail about what I witnessed on the tv, but lets just say these people aren't models, and the women don't seem to be enjoying themselves too much. A quick scan through the rest of the channels showed programs that are shown everywhere: gameshows, soap operas, pop music, news, and sports. I settled on soccer, with a Korean broadcast team recreating the most exciting moments from Eurpoean competition.

Moving on, the room also has space for shoes level with the floor in the hall. There a "shoe horn stick" for removal, and then you make a step up (through another door) into the room itself. I will be here for two nights, but unfortunately I cannot leave all my stuff here. I'll have to lug it back and forth from the school, but again, it is across the street so it is not a huge deal.

Upon my arrival, there was some confusion. I heard through the grapevine (another teacher at my school) that I would be training here in Seoul. However, I was never officially notifed of this, so I couldn't be certain. Anyways, there was someone at the airport to recieve me, but rather than drive to where I needed to be, he instead put me on a bus (a very nice one) and said "one stop".

He said something similar to the driver, b/c after I arrived at my destination, he pointed to the terminal, but I thought he meant the hotel. After 30 min or so, the girl finally found me at the computer lab in the hotel. She said she spotted me earlier, but lost me in the crowd. I was not happy about this at all, but the girl, Ja-yun was very apologetic and hoped my initial impression of Korea was not terribly negative. She was surprised to hear that I was not informed about the plan of where to meet and what I would be doing. Obviously there was some miscommunication.

Well, I'll be writing again soon about my orientation and training. After a long flight and years of dreaming, I'm just happy to be here.