EPTSo.. IM HERE. WOW. It's Day 5 now and there's so much to say. Firstly though, thanks for all the supportive replies in my earlier thread, <3 <3 <3. Secondly, sorry for the few pics which are bad quality. I'm waiting to get a shiny new camera phone before I go apeshit with pics and videos. (Long story but no mobile still
)The flight
I flew from London, Heathrow -> Seoul on a 11 hour flight with Asiana Airlines. I didn't realise they were a Korean airline so I happily spent the 2 hours of snoretime before the flight gleaning scraps of Korean from my boarding pass. (Hey come on... what else is there to do?
) Flight itself was great... I semi-lucked out with a front row cattle class ticket (meaning I got oodles of leg room). The best part of the flight was dinner though... ![[image loading]](http://img90.imageshack.us/img90/5964/dsc00838vk0.jpg)
Bibimbap... Complete with instruction manual to eat.
Oh.. I almost forgot.. Asiana Airlines has an amazing inflight TV/entertainment system. They have the usual 10-15 films available but they allow you to play/pause/fastforward through them at your leisure which is amazinggg if you want to skip the boring parts of Ironman, Kungfu Panda and Forbidden Kingdom. ^^ I played around with the entertainment software, admiring the gigabytes of documentaries, guides, music videos, audio and other stuff they had for my pleasure. Then I found this!
![[image loading]](http://img259.imageshack.us/img259/4945/dsc00842ri3.jpg)
Photo of the TV screen inflight: I'm in Korea already...
Sadly it was all in Korean but a skim through showed that it was taken just after Bisu's smashing of Saviour in the 06-07 MSL.
I got fuck all sleep on the plane so I arrived pretty groggily into the arms of a waiting taxi driver at said "Family Mart at Exit F". The driver had been hired by my agency to take me and another teacher to our respective schools. Remember I said that I had nooo fucking clue where I was going outside the airport? Well, I eagerly asked the driver where my school was, [XXXX] in 성복구 (Seongbuk-gu)", "It's a great school!" he said emphatically. ...The lying bastard.
The school
Isn't all that bad. I was greeted by my co-teacher - who as well as being my semiboss is a pretty cool guy. He basically told me that the school used to be great but now is shit now lol. Lots of kids from poor backgrounds, many of whom have given up on the whole education thing. I got a quick tour of the complex... pretty big.. 1000+ students (all boys). I then got shown my own desk (and own comp!) in the staff room (!). When I arrived it was around 6pm-ish so most people had gone home. The principal was still around though, so we went to his office which was basically a 7-star luxury villa complex compared to everyone else's shitholes.
Korean culture!So far I've had done 3 lessons... I'll talk about school life and my teaching (or my best attempt at it) in a later blog though. There was one notable incident on my second day. It was in the morning and I walking to the school amidst a stream of students all going the same way. I'm easily the youngest person on the staff so sometimes people think I'm a student... I'm almost at the main entrance when I hear a somewhat aggressive shout in my direction. I turn around and see a 50-ish year old teacher staring at me and repeating something. I do the usual Korean greeting thing (head bow + anneyong haseyo) and half-ignore him. This was probably the wrong thing to do as he ran towards me and grabbed me by the shoulder. In response, I unleash my terrible Konglish on him telling him quite firmly that "I'm the new English teacher, you noob!" (maybe not quite like that). Anyway, turns out he was the Vice-Principal. Oops. He apologised after though........
Other shit
My accommodation is pretty good. It's a classic 원룸 ("one room"). Very clean, completely free and 5-10mins walk from everything I need so no complaints. Will take photos/videos later...........
My location:
![[image loading]](http://img216.imageshack.us/img216/5225/dsc00849yq4.jpg)
I am here.
The street I'm on is nothing special. It's a regular main road albeit with the district police station and tax office opposite me. After some exploring though, I found what must be the 'trendy area' near me. It's right outside 성신여대학교 (Sooshin's Women's University) so there are little mobs of similar-aged Korean girls all along it. ^^
![[image loading]](http://img146.imageshack.us/img146/3000/dsc00868np7.jpg)
The street in the morning...
![[image loading]](http://img146.imageshack.us/img146/4278/dsc00857jg7.jpg)
The street at night...
![[image loading]](http://img300.imageshack.us/img300/295/dsc00856id8.jpg)
Final thought.
At a very superficial level, if a giant foot came down on top of Hong Kong and squashed it like a ball of blutack.. you would get Seoul. This is obviously a hideous and very personal analogy but Seoul is like a diluted version of HK in purely aesthetical ways. The buildings are shorter, the streets wider, its less crowded, but the same Asian city buzz is here complete with neon eyefuck, cute Asian girls, smelly side streets, smokey LAN cafes, ultra polite service, cluttered shops and sticky weather. This isn't to say at all that its boring and old to me... Korean life is vastly different and I'm just scratching the surface of this awesome place. I know I'm going to have a great year ahead.
Thanks for reading. Btw, I'm in need of more Seoul friends.. Going to PM some of you folks now...
<3 to comments as always.!!!
