안녕하세요 (Hello)! We’ve made it through our first week in our new home, mostly overcome the jetlag, and are settling into a day-to-day routine. We are going to take turns below describing the journey thus far, telling you all the parts most relevant to our individual journeys.
Jamie
Ok, to start off with I'll let everyone know where we wound up, since that was such a source of "What? You don't know where you're going? But you leave tomorrow!" I found out at orientation that I was assigned to... *drumroll* Goheung Podu Middle School! We are living in Goheung. (I'll give you a second to Google maps that). If you're following along, Podu is southeast of Goheung, so I commute to Podu by bus. But that's not the end of the story! I found out when I arrived in Goheung, two days before the start of classes, that I would also be teaching at two different "travel schools", in Baekyang and Bongnae. For those following along, those are yet southeast of Podu. In fact, they are the northern and southern islands dangling off the southeast of Goheung-gun (the county being named after the principle city, where we live. Or maybe the other way around, who knows.)
I've finished my first three days at Podu Middle, but I haven't visited the other two schools yet. It sounds like my schedule with be Monday and Tuesday at one of the travel schools, Wednesday at the other, and Thursday and Friday at Podu. I will have different coteachers at each school, but I've only met the Podu coteacher so far. The first day I met her also happened to be the day Katy arrived in Jeollanam-do, and since her train stopped in the city my coteacher lived in she went with me to the train station, waited for Katy for an hour with me, took us to dinner when she arrived, and showed us back to the bus station so we could get to our own city. It's part of a coteacher's job to help the foreign teachers get settled in with bank accounts and things like that, but I really don't think what she did was in the job description and I was blown away.
What follows is the chronicle of my travels from Talent to Goheung. If that doesn't sound interesting to you, I'll confine it to a paragraph so that you can skip it easily. I drove down to San Francisco with my dad and stayed the night with one of mom's friends from high school. We drove to the airport early in the morning and I got on a direct flight to Seoul, but not before panicking when I realized that I had forgotten to take the recommended sum of cash with me to change over in the airport. This was important because it can take a little bit to get a bank account set up, and there's plenty you have to buy in the meantime, so they recommend that you take about $1,000 cash with you and change it over in the airport. I did not have this cash with me, and I knew how it would look if I tried to withdraw that much money from an ATM in the San Francisco airport, so I called up the bank, let them know of the situation, and got cleared to hold up the line at the ATM making the maximum withdrawal five times. That settled, I got on the massive airplane and sat for twelve hours on the way to Seoul. I sat next to a marine who was on his way to joint exercises on martial ethics with the Mongolian military, which was kind of cool to hear about. I made it through customs and everything in Seoul by the early afternoon, but it took another little bit to book a room for the night at a desk in the airport and catch a shuttle to the hotel. I tried to stay up as late as I could in order to start getting used to the time difference, but with the difference and the exhaustion of travel I couldn't make it past 8:00 PM. So, I woke up the next morning around 4:00 AM. I killed time until a halfway decent hour, then went out in search of breakfast. The hotel was there because of the airport, so it wasn't really in a real neighborhood and I couldn't find much. I decided the hotel restaurant would have to do, but when I read the menu I was disappointed to find: "American Breakfast (fried egg, french fries, and toast) French Toast (with what I think was rich simple syrup) or Coffee (surprisingly good given the first two items). Sustenance technically accomplished, I went back to my room and packed up. I headed back to the airport right after checkout, which was too bad since checkout was at noon and I didn't have to meet my group until 6:00 PM, and I would have much preferred spending the day exploring Seoul, but I wasn't sure what to do with my bags, so I just waited in the airport. Thankfully, there was already a sizable group of other English teachers there, so we got to know each other while we waited for the bus to Jeollanam-do. The bus left pretty late, so by the time we got to Gwangju everyone just went straight to bed. Orientation started bright and early the next morning, but it lasted for a week, so I won't get into that just now. On the last day of orientation we all met our coteachers, who took us to immigration to get our Alien Registration Cards, which are our ID here, and take us to our cities. My coteacher doesn't have a car, though, so we got driven around by my school's principal. I had heard some intimidating things about Korean principals, so I was nervous, but he was really friendly. He drove us to Goheung and then took off, and I was left with my coteacher and an administrator to look at the apartment, fail to set up a bank account, fail to get a phone, and then head to Suncheon to get Katy (after a good while of them arguing about the best way to get that done.)
Katy
Hi, Katy here! Jamie described the trip itself, which is mostly representative of what mine looked like, minus orientation, plus a ride on the Korean high-speed rail line cross-country. Of note is that by the time he and his co-teacher picked me up, I’d been traveling for over 72 hours and lugging the equivalent of my weight in luggage around behind me. So understandably, I was thrilled to finally get to our new home and settle into an apartment….
….Speaking of, I’ve been well aware of this “living small” trend in lifestyles lately, whether it’s a tiny-house in the country, or a micro-apartment in the city, it seems to be pretty hip these days to downsize and live minimally. Thus far in our life together, Jamie and I have been happy with relatively small apartments (1 bedroom), close quarters, and squeezing past each other in the kitchen. Call it a perk of young-love, but small-ish living has never seemed particularly difficult. That is until we got to our apartment in Korea. At 315cm x 480cm, this place is 162.75 sq ft (plus a wet bathroom which I’ll explain momentarily), ten sq ft smaller than what was once boasted to be the smallest NYC studio apartment on the market.
Recently upgraded, all three of the appliances are new, the floors were clean, and the walls seemed freshly painted where there isn’t wood paneling. So in that respect I was thrilled to not be in one of the grungy spaces I’d heard horror stories of from ESL teachers past. Now let’s talk about appliances and the bathroom. Korean standards are different, largely based on cultural differences such as cuisine and hygiene. As such, we have (and were guaranteed by Jamie’s contract) a two burner stove but no oven, a small refrigerator, and steamer microwave. A washer (which in our building is in the common space) but no dryer, and a wet bathroom, which I will now explain. Showers are a luxury here, and few people have a separate space designated in their bathroom in which to shower. More common is the “wet bathroom” in which a shower hose comes out of the sink and you wash right there in the middle of the restroom. This means no toilet paper, towels, toiletries, or anything else is kept inside the bathroom, as the entire space gets wet. As such the bathrooms are quite small.
Other cultural effects on housing include that there is always an entryway in a Korean home because shoes are never to be worn indoors. They are slipped off in this recessed space just inside the door and replaced by house slippers. Similarly, there are bathroom slippers which are plastic slip-on shoes that are kept just inside the bathroom door and worn in that space only to keep feet off the wet floor. As for other basics, such as a bed, table, and wardrobe, only the wardrobe came already in the apartment, though Jamie’s contract ensured the other two would be provided. So, we slept and ate on the floor for three days while we waited for the bed. I knew I was a bit boney before this trial, but it has never affected my life so much as to result in bruised hips every the morning. You can imagine our excitement the day our bed was delivered and we got our first solid night’s sleep! My days since have been filled shopping for dishes, bedding, groceries, and other furnishings to complete our home while Jamie works. It has helped me get to know the town, learn starter Korean, and keep busy. I'll talk more about my endeavors in 아줌마-hood (Ajumma, or, Korean Wife-hood) in our next post.
Best,
J&K
p.s. the below pictures include views of and around Goheung, us hiking up a hill for a view of Suncheon (a large city about an hour from Goheung), some of the interesting English phrases you can find about town, a mural of Goheung's proud attractions (the space center and citron fruit), and finally, the photo with a track in it is from Jamie's school looking out over Podu. Enjoy!
p.s. the below pictures include views of and around Goheung, us hiking up a hill for a view of Suncheon (a large city about an hour from Goheung), some of the interesting English phrases you can find about town, a mural of Goheung's proud attractions (the space center and citron fruit), and finally, the photo with a track in it is from Jamie's school looking out over Podu. Enjoy!
