The Korean “Adventure” – Part 2: The next morning and first impressions

I had been assured by a phone call the previous night that I would be picked up at 2pm and taken to my workplace. I, of course, woke early (thank you jetlag!) and enacted the first phase of my Korea plan.

Phase 1: Role over dramatically, curse your jetlag and lay around with your computer for the next 3 hours. Needless to say Phase 1 was successfully accomplished.

After that I felt obligated to do something vaguely resembling walking on two legs and perhaps looking at stuff. Drunk from the success of Phase 1 I was able to go out, find a Family Mart half a block away from my motel, buy some food, go back to the motel, and eat said food. While I was out on my mission I had considered doing some real looking around. Here’s the truth, in a year’s time I may have a lot of fond memories of Korea and a bag full of cool places I’ve visited but that morning I was only struck by how absolutely, indiscriminately ugly Korea is. It’s ugly. Just look.

This could just be Suii, maybe it’s the Suji charm, but it doesn’t really matter. I’m not sightseeing this stuff so I simply headed back for my room and recommenced relaxing. One might think I would be disappointed but I firmly believe in making judgments after at least a month of living someplace. I’m not counting Korea out yet, and neither should you.

Around noon (thankfully I had showered and dressed at this point) I received a knock on my door. It was Raymond!

 Raymond and I had been emailing for at least a month and he was a fantastic source of information and enthusiasm. He had come to check on me and we had a great conversation about my new school. I really owe Raymond a lot; between him, and all the questions I fired at my recruiter, I felt fairly prepared for my first week in Korea, something the company itself had not done at all. In fact, I knew a lot more than the other teachers that were picked up last night did.

Eventually 2pm rolled around and it was go time. A Korean teacher picked me up and I finally got to see my work.