Days 1-3

I was going to do a pre-departure first entry to kick things off, but left this until the very last minute and I was scrambling more than I would have liked. The night before the flight one of my luggages ripped open, and naturally had to repack, plus my bags ended up being too heavy. Plus I ended up leaving a lot until the very last day, not enough time. Sleep for 4am, awake by 6:30am Saturday. It was a rough morning.

Met the group of Canadians heading out of Toronto. They seem like a chill bunch so we all got to know each other a little bit before the flight. We had to meet at Pearson for 9:30am with the coordinator, so we had a lot of time on our hands. Our flight left at 11:50am. Korean Air is actually really nice, free drinks, decent meals, they gave us blankets, slippers, pillows, basically anything you could want on a flight. For Economy Class, it was pretty awesome. Plus empty seat next to me. Downside was the 14 hour flight and being unable to sleep. Caught 6 films, got some shuteye during Kung Fu Panda 2.

Arrived in Korea for 2:30pm on Sunday, by this time awake for about 17 hours with a slight shuteye. Layover in Gimpo Airport, so the group trekked from Incheon to Gimpo. Really easy to get around places here, and super cheap. Only cost about $7 for the transfer even though the airports were pretty far apart. Second flight for Gwang-ju was at 8:30pm. By this time nobody could sleep although I think it was hitting all of us. We met some Americans and more Canadians in the Gimpo Airport that are part of the program. The whole group seems really chill and friendly. It is crazy weird in Korea though how many couples and families will literally dress the exact same. Same hat, pants, shirt, shoes, even matching cardigans. In the airport alone we caught at least a dozen couples and families.

Short flight down to Gwang-ju. Met the Jeollanam-do coordinator and he matched us with our roommates and all that jazz. Naturally sleep was gone so stayed up for a while longer. By the time I slept it was about 34 hours with an hour nap on the plane. Then my internal alarm clock went on for 3-4am. Up again for 7ish for breaky as it was our first day of orientation. It was rough to get through, not as bad as I was thinking though. After all the intros and dinner and all that we toured through Gwang-ju city centre. It is crazy how wild the drivers are though. I don't really understand the driving system, lights are red but nobody is really stopping. Cars go in and out and will run you over if you get in their way. I would not want to drive in this country. The city centre reminded me a lot of Prague or even the Ottawa Market, everything seemed to be squared off and filled with only alleyways to get around. The dangerous part of that though is that they are still considered roads even though they act as sidewalks so cars and scooters are zooming in and out of the alleys with little warning. And I thought people were going to be celebrating halloween over here, but apparently the internet lies and they don't celebrate halloween. We did catch a couple girls giving free halloween hugs though. We also were shown a place called the Underground Grocer which basically brings in foods from outside of South Korea. This guy will order almost anything you could want. It's actually pretty awesome because he will order cheeses and it's suppperrrr cheap to get it sent out. The postal system in Korea is dirt cheap. To send a package of 50lbs back to Canada it's at most $20.So that'll make things easier. It's kind of funny how people will stare at you though. I read about being the outsider, and it makes sense, but people were literally snickering and taking pictures of us as we walked through the centre. Oh well. I try to speak some Korean as much as I can, but starting off with Anyeung aseyo has kind of led a lot of the Korean people I've encountered to think you can speak it. But they are super nice and most of them do speak English, and even if they don't they try super hard to get their English across. These are just quick observations, guess we'll see how they change over time. Our coordinators took us to an ex-pat bar called German Club. It actually reminded me a lot of the Beacon. It was pretty fun. Karaoke and bar-brewed beer. Good way to spend the first legit night in Korea. Downside was opting to go back to the hotel at 3am for another 7:30am wakeup call.Out of the past 5 days I probably have only an accumulation of one solid night of sleep.

We learned about lesson plans and all that today, good thing is they basically gave us an endless amount of resources and even activities and lesson plans to already go off which will make it super easy to come up with some stuff, at least to start things off until I get into the swing of things. From the sounds of the classes and the whole process, it actually sounds like a ton of fun. You can do anything with these kids and apparently love every little bit of things that aren't Korean, so I'm going to try and bring some Canadian activities into the mix. Maybe around Christmas I'll get them to make cookies, ice them with English words and make that into an activity or something. We'll see. It all depends on the school and the co-teacher and how things are run. As long as I get on their good side it should be okay. I'm going to try and butter up to the Vice and Principal. In the Winter Semester it's possible that I might have to do something called desk warming, where I'll literally just be in my school 'working' but classes will be out so 'working' will be sitting at my desk surfing the web and reading. Apparently if you get on the good side of the V.P. and P they might just say don't bother coming into the school at all. It is required by the contract and working obligations, but they can make a swing.Also learned my name in Korean, far too long to spell, it sounds the same, except Michael is Mi-ch-ae-hel, so it's a little drawn out.

Long first post, but I don't know how long I'll have Internet for so I'm going to try and get some things in this week while I have the hotel. I don't know what will be in the school when I get there, and I've heard Internet can take a while to set up. So we'll see how that goes. Apparently there is another guy going to my town as well, I was under the impression that I was the only one. Older guy, seems nice, been doing this for several years so he kind of knows Korea, so it might be good to have someone familiar around. So many people are here from teacher's college though, or have done this before, so they have so much experience to bring to the table. I feel kind of lost though, when we talk about lesson plans and all that jazz I have no experience to draw on and they're pulling a million things out of their ass from their classrooms. It's great though, I will definitely be stealing multiple ideas from people.