Couples Housing

They let us out! On Friday morning our “tour guide” David brought Jamie by for a visit and just before he left he informed us that my test results came back negative and that we could get out. Thank god! He ordered us breakfast, gave us an hour to pack up and then brought us back to the university. It was so anti-climatic. When we got back, we step out of the cab and he says to us, “OK! It's your choice if you want to go to class. Do what you want. Bye!” That's it. No check in from the illusive supervisor, no report on the week. In seconds we were free. Not that I'm complaining, mind you. It was just interesting.

We finished off our week (day) of orientation by watching the practice lesson plans of the other teachers and thankfully we got back in time for the Tae Kwan Do performance. It was amazing. Lots of kicking and breaking boards of wood interspersed with ridiculous skits and adorable dances. That night we played card games with our friends Chrissy and Dave (I'm hoping they'll be recurring characters so remember their names). When we woke up the next morning we put on our suits, packed up our rooms and loaded up the buses. We had a closing ceremony where again we were warned about H1N1 and told that we wouldn't be able to teach at all this coming week! They said that we would go to school every morning to check in and show that we were healthy and then we would just go home. So funny! Anyway, we took it in stride (we didn't care at this point anyway). They then served us a delicious buffet and took us to our district offices to meet our co-teacher.

Part two: The district office:remember when I joked about not being given Couple's Housing?

Arriving at the district office was real cute. All of us western teachers are standing there in a group in the parking lot waiting to be introduced to our Korean Co-Teachers who are also standing in a group in the parking lot. Everyone looks very excited and you can tell that everyone is trying to decide who they want as a co-teacher. Anyway, we get paired up and instantly swept away to our schools and new lives in Korea.

This is when the fun begins. Shortly after the crowd started to disperse I see a western man trying to contact John Pak (our “supervisor” with SMOE). Having just seen him hug a woman goodbye I'm a bit curious - upon examination it turns out that he wasn't given couples housing with his wife. Great. Jamie and his co-teacher are waiting to be picked up so I go over and ask about our housing. The co-teacher is obviously confused (it turns out she was actually just filling in so she had no idea what we were talking about). My co-teachers arrive and I ask them if they know about the situation. Their response is not encouraging. No, they say. They didn't know I was married. They had prepared a room for one person-with a single bed. At this point more people from Jamie's school show up and now their on the phone with S.M.O.E and there's about 6 people trying to figure out what to do. Finally it seems like we've been placed in the same building. So we decide we'll just see what this looks like and we head out to our schools.

We arrive at our apartment building and yes, thankfully Jamie and I have been placed in the same building, 2 floors apart. The rooms are just that. Rooms. It's an open room with a kitchen area that includes, a range, sink, and a small fridge. The bathroom is the only separate room, it has a washer, toilet and shower...but the shower is more like a shower head attached to the sink. Not actually a distinct space. Shannon's room is considerably larger than Jamie's. Shannon thinks it's funny that the rooms were so obviously prepared by men vs. women. Jamie's room was prepared by a man, as he was showing the room he pointed out the arm chair, the cable television and the big bed (he was also very proud of the curtain). In my room, prepared by my female co-teachers (both mothers), they bought me sheets and pillows (and a pig stuffed animal), cleaned my whole room top to bottom, left me with towels, plates, laundry detergent, orange juice and water. Anyway! At this point the numbers have grown, I have my two Co-Teachers, the Vice Principal and the Man in charge of Administration (he set up the room). All 5 of us traipse up to Jamie's room where there's the equivalent people from Jamie's school. They all talk trying to figure out what's happening and how to handle this situation. Ultimately we just told them we'd decide on Monday whether or not we want to keep our rooms or move to a bigger apartment.

In the mean time we get taken to visit our schools. Shannon's school is literally across the street. We can see it from our windows. Jamie's school is a 15 minute walk down the street but there are 2 buses that go that way. There's everything in walking distance, including, but not limited to, a Dunkin' Donuts (we've already tried the Garlic and herb coffee roll and Red Bean Paste filled donut), 2 bakeries, a grocery store, shops galore. You get it. We live in the city.

Well, that brings us to today. We slept in Jamie's room last night and I think we've decided to just keep the two rooms. We'll use Jamie's room as a bedroom and Shannon's room as everything else. Not great, but now we have a guest room! Come Visit! We debated having them get us a new apartment (and they would), but it's a gamble. It might be considerably farther away from our schools, we doubt there would be as much space as the two rooms combined and this really isn't so bad.

Well, that brings us to our “exciting things about Korea” section:

• Chinese food is just as popular in Korea as it in the states; instead of being “Americanized”, though, they are “Koreanized”

• Dunkin' Donuts are very prevalent in Seoul, and they are waaay nicer than in the states

• You can set up your debit/check card to draw fare money from your account for busses and subways

• The trash disposal system is very extensive in Seoul, and you need to separate EVERYTHING – the collection system is based on how much trash one produces and everyone must purchase special trash bags (one for general waste and one for food waste); recycling is highly encouraged and free

We still have a whole lot to learn and experience so keep checking in for more updates!

Quarantine.

Oh, this is an exciting experience. It began Yesterday (wednesday) morning.
(this narrative is told in the first person, from Shannon)

First, I woke up sick. My throat hurt, I had a fever, the sweats and felt nauseated. They are so paranoid about Swine Flu here that they gave us all thermometers and have been making us report our health. So, when i woke up sick, I went to tell them. I really should NOT have done that. First they sent me to the health clinic on campus. (after having me, jamie and the man who walked up there put on a face masks). Then they brought me to hospital. Jamie can with me-thank god. I would have been in hysterics if he wasn't there. After 4 hours in the waiting room, the doctor told us it probably wasn't H1N1 and so he prescribed me this crazy concocotion of drugs (Augmenten, Tylenol, Xanax, and an Antihistamine). However, that wasn't good enough for our orientation leaders. They insisted on taking us to a second hospital for the flu test. So we get in a taxi, ride for an hour to this other hospital, take the $320 flu test, get the medicine "tamiflu" and head back. Still not good enough. Now I'm quarantined in a hotel. who knows how long. The man David, suggested that Jamie stay the night with me in the hotel, but i refused to let that happen. I figured if he stayed with me he'd get quarantined too. So, jamie went back to the university to plead my case and try to get me out. Not so lucky, as soon as he got back They quarantined him too. I'm particularly angry about that beacue there's no real reason for him to be quarantined. All week we have been in seperate rooms! ugh. he's quarantined at the universtity, which sucks that we are both alone, but i think it's good in the long run becuase he can get in contact with people for information. For example, last night they forgot to get me food, but becuase he could just go and find someone they ordered me some. It's a little nerve racking being here because I'm completely stranded. I can't call out, i can't talk to anyone becuase everyone speaks Korean and I haven't learned anything past "hello." However, looking on the bright side, there's a computer in the room so i can G.chat with jamie and have plenty of things to look at. I'll probably take this time to learn a little more korean. At Least the alphabet. Also, this hotel has a full size whirlpool in the bathroom and is quite swanky. When we came in the computer automatically boots up and started talking to me (in korean unfortunately). it's pretty interesting. everything is controlled by this one remote. The air conditioning, the TV, the lights. If only i knew what the korean words meant...it's ok. i can take the two second walk across the room to turn the lights off.
they let jamie come visit for an hour this morning and he brought lots of food which is nice. I was worried they'd forget me again, so i was saving my dinner from last night.

So, we have no idea what this means. We're not certain when we get out of here, we not certain if we can start work on monday. Heck we're not even sure if we can stay in the country!

If they send us home, maybe we'll just start our travels early? I guess we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

anyway, exciting little things we've discovered about Korea from our forray into the world for the Korean medical system:

people LOVE their cell phones. EVERYONE was using them. Our chaperone for the day was on his cell phone constantly and would regularly give it to the doctor/nurse to talk to the SMOE people. Even the doctors and nurses would pull their cell phones out and answer them during my examinations. It was funny though. They used them more like walkie talkies. Two words and then they'd hang up.

taxies are clean and fairly cheap. the cars are luxurious and 2 out of the three we rode in had fake turf in the back on the back on the floor. Very cute. Our taxi ride was an hour and was about $30. I don't ride taxi's often, but that seems pretty cheap-especially because tipping isn't very common in korea...although our second taxi driver demanded a tip becuase he heard our chaperone talking about swine flu on the phone. It was funny, i think as soon as he heard that he cracked the windows. Anyway, still only about $30 with tip.

Delivery food was neat. They brought it in a plastic picnic basket with real silverware and everything in glass containers. When you finish you just put the container back outside your door and they come back and collect it.

we'll keep you posted on our continued adventures (hopefully still from within Korea)!

We're Here!

Yes, we landed outside of Seoul on Sunday night (here) It was a really long travel day - about 23 hours in all. Logan to San Fran layover (where we furiously wrote all of our thank-you cards) to Incheon airport Korea - very crazy. The international flight was pretty sweet as far as planes go. The food was pretty good and it was free alcohol, plus in front of all the seats were these multi media video/computers that was pretty neat. When we got to korea we realized that we hadn't read the paperwork about where to go so we furiously searched the crowd for another person with a footprints travel tag. Thankfully when we found her she was prepared and we walked with her through security (a BREEZE by the way). Anyway, because we're all English speakers in a country where we don't speak ANY of the language and nor is one bit of it understandable it's been pretty easy to make friends. (incidentally, mom and dad keller-that first woman, Shauna, is from Arkansas! Near eureka springs! i felt so proud that i knew the geographic location).

We checked in at the University where we will be staying this first week at some time between 8 and 9 PM Korean time. Our time zone is 13 hours ahead of you all, so i guess we were arriving here between 7 & 8AM EST on sundayMorning! They have us divided into male and female dorms while we're at the university (SungKyunKwan University), so Shannon and I are separated for the moment. The dorm rooms are cute. They look just like the UMASS dorm rooms only newer and with a shower and bathroom. The whole university is great and the dorms are painted lime green and yellow. You know how shannon loves the bright colors. This week we are basically quarantined to the university so we haven't explored anywhere yet - we have a weeklong training that goes until Saturday afternoon, after which we will meet our Korean co-teacher and the principal of the school we'll be teaching at.

Monday we had a welcoming ceremony that started with musical performance and ended with a warning about Swine Flu! They are very paranoid that we are carrying swine flue so every night we need to tell them our temperature. We also have medical tests tomorrow (including bloodwork) before they will give us our Alien Registration card.
ANYWAY, after the warning we sat through 3 hours of lecture. If we weren't jetlagged it probably would have been better, but it was hard to stay awake. On top of that we tried to go to a "survival korean" class last night from 7p-9p (it was optional), but the woman was going so fast and neglected to talk about the alphabet or use the English phonetic equivalent to English, so during the break we booked it back to the rooms to sleep. We probably should have stayed up past 9 though to get over the jetlag but both of us pretty much collapsed after saying as much. i Of course we both thought we be fine by today but this morning we both woke up and were wide awake at like 2:30. The excitement and nerves wasn't helping.

Today, tuesday, we had two sessions on teaching. One about using technology and the other about getting students involved. Both were highly engaging and enjoyable. We're just about to head out to dinner and then go to another optional class on Korean Culture.

Food has been good so far, but shannon thinks she'll get tired of it ultimately. Every meal we are served Kimchi (EVERY meal), but the also put BBQ sauce on pretty much every meat and we really like it. They served us french fries today for lunch which i think they did for our benefit. It was hilarious because they gave us about 7 french fries a piece. Not your typical american style serving, but we made due.

Well we both now have skype! Yay for skype! Jamie's name is Jamierlyon and shannon's is Shannon.a.keller and again, just think of your time, subtract an hour and change the AM to PM or vice versa, and you've got us. It really makes getting in touch kind of difficult... but for as long as we have jetlag we could be chatting in the afternoon in your time!

And so it begins!

World Travels here we come! Ok. So it's really only South Korea right now but we have big plans! Regardless, we've made it to our last night in the Valley. Who knew this day would come? 3 months ago were were planning the wedding, 2 weeks ago we were getting married and 5 days ago we bought luggage! (lots of luggage, mind you.) We also bought: a new Mac (using it now), lots of clothes (wearing them currently) and loads of deodorant (suggestion from westerners in Korea). We've also managed to avoid cooking at all and have been using the excuse that we need to appreciate western cuisine for the last few times before we ship off to a new country. (maybe not a good excuse, but it's worked for us so far). It's been a fun filled week.

So, we're heading out tomorrow afternoon to sleep in Boston and arrive at Logan for our 6am flight refreshed. I imagine you must be thinking, "wow, they're packed and ready and so prepared that they can be posting on their new blog! What a couple!" Well, that may be true for some couple somewhere but not us. Currently Jamie's making a pizza for our "last night get together" and i'm well....procrastinating. We're trying to stick to our regular patterns-they say it helps with culture shock.

Ok. We're real excited to be moving to Korea and think it's going to be an awesome challenge and yet incredibly rewarding.

Want to know what the guide books tell us? (We'll keep you posted on whether they're true)

that there are no ovens, that rice and kimchi are eaten at every meal, that there's lots of drinking, that you can only find frilly and uncomfortable underwear, that everyone dresses up all the time, that Seoul never sleeps, that driving is like taking your life in your hands, that the subway system is incredible, and, of course, that we'll love it.

We're off on Saturday- 6 hours to san francisco, 4 hour layover and 13 hours to Seoul. Plans for our flights? While we're still in the states we want to finish up our Thank You cards so we can mail them with all the postage we have. On the flight to Seoul, watch the rest of the Angel Series!

Great! This is going to be great!