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.
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!
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