Before you start, I want to let you know this will be split up into parts. I wasn't exactly planning on doing another series like I did in the past with my trips, but as I began writing I quickly found out there is too much to cover in one post. Here is part 1 of... well we will just have to wait and see how many parts there end up being. I mean, I am covering a whole year.
Well, it is almost 추석 (pronounced Chuseok) here and I thought I would recap this past year. And why would I be doing this because it is almost 추석? Well, that is because it is a kind of Korean thanksgiving therefore, I want to take some time to reflect what has been happening and give thanks to all the friends I have met here. Hope you enjoy this "look back" at my stay in Korea thus far.
I can still remember the first day I came to Korea. I remember the 14 hour flight and which the lady next to me kept asking about the time we would land and how to calculate how much time we had left. I got the feeling she didn't understand the concept of time change and even though we were changing time zones, the flight would still be 14 hours long. (It would also be good to point out that on the monitor in front of us was a counter where it told you exactly how much time we had left.) I remember how uncomfortable I felt sitting in the thin rows of chairs on the plane and how I couldn't really sleep. I think it was a mixture of excitement and being completely uncomfortable. I remember landing on the ground and remembering I had no clue who would be meeting me at the airport. Well, no one met me at the airport. After buying a calling card and making a phone call to my school, I was told to get on a bus and head for 서현(pronounced Seohyeon.) When I got there, it was around 8 at night and I had no clue where I was. A few foreigners passed me, at which point I asked if I could borrow a phone so I could call my school again. They allowed me too (almost unwillingly, which really surprised me. Here I am with luggage, which was a good indication that I was new and had no clue where I was, and they didn't really want to help. First sign of many about what to expect from foreigners here.) Anyway, I was finally picked up and checked into a hotel. The place I would be staying wouldn't be ready for a few days.
This was the weekend in which I met my first friend in Korea. His name is 정길(pronounced Jeong-gil, kind of like jungle) and has been a great friend in Korea. We met at a church neither one of us actually attend anymore. I guess you could call it fate. Well, the following Monday was my first day at work. I was picked up from my hotel and driven to where I would be working for the next year. Simon was the first co-worker I would meet and the one who showed me my apartment. I then met my boss and other co-workers: Karl, Jenny, Mrs. Kang, Ryan, Kathy, Travis, Sally, and Sunny. All of which have been great to work with. At the end of the week, I was taken out to dinner with my co-workers. I was told as a new employee I would have to try 소주 (pronounced Soju.) Let me go ahead and state that I absolutely do not like 소주. But as it was a kind of Korean tradition, I drank it. It is a very strong drink and later found out that Koreans love to drink it.
Well, I moved in December which meant I would have to spend Christmas and New Year's alone. At least that is what I thought. I ended up working on Christmas day, which didn't exactly bother me. It was also nice to not have all of the annoying Christmas songs that you would normally hear in every store you walked into back in the States. For Christmas, 정길 invited me out to dinner and introduced me to two new friends, 유정 and 은진. We met at a nice restaurant and had some sort of spicy chicken. As for New Year's, my co-worker Karl came over to my place along with 유정 and her cousin. We ate dinner and watched the festivities on TV. I actually came down with a pretty bad cold (I actually got a shot in the rear region for the first and second time that I can actually remember. A few days later, it was gone.) and that was the reason we stayed at my place instead of going out. I was afraid I would get worse being out in the freezing, Korean winter. One in which I was not well equipped for living in FL for the previous 2 or so years. However, I made it through my first month in Korea and loved every bit of it.
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