week 1 adventures in teaching

After the first week of teaching and being “settled” into where I’m going to spend the next year. I’m pretty well drained. Emotionally this week has been a roller coaster. I have to go way out of my comfort zone and ask people for help, and am dependant on them for just basic things that I would have never thought to ask for help with in the US. I’ve had to ask for help with everything from getting directions for a taxi driver to setting up my cell phone, keeping the internet turned on in my apartment, getting the results from my HIV and drug screen and a multitude of other things.
The cell phone for an example was a trial of errors. I first went to a little store a couple of blocks away where I’d heard from the previous native teacher that they spoke good English. He was right about that. Actually the husband and wife had lived in Atlanta previously. So we bonded pretty quick. They sold me one phone and gave me a piece of paper explaining in Korean to the people by the big department store in the area to set up a prepaid account for me. I was then met with the big x made with their arms no prepaid, no phone for foreigners. Ouch! By this point I’d walked a good 4 miles between the stores and my home and I had to pee really bad and there aren’t any really easy places to find a bathroom in Korea so far. That was the moment I ran smack into my principal. Who is really nice and is trying very hard to speak to me in English. I felt bad that I kind of talked fast and then ran off but… the idea of asking her where a bathroom was… not appealing at all to my independent streak that I’d been trying to have here. So I walked very briskly in the 88 degree and 94% humidity back home. I finally got home and crashed figuring I’d deal with the cell phone on Friday.
I asked Miss K. about it and she called the guy who had figured out a solution and I was to go by afterschool and he’d take care of everything. He did. I walked down there from school hoping it would only take a little while since I also needed to go home change and get my bag together to go meet Allison (my recruiter) for dinner. Things were taking a while with the paperwork so I left for about 10 minutes to run home change, get things together, go to the bathroom, and then ran back down the hill. I got back and things were set up and they had a Chinese plum waiting for me. That’s a major sign of respect and friendship here so I’m going to have to buy them some fruit this week and stop by. The guy Ken programmed my phone with Judy’s phone number so if anything happened I had someone who spoke English in the area who would help me. I think I must have some good Karma or something for all the help they gave me. I’m glad they are only a few block away and I’ll probably see them regularly. Oh and they way they set up my phone is that it’s prepaid but in his name. Yeah, he’s guaranteeing my phone, just because he knows how it is to be in a different country and not able to get things done.
They then wrote out for me the directions for the cabbie in hagul so I could get to the main station where I was to meet Allison. No one else showed so I was glad I at least did and we had a nice dinner downtown. Then she had to catch the KTX back to Seoul where she was meeting some people who were coming in to start teaching next week.
I managed to take a hair raising cab ride home. I’ll write about the cabbies another time, but lets just say I was a little nervous that this one was watching tv and not the roads on the way home.