My first day at school and dinner after.

The first day at school.

Today was my first day. I didn’t teach, I just shadowed a half dozen teachers during each of the classes. There are five teachers leaving and four new ones due to fewer enrolled students. All the teachers were very nice and extremely helpful and informative. The first half of the day is all kindergarteners. There are different age groups and proficiency levels. For example the MK 7-1 class is the “morning kindergarten, age 7, first year students.” Kids who are 7 in Korea are not 7 in the US. In Korea, when you are born, you are one. So, a kid born December 31^st is “one.” Even weirder, on January 1^st, every kid who was born the previous year adds one year. So, that kid born December 31^st would be “two” on January 1^st. So, that means at the beginning of the school year, my MK 7-1 class will be full of 5-6 year olds buy American years. (By the end of the year, they are pretty much all 6.)

All the teachers went to go get lunch together. The school does serve lunch for free for the teachers, but fish head soup was being served so everyone went to go find something else. Some of the teachers went to go get some regular Korean food, and some were going to a Chinese style restaurant. I know I like Chinese so I decided to go with the option that I was most familiar with since I hadn’t eaten a real meal in quite a while.  The food was pretty good. I just told the other teachers what I wanted and one of them ended up just pointing at the picture of the dish I wanted since I couldn’t read what it said and had no way of saying “I’ll take the one on the left.” The food was good. The other teachers at my table said they came to Korea without any chopstick experience. I’m no stranger to chopsticks so it wasn't a big deal.

The second half of the day was PK and EIC students. Post kindergarten and … I couldn’t get a definition for the EIC. I’m going to guess it is English Intensive Course because those kids are BRILLIANT!! The kids spoke English almost fluently and were reading stories out loud and able to answer comprehension questions about the reading. Other classes were taking vocabulary tests… the words were very advanced, and the kids had to write definitions for each word and use two of them in a sentence. Incite, undoubtedly, monotonous, hoist, parched, etc. Some of the kids barely had an accent, some had memorized multiple lines from a play they were reading. Impressive.

After a long day of watching and taking notes, I went to get some dinner with another group of teachers. We went to a Korea BBQ restaurant. We had some BBQ beef, a bunch of pickled side dishes, spicy salad stuff, salty spicy stuff, and a Hite beer. The food was good. I ate mostly just the beef, rice and some of the salad. 

At first I equated the beer to a PBR, but it was less “harsh” than that, so maybe more like a regular Coors or Budweiser. I got stuffed and had a liter of beer for just 12,000 ₩ which is about $10.50. The other teachers said this was a pretty expensive meal. Oh, and lunch was only 4,500 ₩ which is about $4.00. 

Something interesting I’ve noticed is the loyalty Koreans have toward Korean made goods.  90% of the cars on the road are Korean made, the 42 inch flat screen in my hotel is LG, the stool in front of the computer is LG, and other random appliances and non-appliances are made by Hyundai, Samsung, etc. Imagine how much better off the US economy would be with that kind of loyalty!

I forgot my belt for nice clothes so I’m going to stop by a Union Bay I saw down the street on my way into school in the morning. (I know, Union Bay??) The other new male teacher Josh and I have to dress up because the parents are coming into one of the classes today, so they want to introduce us. 

Leaving PDX and arriving in ICN (Incheon Airport)

The plane ride from Portland to Los Angeles was rather nostalgic at first. Taking off I could see the silhouette of Mt. Hood against the early morning dawn. I couldn’t help but think about how this was going to be the last time I would see the iconic peak that I grew up seeing every single day for an entire year. 

The plane took off heading east and I could see i205 and the Columbia River below. Then flew over the part of the Columbia where we went wakeboarding last summer, which was neat… only to see that just beyond the trees about 100 feet way was a massive sewage treatment facility. Yaaay! (I thought the water felt warm that day…) Then the plane turned south and we flew down the east end of the Willamette valley. Again, took in Mt. Hood for the last time and enjoyed the early morning light reflecting off of Timothy Lake and Clear Lake (where I won’t be camping this year with my friends.) As we headed south Mt Jefferson was looking very white. We flew right over Detroit Lake, which looked to be about half full. 

I could see all the peaks until the Three Sisters. The front side of the Sisters were visible, but there were clouds butting up against the back of them so I didn’t get the full effect. The clouds also meant I couldn’t see Mt Bachelor. There was pretty much cloud cover the rest of the way until just north of Los Angeles, which looked very pretty since the hills were all green. I think it was Santa Barbara, not LA. The LA airport was mediocre. It was hard to find my way around, and not many food options in the international wing. I did find a sandwich and banana ($11.50!!) at a Sam Adams café thingy; the beer was tempting, but decided against it as it was 9:30 in the morning. There was a duty free shop in the international wing too. A liter of Absolut Vodka for $21.00. Cheap. Leaving LA was uneventful visually, obviously, since we were flying directly into and over the ocean. The culture shock began to set in at that point. I was pretty much the only non-Asian in sight and every one was speaking and everything was in Korean.

 I was in the middle row on the left side of the plane. There were 10 rows in the plane, plus the second level. It was huge. For some reason the person next to me switched with an American, thank god. He was from Dallas and on his way to the Philippines.  It was nice having someone to talk to. I fell asleep for a little while and jerked myself awake rather embarrassingly. I dozed a couple times after that, but never really did sleep. 

At 4:15 pm Portland time the little airplane icon on the screen in the head rest in front of me showed us where we were in the world and said we were less than a 1/3^rd of the way there and showed us a few hundred miles away from flying directly over Anchorage, Alaska. (It’s the closest I’ve been to Alaska!) At this point we were at 38,000 feet and traveling 567 mph and it was -76 degrees outside the plane. 

The flight went from LA, north up the coast, over Anchorage, over Nome, the Bering Strait, and over Russia! (Now I understand how Sarah Palin can see Russian from her house, she’s at 40,000 feet) Stupid clouds though… I couldn’t see anything over Siberia.

The last hour was brutal. It was like we just stayed in one spot on the map over the ocean east of Korea, not moving.

I watched a ton of videos to pass the time. The first one I watched on the screen in front of me was Where the Wild Things Are. I didn’t like it at all.  The second was The Invention of Lying, which I thought was pretty funny. On my computer and phone I watched a Sunny episode, I Love you Man, part of Inglorious Bastards, and part of Valkyrie. I kept getting interrupted.

Oh, I also had Sprite spilled on my arm, lap, and a little on my computer. That was fun. There’s nothing like a clammy butt when sitting for 13.5 hours!! It happened when we were flying over the International Date Line.

I’m definitely buying some duty free stuff when I come home. That stuff was so cheap. High end Scotches were ½ to 1/3 the cost in Oregon.

The landing was uneventful as well. It was foggy/hazy so I couldn’t see much.

In the hotel:

It took about an hour to get from the airport to the hotel due to rush hour traffic. 90% of the traffic we passed was either Kia or Hyundai. Unfortunately it was dark and foggy so I couldn’t take in what I’m sure is a beautiful view of Seoul. What I could see was high-rises. Everywhere. The bridge from the Incheon airport to Seoul is the 5^th longest in the world and is very impressive.  The hotel is … interesting. After trying to figure out how to turn the lights on for a few minutes I had to ask the guy who was helping Carla bring her bags into her room. Unfortunately, no wifi here. So after arriving, I was tired (as I had been up for at least 24 hours), I was hungry, and slightly uneasy in my new surroundings. So Carla and I went on a mission for food. It was a nice brisk night. The hotel sits about two feet off the main road so we went along the backside to find something to eat. It was classic neon lights and businesses packed into small buildings. And I couldn’t read a thing. We walked a couple blocks and we both mentioned that we were soooo glad we weren’t walking down this dark semi-alley alone. There was a sign with a picture of food on it, so we figured that was a restaurant, we also saw another sign that actually said pizza. It looked like a pretty sketchy establishment, so we opted for a 7-11 looking place on the corner. I got some cup-o-noodles that had a pretty picture.  While there we ran into the guy from Portland that was on both flights with me! Small world, edh? He was with another teacher who just arrived from “Sunny England” as he called it. They were in the hotel down the block from ours. We walked back to out respective hotels and I ate about five bites of my noodles. They were very spicy and I was so tired I couldn’t stand it. So I went to bed. And that was my first day!