In Korea and really tired!

Okay, I'm now in Gwang-ju, South Korea!!!

The flight was really brutal. It was about fourteen hours long as the plane literally followed the sun halfway around the world. I sat with an older Korean man and his daughter the entire flight-- they spoke very little Engish. The take-off was really cool. The plane we were on was enormous! There were two levels, and I was on the bottom, but it still seemed quite high. As we flew over the NWT and Alaska the plane windows frosted over completely (looking out of windows I could see tudra and rock through the clouds with the odd river and lake). My ears popped multiple times, but it wasn't at all painful.

After the first fifteen minutes of thinking about the fact that this giant hunk of metal filled with people and gas and luggage was actually able to lift off the ground, I became incredibly BORED. I quickly wore out the battery on my portble DVD player (Thank you Tracy!!) and could not seem to sleep no matter what! As for entertainment on the plane, there was a few Korean shows and a hollywood movie dubbed in Korean and with Chinese subtitles. Frustrating!! But hearing Antonio Banderas in Korean but somehow with a Spanish sounding accent was kind of funny.

On the plane I was surrounded by a bunch of kids (all wearing CANADA t-shirts). This chubby little boy sitting to my left spent most of his time counting and trading all of the cash he had accumulated during his stay in Canada (won, us money, canadian), and staring at me. On the plane they had duty free shopping, which all of the Korean passengers were all over. The food was all Korean, but pretty bad; I felt mildly ill the entire time. And disoriented!! It was a friggin time warp that I could not wrap my head around.

When we got off the plane, it was around 5:30pm on Saturday. From Incheon airport (In Seoul) we all bussed to the hotel in Gwang-ju at about 12:00am, where we all sat down to a huge dinner. I finally got to go to bed around two am, then had to be at breakfast at 8am, not that I could actually sleep all that time anyway!

The next morning myself and some of the other teachers went walking around, taking pictures. Everyone we passed on the street stared at us. Little kids would stop to stare or yell "Hello!!" to us. The apartments and stores seemed all pretty standard, except hat they are all plastered in colourful signs. Sometimes there was English printed on t-shirts or signs, but they rarely made a lot of sense!

I haven't seen these yet, but apparently in some ladies' bathrooms there are "etiquette bells". When you press a button a chime, or the sound of birds tweeting goes off as a nice way of masking certain sounds in the bathroom!!

In a variety store someone tried to use an ATM and there was a little pad that you had to put your finger on to take your fingerprint! Crazy!

Today was the first day of orientation, and we had a couple speakers in to tell us about the jobs, and what to expect. I can't wait to get to my town (Naju) and figure out where I'll be living, meet my co-teacher, and see the school.

Okay, now we're going to a Korean jazz bar called "Hell" (I'm not even joking). Should be fun!

Pre-Journey Entry

Dear Diary,
mood: apathetic. My life is a black abyss filled with anguish and pain.

Just joking! My name's Cathy and I'm moving to a small town in South Korea for a year. I'm putting together this blog so that I can post pictures and make my mother worry about me a little less! I'll be moving in a few days (fourteen hour flight from Canada) to teach english to cute little elementary school kids. I'm pretty excited, although I don't think it will feel real until I'm on the plane. Since I'm not there yet, there's really not much else to say. If you're some random person just checking out this blog, I can't promise you anything particularly interesting. If you're a friend thinking "oh god, Cathy is officially a loser! A blog? Geek! Nerd!! pathetic piece of a computer geeks hardrive!!!..." etc. etc. I have no defence.