I've been in South Korea for a little over 24 hours now (although most of that time was at airports). The trip itself went very well. I got into Seoul in plenty of time to get through immigration and customs, get my luggage and get re-checked in for my flight to Busan. I got into Busan and got on the correct bus heading to Ulsan. I was supposed to go to the bus terminal in Ulsan where I was going to be picked up, but for some reason the bus didn't go there and I was put off the bus on some street in Ulsan. Fortunately I was able to get into a taxi, with the help of some English teachers coming back from a vacation, and headed to the terminal. At the terminal there were two people holding a sign with my name on it, so I got into the car with them. Fortunately they were the people I was supposed to meet and not robbers who were hopping to get lucky. They took me to my new apartment and got me all settled in.
My apartment is a studio style apartment, although it's a pretty good sized place with an enclosed balcony. That means that I have a sliding door leading onto a balcony that then has another sliding door that has railing right on it. This is where the clothes drying is taken place. I do have a washing machine which is in the kitchen. I have no dishwasher or oven. My stove top is gas which is exciting since I've never used gas before. The school has provided me some pots and pans and I am looking forward to cooking my first dinner tonight which leads me to my next topic.
I woke up at about 8:30 this morning, my first full day in Ulsan. Normally I would have gone to work but today is a national holiday in this fair country so I got it off. I decided to go exploring this new city some. It was raining but it wasn't too cold. Before setting off I of course decided to set a couple tall nearby buildings as landmarks so I wouldn't get lost. I started walking found some nearby grocery stores and convenience stores (I have three convenience stores within about 3 blocks of my apartments). I also found a farmers market of sorts and bought some vegetables. In the course of exploring I of course got lost. The land marks didn't work very well since every tall apartment in town looks exactly the same. I eventually found my apartment after about 2 hours of wondering around getting soaked.
It's still a little soon for me to have much in the way of first impressions. It's all still new and exciting and different. The biggest thing is that they don't speak English and I don't speak Korean so when buying things I have to trust them. For instance when I was buying something the guy held up 5 fingers and said something, presumably 5 something won. I assumed it was 5,000 won since I hadn't had seen anything under 1000 won before. I handed him 5,000 won (about $4.25), his eyes went wide and started shaking his head. It turned out it cost 500 won (about $0.42). Also after doing some shopping it struck me how it's fairly easy to get around (at least walking, other transportation could get difficult) and shop without knowing a single word, just numbers.
Hopefully this will give you an idea of my new life in Korea, at least my life so far. I'll attempt to load some pictures next time.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Change of plans
Just a quick up date, instead of getting to South Korea on the 24th as originally planned, I will now be starting on the 28th. This is primarily due to delays getting my work visa. I don't really know the reasons for the delay but I assume it has something to do with me being a very shady character.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Preparing to Leave
In case any of you haven't heard, I will be heading to the wonderful country of South Korea around the 22nd of February. Specifically I will be going to the city of Ulsan, which is in the South East part of the country. It is right on the coast on the Sea of Japan. The city it self is a major industrial city with a population of 1.1 million. It is home to the largest automotive plant and the largest shipyard in the world. Despite its size it is still only the 7th largest city in the country.
I will be teaching at a private language school there. A private language school is basically an after school school parents send their kids too to learn how to speak English better. The kids do learn English in their normal schooling, but the private schools allow them to learn the language better and provides better opportunities for their future employment. As such I will mainly be working afternoon evenings over there 5 days a week 35-40 hours a week. I will be making 2.5 million Korean Won a month, so I will literally be a millionaire after the first month. Before you start hitting me up for money though be aware that the Korean Won does not transfer into the US dollar at a very high rate. (I hope you'll forgive me for hoping the US dollar will continue to devalue against the Korean Won, at least during the next year).
Most (if not all) of you are probably wondering why I am doing this. Well, there are several reasons. First of all it is quite hard to find a good paying in the current economy and this job will pay well, even once I transfer the Won into the US dollar. Secondly, I am still sort of young (going on to more than a quarter of a century), I have nothing holding me down, and it is a chance to experience a different country and culture while being payed well. Many of you are probably saying these are very similar to the reasons I gave for becoming a truck driver, and you'd be right. I did that to see the country and make some money and have some good experiences. Replace “country” with “another country” and the reasons are the same. Perhaps I'm just not any good at settling down, or finding a career, or finding a steady job. Or, maybe I'm just a wild and crazy youth, going out to experience the world. It's really hard to tell.
Apart from the “why” the second most common question I receive is “Do you know any Korean?”. The answer to this is “No.” I got Rosetta Stone from a friend and I couple of phrase books/dictionaries and am very slowly going through them. It is very slow going, especially since Korean is so different from English. They don't even use a similar alphabet. It's like they are trying to make it hard for me. The most troubling part is that I have to trust these books and software to translate accurately for me. It reminds me of a Monty Python sketch where things are mis-translated and wackiness and harm is done. Hopefully I won't be accidentally saying anything vulgar in Korean, but it's impossible to know for sure.
Since this has been going on longer than I thought I'll try to wrap it up. I'm going to South Korea in a week or so, I will be there for a year. I will attempt to maintain this blog, probably updating every week or two to keep all you wonderful people updated on my comings and goings. While there I will of course miss all of you, although hopefully you will keep in touch. Don't bother calling me since I will be cancelling my phone service. My e-mail is either trevor54@gmail.com or trevor54@hotmail.com my Skype username is trevor.dykeman. You can try contacting me on Facebook, but that is probably the slowest way to keep in touch.
I will be teaching at a private language school there. A private language school is basically an after school school parents send their kids too to learn how to speak English better. The kids do learn English in their normal schooling, but the private schools allow them to learn the language better and provides better opportunities for their future employment. As such I will mainly be working afternoon evenings over there 5 days a week 35-40 hours a week. I will be making 2.5 million Korean Won a month, so I will literally be a millionaire after the first month. Before you start hitting me up for money though be aware that the Korean Won does not transfer into the US dollar at a very high rate. (I hope you'll forgive me for hoping the US dollar will continue to devalue against the Korean Won, at least during the next year).
Most (if not all) of you are probably wondering why I am doing this. Well, there are several reasons. First of all it is quite hard to find a good paying in the current economy and this job will pay well, even once I transfer the Won into the US dollar. Secondly, I am still sort of young (going on to more than a quarter of a century), I have nothing holding me down, and it is a chance to experience a different country and culture while being payed well. Many of you are probably saying these are very similar to the reasons I gave for becoming a truck driver, and you'd be right. I did that to see the country and make some money and have some good experiences. Replace “country” with “another country” and the reasons are the same. Perhaps I'm just not any good at settling down, or finding a career, or finding a steady job. Or, maybe I'm just a wild and crazy youth, going out to experience the world. It's really hard to tell.
Apart from the “why” the second most common question I receive is “Do you know any Korean?”. The answer to this is “No.” I got Rosetta Stone from a friend and I couple of phrase books/dictionaries and am very slowly going through them. It is very slow going, especially since Korean is so different from English. They don't even use a similar alphabet. It's like they are trying to make it hard for me. The most troubling part is that I have to trust these books and software to translate accurately for me. It reminds me of a Monty Python sketch where things are mis-translated and wackiness and harm is done. Hopefully I won't be accidentally saying anything vulgar in Korean, but it's impossible to know for sure.
Since this has been going on longer than I thought I'll try to wrap it up. I'm going to South Korea in a week or so, I will be there for a year. I will attempt to maintain this blog, probably updating every week or two to keep all you wonderful people updated on my comings and goings. While there I will of course miss all of you, although hopefully you will keep in touch. Don't bother calling me since I will be cancelling my phone service. My e-mail is either trevor54@gmail.com or trevor54@hotmail.com my Skype username is trevor.dykeman. You can try contacting me on Facebook, but that is probably the slowest way to keep in touch.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)