First Day

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.