Colleen and Jake's Excellent Adventure: Arrived Alive

Hey everyone!

So Jake and I have arrived in Busan alive and well! We finished our first week of work and are becoming more familiar with the neighbourhood, our coworkers and the Korean lifestyle in general again.

We got in on All Hallows Eve (or October 31st for you non-heathens), and what an entrance it was! We flew out of Pearson at five to midnight on the 29th, and spent 14 hours next to an old Korean harmonee (grandmother) who was constantly staring at Jake (her seat neighbour) either to see what he was watching on his tv, or to gesture at him for some help. What a gentleman, Jake opened water bottles, rice packages and more for the cute old woman with the bad knee.

What an adventurous 70 something woman, flying from Canada to Korea on her own, knowing not a lick of English!! I would assume that she was visiting her son or daughter that now lives in Toronto, but she was wearing a group tour lanyard tag thing, so maybe she was just in Canada for kicking vacation??!! What an adventurer! I want to be just like her.

Anyhow, after a few games of Yahtzee, Tetris, minesweeper, chess, several Korean and Western meals and watching the movie "The Hangover" we landed in Incheon International Airport in Seoul at 3am local time. We had a few hours to kill until our 8:50 am flight to Busan. So, we surveyed our food options, and the only things open were a KFC, a McDonalds, and a Japanese restaurant with a seafood ridden menu. After flying halfway around the world, we were definitely jonesing for some kimchi bokumbap or bibimbap or mandu or anything Korean! Foiled! We ate some Egg McMuffins and hashbrowns instead.

We caught our morning flight along with all the Korean business men whose only luggage are their suitcases, on the 45 minute domestic flight. We were overweight by at least 10 kg each on the domestic flight, and probably 3 or so for the international flight, but they never seem to care about that on Korean air. What a nice friendly bunch! Service at it's best! (Our coworker said he flew here from Turkey, and he paid 25 euro per extra kilogram with Turkish Air!)

Touch down in Busan, and a silent man with our names on a sign grabs our bags after we make eye contact with him, and we walk in the 27 degree heat to our new academy's student van. He drives us, in pure awkward silence to our new house in Suan Dong, Dongnae Gu. Yes, that's right. It's a house. Rare for Korea, and very rare for the 2nd largest city in Korea!

We walk down a twisting alley with our bags, sweating and with no idea where we were, or where we were going (were we going to the school? Were we going to meet our boss? Were we going to go pick strawberries? Could've fooled us!) Avoiding rolling our luggage through a mini mine field of fallen and squashed tangerines on the concrete walkway from the trees hovering above, we arrive at a gate, and the silent man places our bags into the doorway of a house that has an old woman cleaning the floors on her hands and knees with a rag. Exit silent man. Where are we? Is this our house? We smile at the old lady who is cleaning and not interested in our presence. We sit on the bed and exchange confused whispers. Enter Delia, our new coworker who is on her way to buy some eggs at the store. She fills us in. This is indeed our place. She lives around the corner (literally), and our boss, Eddie, lives above us all. Exit Delia for eggs. Eddie, our new boss comes down and asks us how we like the apartment. A little worse for wear, we ask if it's finished and "ready" for us to move in. He says yes, we briefly strain to understand what he's trying to tell us in broken English. Then he leaves.

Jake and I go for a walk, knowing we will find a Gimbap heaven (these places are everywhere.... think Tim Hortons in the Maritimes) and have some dumplings and gimbap. Nap time.

Then we get our Halloween costumes on and head in a cab to Kyungsung University area where we meet up with Kendra and her boyfriend and get some drinks at a forigner bar. The bar parties all ended up combining and it just

became a large street party. Never have I seen so many foreigners all together in the same place in Korea. It was wild! There were brave Koreans scattered everywhere to catch a glimpse of this strange bizarre and boisterous event taking photos on their cell phones, and looking genuinely confused, afraid, and just generally gob-smacked.

We ran into people, and used Kendra's cell phone to contact several old friends that live in Busan, and met up with most of them throughout the night! Good times!

Our first day of work was on Tuesday, after we spent Monday "observing" classes. The school has it's own building, and is in a quiet backstreet next to a "river" near Dongnae subway station. The students are at least a million times smarter than at our last academy, and they are adorable, and wear uniforms with bowties and blazers and white leggings! There are 6 of us foreigner teachers, and a handful of Korean teachers and Korean helpers that make sure that the kinder-gardener's eat lunch, wash their hands, etc. There is a teachers room equipt with a few computers, and there is a specific curriculum set out for each class for each day and many textbooks and tapes and cds to choose from!