(32K)I arrived in Ulsan Sunday morning in a very brain-dead state. Ulsan is in the south-east corner of Korea, a one hour drive north of Pusan. Unfortunately, it is about as far from Seoul (where Michele was living) as you can get and still be in Korea. I was taken out for dinner, which is the custom in Asia when someone first arrives. It doesn't matter how jet-lagged you are, it's very impolite to just collect someone at the airport and dump them off at the hotel. Keep this in mind if you are ever entertaining people from Asia...
It wasn't until Tuesday that I got to meet the other teachers; Debbie and Darren from upstate New York, and Spain (a woman) from eastern Canada. Spain and I shared an apartment about half an hour out of town. It was in a high-rise in the middle of the country! In Korea, land is at a premium, so they always build up. Our building was at the edge of a mountain stream on one side, and next to some rice paddies on the other.
When I started teaching, it wasn't that difficult. The company I worked for was very clever. Several years previously, they hired real English teachers, and had them write a curriculum and daily lesson plans for every conceivable level of English class. Then the company could hire inexperienced teachers, and get competently taught classes. There are many teachers in Korea who have no experience, who are just thrown into a classroom and expected to teach with no support or materials.
I had some trouble with my Korean visa (they only gave me 15 days when I arrived), so I had to leave the country to fix it up. The closest place to go that wasn't North Korea was Japan. Luckily, my friend Dawn lives there, so I had a place to stay while I was there. The best thing about going was that Spain would be gone when I got back!
I had a great time in Japan, but it cost me. I spent more for six days in Tokyo than I did for one month in Indonesia! The cheapest restaurant food around was McDonald's, but sushi was a close second. The cheapest sushi in Tokyo was better than the best I've ever had in the states. We ate sushi. A lot.
Tokyo is really amazing. Twenty million people, and very little crime or poverty. I went to the Imperial Palace (couldn't go in), Asakusa Temple (very impressive), and Akihabara, the electronics part of town. They actually have a section of town about 20 square blocks that is devoted to every kind of electronic beast you can imagine. Everything from air conditioners to digital reverbs to car stereos to computers. They have an Apple building. More than one! Six stories of Macintoshes! The amount of electronic wealth in the area is staggering. I was impressed.
When I got back to Ulsan, I had been transferred to a different school. At first they wanted me to live in a yogwan (cheap hotel), but I was going stir crazy, so they put me back into the same apartment as before. Spain was gone, and Barry and Johnna had moved in. They're both from the states, Utah and Santa Cruz, respectively. I got along amazingly well with the both of them, and we started actually seeing some of the sights in southern Korea. We went to some beautiful Buddhist temples, Bulguksa and Tongdosa being the most impressive.
My new job was different. The school hadn't started the official program yet, so I had very little in the way of books to work from. Luckily I was the first native English teacher at this school, and the novelty value was good for about two weeks, giving me time to get some lesson plans worked up. I was only there for a month, but it was the most fun I had while in Korea. When it was time for me to leave, they threw me a going away party with a cake! They eat everything with chopsticks in Korea.
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My last three weeks were spent in Kuri, a suburb of Seoul. I had already experienced the more rural areas, and it was good for me to see the capitol as well. It was very western, especially Itaewon, right next to the American army base. I took Brent, my replacement at the school, to Itaewon, and he wondered if he had even left North America (he's from Edmonton). I finally left Korea in mid-October.
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