Greetings all from Korea...well South Korea to be more precise. I got in Tuesday night after just a short flight...well about 30 hours door to door...Fun! Somebody remind me to take a more direct flight next time...I went through Minneapolis, L.A., and Tokyo before arriving in Seoul.
I read a lot about Sourth Korea before I came here so I was ready for a lot of the major differences...so the culure shock has been minimal (so far). I'll tell you though, that it's different to walk around looking at signs everywhere and not be able to understand anything. I've told myself that I'm going to learn the language (more or less) in three months...we'll see.
I live in Ilsan, which is part of Goyang (also spelled Koyang) city. It is North-west of Seould but still on the Seoul subway system...so I guess you could call it a suburb of Seoul. I'm about 30-40 minutes from downtown Seoul. I got to experience the Subway the last couple of days but I'm told that you can't get a true appreciation until you ride through rush-hour.
The school that I work for has been really good to me so far...someone picked me up at the airport, they took me out for lunch, and have been showing me how to get around. The owner/President speaks really good English, he has a keen interest in stock markets so we were chatting it up about Finance stuff...gives me a chance to put my education to use in some form. I actually wondered if my Finance degree helped me get the job because the other guy I've met that just got hired at the school has an MBA...makes you wonder what he's doing teaching English knowning that the average MBA makes about $70,000 in Canada.
My apartment's nice but it's pretty small compared to what I'm used to...nice view though. I have Air Conditioning and a Washing machine, pretty much everything I need except an oven. They pretty much bought everything new. Funny thing when I looked in my cupboard I had one plate, one glass, one fork, one spoon...you get the idea. So much for throwing a dinner party anytime soon. But I've got a pot and a frying pan so I'm good for myself. I'd like to get a few more things...interestingly there's a Wal-Mart down the street only a 5 minute walk from my apartment....gotta love Wal-mart.
I haven't done much exploring since I got here, been jet-lagged so I've been falling asleep early, then wake up at 6 or 7am..but I'm gonna be up late tonight I bet. I'm heading into Seoul to meet up with a guy that I went to University with. He's from Korea and was in Winnipeg on an exchange. I didn't really know him that well but he's a good friend of a good friend of mine and we hung out a few times last year.
I start work on Monday...gonna be interesting, but from the look of the classes I observed I think I'll enjoy it.
For anyone looking to call me the time change is 15 hours ahead of Central Standard Time. I've found that the easiest way to figure it out is to add 3 hours to whatever time it is then convert am to pm (or pm to am).
That's all for now....
