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Week 53 (Feb 26th to Mar 4th) |
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Monday Feb 27th,Today the other new teacher, Mike, arrived. It's a
full house in the teachers room! What's funny about Mike is that Sue almost didn't hire strictly because he's very tall and big. Sue tends to only hire "attractive" people. Pictures are important in the
Wonderland hiring process! However, Sue waited until the very last minute to hire replacements for Carey and I, and thus was stuck. Here's the part that I love: Mike is turning out to be an awesome worker, and I think that he will be a really strong asset to the
school. So there Sue! Today was also my last actual teaching day. While I'm already missing my beloved morning students, I
definitly wasn't all that upset to lose the afternoon kids!
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Tuesday Feb 28th,My last day at Wonderland! Because there were no
morning classes today (break before the new semester), and I don't have any scheduled classes on Tuesday afternoons, I actually didn't have to teach at all. In fact, I'm not even sure why I had to be there at
all. Sue hadn't bothered to finish the schedule yet for the new semester (starting the next day), which meant that I couldn't even help the new guys plan their schedules, so basically I sat around all day
playing on the computer. What a last day. Am I sad to go now? No, not exactly. I definitely won't miss having my time wasted and not appreciated. After my "day of school", I had to finish packing and
temporarily move all my stuff to Ryan and Lindsey's place so that Joe could move in. Since this effectively made me homeless, Ryan and Lindsey were kind enough to put me for the night!
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Wednesday March 1st,Early in the a.m., I hopped on a train for Busan to
catch the ferry to . . . Fukuoka! This is the visa run, quite common for foreigners who are working in Korea. In order to get a new visa issued, you have to leave the country for 2 days to pick up the visa in a different country. I don't really know why, but it means a mini vacation for me anyway! I took the speed ferry, which only takes 3 hours! (The slow ferry takes 15 hours.) I got off in Fukuoka at about 5 pm. Since I couldn't figure out what bus I had to take to my
hotel, I took a taxi. The thing with taxis in Japan is that they start at $6 . . . oh well. As soon as Igot out of the taxi, it started pouring rain. Here's the best part: I got totally and utterly lost whilst looking for my hotel, and spent 2 hours wandering up
and down the same street. Finally a little old Japanese lady noticed how incredibly frustrated I was, and looked over my shoulder at my map while trying to sound out the English, and took me right to my hotel.
Why couldn't I find it? The damn sign was all in Japanese, no English! Of course, by this point, I was drenched to the bone, and in no mood to do anything at all, so I curled up in bed and got some much needed sleep.
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Thursday March 2nd, I had to go to the Korean consulate in Fukuoka to
apply for my visa today. I saw many of the same foreigners that I saw on the ferry there. Fortunately, my application got processed faster
because I already had my confirmation number from Jae. For the rest of the day, I wandered relatively aimlessly around Fukuoka. It's a pretty compact city, and very walkable. First I went to Ohori Park, a
really nice park around a lake. Then I accidentally wandered into a Shinto shrine ( I can't remember the name of it). Then I checked out the Fukuoka castle ruins, which aren't really very ruinous; it's pretty
much just a garden. Then I headed downtown to look in some stores. For awhile, I wandered through the entertainment district, kind of half looking for somewhere to go that night, but I didn't find anything
that looked both affordable and interesting. I somehow ended up in Canal City, which is a city block wide mall in Fukuoka.
Believe it or not, I was actually kind of bored in Japan! Fukuoka is nice, but not terribly interesting .
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Friday March 3rd,After I picked up my new visa at the consulate this
morning, I was left with a few hours to kill before catching the ferry home. So I headed to the downtown area to check out a few temples. The two that I saw, Shofukuji Temple and Tochido Temple, were nice and
peaceful, but they certainly didn't reach the magnitude of the temples that I saw in Kyoto and Tokyo this summer. Somehow my wandering took me back to Canal City, where I found an HMV store this time. They
had really good selection! I so wanted to buy the whole store . . . I managed to control myself and bought two CDs. Finally I was on my way back to Korea! I was thrilled when immigration didn't even blink an eye at my new visa, and even more excited when I got that "entry admitted" stamp-- that was my first moment of professorhood! Since I still technically had no home, I spent the night at Ryan and Lindsey's again.
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Saturday March 4th, Moving day! Early in the a.m., I lugged one huge
suitcase (weighing probably 80 pounds), my carry-on suitcase and a full backpack on the KTX train to Seoul. Unfortunately Jae had an out-of-town gig, so he couldn't meet me, but he sent one of the other
teachers, Oak to meet me. Kenji, the foreign sax teacher also came to meet me. I had heard Kenji play before, but had never met him, so it was nice to finally meet. First Oak took me to my new apartment.
My new place is in Bangbae, south of the river, and a couple subway stops away from the school. Bangbae is quite a large neighbourhood, and I'm kind of right in the middle of it, so I suspect that I'll be getting lost a lot! I've learned that when a Korean says 2 rooms, what they really mean is 1 bedroom and 1 living room. Not that I'm complaining-- this is the first time I've ever actually had a bedroom in an apartment! The bedroom is really small, but the living room is a
good size, so I'll be able to have people over. The next step was furniture shopping. There are many furniture stores close to my apartment, so we just walked up and down the street finding the good deals, bargaining down, etc. By the end, I had gotten almost
everything I need for my apartment for under $300--pretty good!
Now I had stupidly agreed to let Carey and Sylvia sleep at my place for a couple nights (they had their immigration interview a couple days ago in Seoul). A week from now, this would have been fine. But having
a brand new apartment in complete disarray, without extra guest bedding, or towels, this was a very bad idea! Still, it was nice to have them around, I guess.
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