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It started out pretty bad, but not so bad that i wanted to go home. First of all, I had a 13 hour flight and visited 5 airports to get to my destination, and at every airport I was at, I had at least a 3 hour wait. When I left Moncton, New Brunswick Dec 18,2002 I arrived in Halifax, Nova Scotia about 20minutes later. Then after waiting for about 3 hours I got on a medium size plane to Toronto. Again, I waited about 3 hours in Toronto to get a HUGE plane to Incheon, Seoul. My flight was HORRIBLE! There was so much turbulance it was impossible to sleep. When i did fall asleep the captain would wake everyone up and warn us about the turbulance. When i arrived in Incheon, my largest piece of luggage was missing, and of course there was no english speakers around to help me and i had to hurry or i would miss my plane. I finally talked to someone, or should i say, we used pictures to get our point across about what my baggage looked like. So, after this horrible episode i had to figure out what Shuttle bus i was suppose to get on to get to Kimpo airport. What a task this was. I asked 3 or 4 times and every person told me a different bus. Finally, a boy that was on my plane (Did i mention i was the only foreigner on the plane) came up to me and asked if i needed some help, he said i looked a bit upset. Anyway, he pointed me to the right bus and i ended up making it just in time cause it was about to leave. Then i got to the airport and got on a small plane to Daegu. Guess what happend when i arrived in Daegu; My director wasn't there to pick me up. Some how i knew that i was going to lose my luggage so i had packed a lot of stuff in my carry-ons and i knew that my director wasn't going to be there. I called her and she said that she didn't know that i was arriving today. WOW! Figures, nothing seems to go as planned in Korea (from my experience thus far anyway) So it took her about an hour to get to the airport to pick me up. Then we went to lunch. Lunch looked amazing. It was a traditional Korean setting and all the food ended up being horrible and spicy. This is my first day in Korea, I was definitly not ready to jump right into eating spice. After eating i was taken to my institute/Hogwon where i would be working, to meet the kids... Let's remember now.... I havnt showered in over 20 hours and have barely slept and it is about 1pm in Korea, and i was taken to a place where i had to deal with over 100 kids from 1pm until 8pm. She let me leave an hour early, because she figured i must have been tired, HOW KIND! What made things even more frusterating is that my apartment wasn't ready so i had to stay at my director's house the first night. That wasn't that bad because she seemed really nice. (Looks and attitudes are sometimes deceiving in Korea, i dont think the people realize how BLUNT they are). |
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The kids in Korea are great so are the people. The kids are so fun and lively and everytime you see them at school or on the street they want to approach you. A lot of them are to shy to speak so they just stare at you. So, I have made it a point to always say hello first. No matter who approaches first when there is any conversation between the children and a foreighner like myself, they always start giggling. I swear that some of the kids even play rock, paper, scissor (Ki, Bi, Bo) which is the most popular game here used for everything, to see who has to speek to the wai-gook (Foreigner) first. I think it's funny how they laugh after they get a Hello in English. Anyway, I say Hi to everyone, except adults in the train station or on the street. I've had a few weird experiences with the nice people from the street and the train station. One Very nice lady took my cell phone for 30 minutes and played with all the buttons and kept talking to me about my phone in Korean. I had no clue what she was saying but she messed up my phone and it kept asking me for a password before i used it. Luckily, I dropped it a few times and pushed enough keys that it just started working again without the password. |
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