Thankfully there was someone waiting for me at Jeju airport when I landed--my new employers. They assured me that they would take me to my new apartment, right after a brief tour of the school. I'm not sure what they thought I would absorb in my current state, but we went anyway. 2nd floor, books, room with a dinosaur-theme. Cool. Can I go to sleep now?
Fortunately my apartment was a 2 minute drive away, unfortunately the previous teacher had left it in a semi-disastrous state after leaving earlier that day (fired, actually, for scaring the children, among other things). So, the 3 of us spent about half an hour cleaning the place before I deemed it livable.
[Part of me felt a very strong urge at this point to go out into the night and embrace Jeju for all it could offer, (it was Saturday night after all, wasn't this what I traveled 30 hours for?) but the physical side of me told that urge to fuck off and I went to bed.]
The next day I went for a walk around the neighborhood, which triggered a bit of a freak-out for me as it finally sunk in that I was actually in Korea--everything was strange, nothing made sense, words and language as I knew it had been totally vaporized. I was an alien in a new world, and the future was fucking weird.
This feeling soon passed.
That afternoon, a fellow teacher and Canadian (Paul, a total chiller from B.C.) came by my place & took me to meet some people, first to lunch, with Russ (think a kinder, gentler version of Dr.Gonzo with about half the debauchery), and then to play soccer, with assorted foreigners. We never got a chance to play actual soccer, (first due to a game taking place on the field, and second due to a large group of Koreans holding hands in a giant circle), but played the best game of tennis-soccer and mini-soccer that that edge of the field is ever likely to witness--and we were only scolded by one drunk Korean man doing it.
All in all, a fine first day. Teaching would begin tomorrow.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment