Hi Korea, I'm Here!

Hi all! It's been a while! So for some reason, the Vidalia/Tor plugin stopped working for me. I was too lazy to try other methods in connecting but it seems like I'm still not going to have internet at home until maybe next week. We went to the immigration office yesterday to apply for my ARC and my multiple reentry visa (Atlanta only gives you a single entry visa). It cost a total of 64,000 won. They'll mail the passport and stuff to my school next week. THEN I can finally open a bank account, get a cellphone, and get internet!! I'm at school at 7:30AM in the morning just to use the internet. So sad :x


Kids here have to clean up the school everyday. They rotate on who cleans when and where. Last Thursday, 4 students from grade 4 came to my room to clean it during lunch. It's awesome having them clean ;D They don't do a spotless job or anything, but it's much better than nothing! They came back after their classes ended and played in my
office for about 2 hours. Half the time was spent teaching me Korean and other half was spent just chatting/playing. The next day, one of the students comes to my office in the morning and gives me a present! It's so cute :D I forgot that one of the perks of being a teacher (especially a foreign teacher) is you get presents from students. She gave me a cute lil purse/bag thing. It's too small for pencils, too big for money, so I just kind of use it as a camera case.

Another perk of being a foreign teacher is the snacks that other teachers give you/buy for you! In general, Asia doesn't really know what it's like in America. They usually see it as more of one culture like it is here, and that you can't get the food you eat here in America. Soo, everytime I'm out with my coteacher on some errand and she sees some snack (manjuu yesterday) she buys it for me ;D They also give me a bunch of snacks at school.

Most of the people here are really nice to me. My coteacher says that people at our school at all nice, but beware of people outside of school. She fears for my safety :D Most of the people outside of school including vendors have also been nice but I have met quite a few clothing vendors that are just plain rude. I can't understand them, they can't understand me, but when we're writing down numbers and pointing (basic basic stuff) and then they turn to the nearest Korean and laugh at you, that's not very nice. It's not going to get me to buy anything ever from them. And no, I'm not mistaking their laughter, it was like pretty mean make fun of the foreigner laughter-- even the other customer looked really uncomfortable that the vendor was laughing at me.

Ah.. yea so that aside, I tried to go clothing shopping this past week. Clothes here are really expensive! If you can, don't do like I did and bring a bunch of bath supplies (unless it's something of quality that would be expensive here.. they have Aveeno here but it's very expensive), instead, bring enough teacher/plain clothes. Every nicer looking thing is either super expensive (minimum 40,000 won) or too fancy with frills and whatever. The cheapest shirt I've found so far was 3900 won and that's plain white, without any shape. I bought a long sleeved one for 4900 b/c I thought, they wouldn't sell things that looked bad right? no, it really did look bad.



This Sunday I went to Seoul to visit Tanner's friend Joonho and his family. Him, his wife, his daughter, and his son pretty much spent all afternoon with me. Sunday was his daughter's birthday (age 8) so there was a birthday party for her for lunch. Food was great :D Joonho's wife is a good cook! His daughter, Emily, had pretty good English since she had her early years in the states. His son (5 years old?) was super cute! They're both really good behaved children. Anyway, in the afternoon, they drove me around Seoul and took me to Myeong-dong. We shopped around there for a bit. It's like shoppers heaven lol. Anyone who wants to shop in Seoul should definitely go there! We also went to Migliore department store. It totally was nothing like a regular department store. The inside is made of tons of small clothing shops like at a market. Clothes were fairly cheap. I got a nice white wrinkle free blouse for 23,000 won. Ashley, we're going back when you get here :p

Sunday was also the first day I went on the subway. The subway is actually fairly easy to get around. There's English on all the signs and they announce each stop in English after they say it in Korean. My landlord had given me a U-pass card to ride the bus but I thought she had said it was just for busses. I found out that it worked for trains too after I bought a T-money card at the subway station lol. So now I've got 2 cards that do the same thing- work for busses and trains. I don't know how much the U-pass costs to begin with, but the T-money card cost 3000 won. The card comes with a really handy subway map and a map of Seoul. It also comes with a coupon book of I guess famous attractions/stores in Seoul that you can use the coupons at. Some of the coupons are specially labeled "foreigners only" lol.

Aside from clothes shopping, I explored my area a bit more and bought a whole lot of other stuff. I've spent maybe 400-500$ in household items, food, transportation, stickers for students and other stuff for school, clothes, and other random stuff. It really does add up!! I brought $1000 US with me to start with and I think it's a pretty good amount because unless your coteacher and school is crazy speedy in getting you your health checkup and then ARC, you're not going to have access to the 300,000 won settlement allowance. I think my first water bill is also going to be sky rocket high because they didn't clean the apartment until after I moved in.. as in all the water they used while scrubbing, washing, wiping, and all the cleaning I did on my own is all going to be on my bill :x

Some key things that you should buy when you get here: Kitchen faucet filter head, dish scrubbers and soap, dish tray, drain unclogger, tissues, TP, paper towels, washing machine lint catchers (super useful.. I took the ones on the washing machine off b/c they were old and dirty), cleaning spray, vacuum cleaner (my apt had one..), rice cooker, kitchen towels, indoor slippers, bathroom mat, bathroom shoes, bedsheets+blanket+pillow, desk lamp, extension cords/extra adapters, toothbrush and other stuff holders, swiffer type mop, and clothes hangers. There's a bunch of other stuff but I'll list them in a huge list with prices later.