February 7, 2010

Just got back from dinner! We ate a ton of food today and it was just what I had been waiting for. So good! After Katie and Bri woke me up this morning and we got our lives together a little the three of us went next door to apartment building C (were in B) and woke up our friend Kevin we know from WSU. I don’t think he was too happy when he answered the door haha; he and his buddies were out Saturday night until 5am. But it was good to see another familiar face and he pointed us in the right direction of the city and food. It’s about a 15 minute walk from our apartment building to the main street in Dongtan. We ended up just walking up one side of the street until we saw a place that was open. We went in and sat down and took out our little Korean language books to try to figure out how to order something. We ended up just getting up and pointing to a picture on the wall and nodding our heads a lot. Didn’t really know what they were giving us but it ended up being really good! Bri and I had kimchi soup (it was bright red and probably the spiciest thing I’ve ever eaten) and we all shared some sort of sushi roll. The sushi roll had ham, egg, pickled hicima, and a few other unidentifiable ingredients. A breakfast roll maybe? Anyway, it was all delicious and thank goodness I like kimchi because it’s in everything. We stopped in the Dunkin Donuts on the way home for some coffee, and me and my crazy sweet tooth I had to get a donut.

After lunch when we came home Jade’s dad, who built and owns the apartment building, had to come over to Katie’s apartment to fix her heat since it hadn’t been working. He doesn’t speak much English at all so it was kind of funny watching Katie talk to him. I think we all tend to just raise our voices and speak slower when we can’t communicate, as if that will get the point across. He was just making a ton of gestures and kept saying “fire” and “shower”. After a funny little display and understanding a few words here and there, I think we all got the gist of it. We have one central heating unit and we have to press different buttons when were controlling the water temp or the floor temp. But of course it’s all in Korean! We left with Jade’s dad and he took us to the new school we will be teaching in to meet Jade. The school is right across the street from Brown English Language School, the one we originally got the job with. They have finished moving all the stuff over but the building itself still needs some work. We hung out there a little while and then Jade drove us to E-Mart, kind of like a Korean Wal-Mart on steroids. It’s like 5 stories tall and essentially an entire mall in one store. E-Mart has groceries, fresh fish, samples at the end of the aisles, home stuff, electronics, clothes, school supplies, sports equipment, etc. They have everything you could possible want in a store. It even looked like people were sitting down talking to salesmen about buying cars. Since its Sunday it was incredibly busy, picture Costco but five times busier and filled with busy and pushy Koreans. They have no shame doing whatever they have to do to get where they need to go. To get from floor to floor you push your cart onto a flat escalator and these stopper things come out of the wheels and keep it in place. It’s so crazy! The three of us girls got stared at a lot, especially by the little kids. Dongtan is not a tourist destination by any means; the only Americans they ever really see are the English teachers. Jade’s husband had to come with his car also and drive some of our stuff back to the apartment. We were all exhausted after that experience and lugging all our purchases up to the third floor. We dropped everything off and walked back into the city for dinner.

This time we walked up the other side of “downtown” to find a place to eat. We went in this one little restaurant with pictures outside of noodle dishes that looked really good. Again, we said our “ahnyung-hah-say-ohs” (hello) and went outside to point at the pictures of what we wanted. They gave us hard boiled eggs, kimchi, and some more of that pickled hicima for appetizers. They do that a lot, always putting out several side dishes besides what you order. Katie had a cold kimchi soup and Bri and I had some sort of hot tofu noodle soup. After we were finished we were just kind of sitting there for a while trying to figure out how to tell them we were done. We looked up how to ask for the check in our language books and Bri ended up walking up to the ladies and asking for it. We decided that each day or chance we get (at meals and such) we have to switch up doing something like that. Just doing something that’s uncomfortable but will help with learning the language. As we left we all said thank you in Korean and I tried to say “thank you for the delicious meal” and I think I said it right but they all laughed a little. At least were trying!
Were back in our apartments now and all sitting in Bri’s apartment blogging! Haha its funny I always thought of blogging as pretty nerdy and now all we talk about is “oh we have to go home and blog that!” We were all talking on the way home from dinner and the three of us want to try really hard to pick up the Korean language. If we keep it up like we did today I think we will be able to communicate in no time! It’s unbelievably hard and frustrating to be “talking” to someone and to have no idea what each other are trying to say or how you are going to get your point across. I have to remember it’s really only the first day and we will learn, but I want to be able to order food without feeling embarrassed or having to walk the waitress outside to point to what we want. We’ll get there soon!

We’ve met some of the other girls who are also here teaching English. Two girls, Sarah and Amy, have been here for a few months so they have been a big help with a few things. I haven’t had a chance to talk to her about it but I guess Amy does Taekwondo here so I can’t wait to find out more about it! That would be too cool to be able to get back into Taekwondo and especially in the country it originated. It will be weird though to try it with Katie and Bri and like 10 years after the last time I did it! Another girl Taleah has been here for 10 months and she was an Asian Studies major in college so she speaks fluent Japanese and has picked up a lot of Korean. She will be a big help with the language barrier! They all seem fun and each unique so it will be cool to get to know them. I guess another guy is coming in a few weeks and then we know two guys in the apartment building right next door.

So Jade told us today that our apartments are technically located in Osan. So if you look on a map you can’t find Dongtan because the city is so new, but if you find Osan that’s where we are. There’s a major road we cross to get into the city and I guess that’s the barrier between Osan and Dongtan. Jade has been such a big help with everything and that was so nice of her to drive us herself to E-Mart today! We are going with all the other girls to the school tomorrow morning at 8am. I guess for this week we are just observing the other teachers and helping with some more of the moving between schools. This upcoming weekend is the Chinese New Year so we have next Monday off and then we start teaching on Tuesday! AH! Bri and I are both a little nervous to start teaching. Katie has a little experience so she’s pretty excited but I don’t know really what to expect. Korean kids are the cutest though, I hope I don’t have any hooligans.

Well I’m going to go set up my room now. We still don’t have our desks or tables and chairs but we have the hanger thing for our clothes, bath mats and towels, toilet paper, more kitchen pots and pans, etc. And we actually have a pillow to sleep on! I’ll take more pictures of my place once I have things set up, so think of those pictures already up and the “Before” and the ones ill put up later are the “After” picture.