Living in Korea Day 1

Saturday night I arrived in Korea at about 6 pm local time. There was a man in the airport holding a sign with my name on it, so I went with him, we loaded up my luggage and the adventure began! It was pouring rain in Incheon so I didn't get to see as much as I would have liked. But what I could see was beautiful! There are huge hills covered with trees and tall buildings everywhere. They don't have the luxury of space like we do in KS, so they have to build up instead of out.

The drive to Guri took about 2 hours. It was on interstate the whole way...not sure if they'd call it interstate, but their signs were the same shape as our interstate signs. I'm not sure exactly which direction we were going or even what cities we were in most of the time. We went through several tollbooths...in front of each of these toll booths was a dummy directing traffic-the first of many strange things I'm sure I'll see here! I wish I could have gotten a picture of them, but it was dark and we were going pretty fast.

I'm not sure exactly how tall my apartment building is, but I'm on the 9th floor. In apartment 911. I laughed when the driver told me that :-) I hope it's not a sign! In my building I have a bank, pharmacy, grocery store, a little noodle place, and a cleaners of some sort. There's a parking garage underground that doesn't have a lot of space. How do they deal with them? They have little lifts in each space. The first person to park there has their car lifted up above the other one! I'll take a picture of it and post it soon.

I talked to mom and dad on Skype for almost an hour last night. After that I crashed pretty hard. I woke up at about 5 am on Sunday and just lounged around for a while. The apartment is filthy so I couldn't do anything until I wiped everything down. But I didn't have the code to my door (they don't use keys, they use keypads as locks) so I couldn't go anywhere! I unpacked my two big suitcases and stacked up all the clothes on my bed.

At noon my co-teacher Jillian came over to walk me to the school and then to take me to the grocery store. The walk is a very pleasant and quick walk. When I told about my previous commute back and forth, she couldn't believe it. It's going to be soooo nice to walk to school instead of driving everywhere. I have a feeling it will also have its downsides though. She did tell me which bus to take to the school, so one of these days, I will try that. On the way to school is a park as well as the subway station for Guri, which will be very convenient. One of these days, I'll venture into Seoul, but probably not for a week or so at least. I need to figure out Guri before I do anything else.

I have to go and get ready for school right now, but I'll post more on my Korean grocery store adventure later!