Baptism by Fire

I think the title is a little more to Shannon than to me, as she's off for her first day of school already, but it still feels as though we've been tossed head first into the mix of things here in Korea, and no amount of orientation can really prepare you for starting to live on your own.

We arrived in Mokpo yesterday after concluding our orientation in Gwangju. It was a very strange end to the week, which almost made it feel pretty good to get out of there. Things were winding down, I was quickly running out of clothes to wear (it's hard to keep up with laundry when you're doing it in the bathtub and have nowhere to dry things), and some of our group was getting a little restless. But then, things got almost out of hand at the closing ceremonies when a couple of English teachers tried to see just how far they could push the envelope in terms of being inappropriate.

Two people from our group decided to do a thank-you from ourselves to all those who helped arrange the week of training. While it seemed a little out of place, it was overall a nice gesture, until the unusal thank-you's began, which included thanking one of the group members for being Mexicain, and thanking Confucianism for helping with one of the speaker's marriage. It was all a little too tongue-in-cheek, given that most of the audience was Korea, spoke little English, wouldn't understand the humour, and probably wouldn't be impressed even if they did. The two speakers managed to top it all off with a brief story about girls farting, hinting about mooning local Koreans, and then handing out soju to everyone for a toast. I think even for the Koreans it was too early in the morning for soju.

But I really shouldn't dwell on that, we got through it, and Shannon and I are now down in Mokpo, living in our new place and sweating more than I knew I was capable of ever doing. The humidity in this city is amazing! and neither of us were hardly able to sleep last night. It didn't help that we accidentally left the floor heating on all night, which kept our apartment at a balmy 25+ degrees all night long.

Our apartment is huge, especially for Korea. We have three bedrooms, a full bathroom plus on ensuite bathroom, a nice kitchen and large, open living room. Unfortunately, the mess left in here was terrible.and we spent 3 hours cleaning last night and will probably need to put in another 3 or 4 before we can get rid of the smell of mold and animal grease. Our lack of skills when it comes to garbage are also hampering our abiltiy to keep a clean house at the moment - we took out a bunch last night, but seeing as we didn't properly sort it, the garbage we took out is still sitting on the street. There's been a lady on and off a megaphone this morning talking about something (I can understand her say "Thank you"), and I'm worried she's looking for who left the pile of un-sorted trash on the street. What a wonderful first impression we're going to give the neighbours.

We had dinner last night with a number of Shannon's co-teachers and a VP and Parent Leader from mine. Compared to earlier meals, dinner was rather good, but now that we're eating with Koreans, it's a little harder to pick and choose what to eat. Shannon sat next to the man with the best Engish (Mr. Yeun), who may have been the head of the table as well, and he put at least 3 giant pieces of beef on her plate throughout the night. He then had the rest packed up for us to take home for breakfast, but it seems to have been forgotton at the restaurant, which neither Shannon nor I am really worried about.

Shannon started school today, while I begin on Friday. My first trip to the school was a little bizarre - it's one of the oldest schools in town, many things were in a state of disrepair, and nothing in my classroom worked properly, though it may just be that no one knows how to work them and my lack of Korean prevents me from trying. I'm anxious for my teaching to begin, but I think I'll be a little better off after hearing about Shannon's day.

That's all for today, I think my fingertips are starting to sweat, so I should go take another shower perhaps. I'll be back with an update on how school went, as well as whether we can ever remove that smell from the kitchen.