I finally went to bed around 1.30ish and was only able to sleep for five hours or so. I just couldn't fall back to sleep for some reason, and part of it was probably because my apartment is next door to a big construction site. After I laid in bed for a long time, I finally got up to take a shower, but there was no hot water so I couldn't. There was a thermostat in the main room but it was in Korean, so I couldn't figure it out.
After that, I decided to go to breakfast. I can't really describe well where I live: it's on a backstreet, but you walk a block or two and you're on a really big main street. On my block there are a couple of restaurants and a 7-11. I went into the 7-11 for some breakfast, which wasn't too difficult because most of the products were in English. I bought a notepad and paper (to keep track of expenses and write down what I needed to buy), some orange juice, yogurt, and some pastries. The guy working there speaks no English and always bows to me. There's lots of bowing in Korean culture from what I've seen so far.
After breakfast I walked around and tried to find some other necessities. The first thing I wanted to get was an adapter (Korean plugs aren't American plugs). I went into a cell phone store and asked where I could find one. They didn't speak English but he called up a friend who did and I was able to communicate what I was looking for after a little bit. He pointed me in the general direction of a place where I'd be able to find one. I was walking along the street and some Korean guy came up to me and said "Hello!" It was the first time someone just tried to talk to me in English other than for helping me. That was about the only word he knew though. So I said "Park Ji Sung" and he started talking about soccer in Korean. I explained to him with hand motions that I wanted to find an adapter. Then he pointed to a computer store that was on the street (probably the same one the other guy was trying to direct me to). I went in, and the guy working there didn't speak English either. But through gestures I found an adapter.
Next, I bought a plastic cylindrical bin at some little market that I'd use as a trash can. It was a tiny building but it was amazing how much stuff they could fit in there. Next, I went to a grocery store. I wanted to find trash bags and clothes hangars so I could start unpacking. It took me a very long time but I found some clothes hangars, and found trash bags after an attendant helped me. They were at the information desk in the back along with some other stuff. I bought the biggest ones I could but they didn't really fit and they're terrible. They're not like normal trash bags, they're plastic and they have four flaps at the opening that don't do anything useful.
After that I went to my hagwon. Simon had drawn me a map of how to get to the subway, and told me that the hagwon was only 7 or 8 stops away, but he didn't mention which direction I had to go to (he probably did and I just forgot). I hoped I could figure it out. But when I got there I realized it wouldn't be so simple. Simon said that I had to get a subway card at a local convenience store. The guy at my 711 didn't speak English and it seemed like it would be hard to communicate. So I was just standing there, looking at the map and trying to figure out what to do and where to go. Some Korean comes up to me and in a perfect Australian accent asked me if I was lost. Turns out he was an Australian-Korean who had just left everything behind to come here and teach English. He didn't like his contract and had just pulled a runner, I think, and was staying with a friend and wandering around. Anyways, I had the address with me in Korean (but not in Konglish, which probably would've helped me) and he looked it up on his iphone and figured out which stop I had to get off of and where I had to go. After that, he showed me the whole process of how to get a card and how to put money on it. There's no way I could have figured it out myself.
I got off at the subway stop and was hungry for lunch. There was a burger king right there, and for whatever reason, it appealed to me. I had a number 8 (bacon double cheese) but of course it was way too small (it tasted just like it does in the US though). After that I started looking for the hagwon. I went to the street it was on and saw a sign high on a building that said TOEFL and SAT, so I went up to that floor, thinking it was my hagwon. I showed them the address and asked where it was, and the lady went and asked someone else and they said it was a couple building over to the right. It obviously wasn't there though. So I showed the address to a few people, and finally they showed it to me. It was the next building over and to the left (the opposite direction that the lady told me). My school's sign was very obvious but the other school's sign blocked it, which is why I couldn't see it. Later they told me that the other school was a rival and made a huge sign like that on purpose so you couldn't see my school's. So I'm pretty sure they gave me the wrong directions on purpose, and there's no way the lady at the front desk wouldn't have known where my school was.
So I got to the school and had a meeting with my boss and the people at the front desk. My boss told me what I would be teaching within the next few days, and I had a meeting scheduled that night to discuss a class I'd be teaching on Saturday. He also told me about a girl I'd be tutoring on Sundays. Later, Simon told me this is the fastest a teacher had ever started after arriving (usually they waited around two weeks). It's because the teacher I'm replacing left the day after I came (when they were going out for drinks the night I arrived as a going away thing), so I have to take over his classes.
After that, I had a meeting with the people at the front desk. They're the ones that schedule our classes so it's really important to have good rapport with them. They sort of understand English but don't speak it to well, so Simon was the translator. They wanted to know about my teaching style and what type of student I wanted, questions I don't really have the answer to. They said to Simon though that I was very studious looking.
After the meeting, Simon and one of them went to lunch with me (burger king hadn't filled me up). We had some excellent Italian food. The other one was very nice and complementary, she said that she had a feeling that I'd be a good teacher and said that it was the only time in 7 years of working there that she'd felt that way (I'm guessing exaggeration in flattery is part of the culture or something). They were also shocked I didn't know my blood type. They told me that Koreans think you can judge a person by their blood type and were surprised that Americans don't care about it. It was a lot of fun. After that, Simon found me an adapter (my computer plug didn't quite fit into the other one, it was some sort of weird European one I guess, holes for three prongs that are slightly smaller than ours).
Then, I went home for a little while (and got lost from exiting the wrong way out of the subway). I tried to find a digital alarm clock but couldn't. I found a non-digital one but decided to wait until I could find a digital. I went home and tried to figure out the internet (they explained to me how to plug it in) but after I plugged it in it still didn't work. I tried calling Simon on the phone like they told me but it was only an intercom phone and didn't have any numbers on it. I took pictures of the thermostat and internet plug in with my computer camera. I figured out the thermostat after pressing random buttons, one of which turned the thing one, and turned up the middle dial to the max like they had told me to (I'm very confused by the whole thing, apparently the only source of heating in the apartment is a radiator in the floor that heats the water, and Simon had said I'd want to buy a floor heater). They said that by turning the middle dial it would only heat the water and not the whole apartment. After watching a little Korean TV I headed back to the hagwon for my meeting.
We voted on the books we're going to teach and I'm going to be teaching reading. So I have to have Call of the Wild ready by Saturday (a day and a half later). which I should be reading instead of writing this. I met the other two American teachers at the school. One of them is Korean-American and the other is half Indian (matters of ethnicity are very important to Koreans). They seem really cool, but I was pretty disappointed that right after the meeting they just left and didn't invite me to dinner or anything. Maybe they were going to but didn't after I started asking Steven some questions about the apartment. So I went to a random restaurant and had dumpling soup. It was very good and looked healthy. I headed home to drop off my computer, and the apartment was a sauna. The hot water worked, but middle dial had turned up the heat as well. The thermostat said 27 degrees Celsius, which is what it felt like. I turned the middle dial way down but when I woke up the next morning, it was said it was 26 (but if felt much cooler). I was going to go to the PC cafe and a drink afterwards but I was too tired, so I just passed out, and slept in until 8.30 this morning. I still felt tired but decided to get up. I'll write on the rest of the day at some other point.
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