Gimhae, I just met you.

Okay, this is a blog.  Hello blog.  Dear Blog?  New readers start here?  That will do.

So this is a blog all about how my life got flipped, turned upside down, but more of that later.  My name is Jordan and my partner, Kaylie, and I have been living in Korea (South) for nigh on a month now.  I decided at first not to do a blog out of fear I'd have nothing original to say after all the other decent bloggers who are already doing what I'm doing.  As a result I will try to alter the focus slightly from "Incredibly informative and helpful" to a more "distracted and mildly amusing".  The plan is to update this blog once a month for the year I'm here.  I'm undecided on a Christmas Special, we'll see.  But in the meantime I'd like to take a minute, so sit right there, I'll tell you how I became an ESL teacher in South Korea (I told you).

Upon arrival

In West Philadelphia born and raised We arrived here on a Wednesday evening around 9pm after a 30 hour (plus time difference) journey, which in all honesty wasn't as bad as expected.  The first minor issue when we arrived was that we wouldn't be moving straight into our apartment as the couple who had preceded us wasn't moving out until the weekend, so we got to stay in a cute little motel.  And when I say 'cute little motel' I, of course, mean Korean sex dungeon.  The bookshelves of porn which lined the corridors, the mirror above the bed and the red lights which barely illuminated anything past the smutty atmosphere of affairs and prostitution were enough to suggest this wasn't part of the Hilton chain.  Needless to say there was no breakfast included in the cost.  In all honesty though, it wasn't that bad.  It was spotlessly clean, it had a fridge, internet and a massive TV.  Everything the post-coital Korean needs.  We stayed there until Saturday when we were escorted by the Academy's director to our recently emptied new apartment.  For those of you who are yet to experience the Carr-Turtle pad Skype grand tour, it's not massive.  Really it's a one person apartment with two people in it.  You could probably swing a cat in there if pushed, however your proximity to the walls at any one time would put you in danger of being hit by a rebounding feline.  As of yet though, no cats have been swung, flung, or shot-put.

Local cuisine

Given the fact that just about any confined space which occupies humans smells (according to the Turtle) of spicy farts, the food is not bad.  Although saying that I haven't had much as it's been three and a half weeks and I still struggle with the fucking chopsticks.  My students assure me they're a brilliant invention because they free up one hand.  But logically, it frees up your weaker hand.  What can you do with your weaker hand when eating?!  Actually, I don't want to know.  Food in Korea, thanks to globalisation, can be largely what you want to be.  If you want to go local, eat some spicy fermented cabbage that smells how it does when it leaves you, then that's fine.  If you want to eat Italian pizza or French baguettes then that's fine too, you just have to look a little harder (I'm yet to find a Scotch Egg though).  That said, very often the Koreans will put their own spin on it.  And Koreans either like their food monumentally sweet, or just very spicy.  So instead of loaf of bread, you have loaf of bread with chocolate, jam and cream piped through it, which would be fine if you knew of its rich innards upon purchase, rather than the gut-wrenching disappointment of knowing your egg on toast ensemble idea is truly out the window.

The Academy

Is on the 7th (or 8th for our American friends) floor of an office block, which is surreal at first.  Classes are between 45mins-1hour in length and the ages are between 6-15.  Or if you're a singer in Lostprophets the age range is: "That'll do nicely" to "Farrrr too old".  So far I've been called dangerous, told I have a big pointy cock-nose and a big crazy white man.  Although that was mostly Kaylie on the walk to work the day I'd forgot to take the bins out.  Most of the kids are kind and easy to teach, although I do have one child I would happily smack with a Yellow Pages directory.  All in all though, they're pretty nice.  They also assign themselves an English name, to often hilarious consequences.  Kaylie has a student called Obama and another called Jobs (after Steve).  I have an eleven year old called Bill, which is less glamorous, but always makes me chuckle.  Bill, coincidentally, sings Eternal Flame to me at any given opportunity.

First thoughts on Korea

We're some distance away from the main city, sort of 'in the sticks' if it wasn't for the fact that our small town has 30+ mahoosive blocks of apartments jutting out the landscape.  At first they're quite imposing, the first night walking home I felt watched by a group of monumentally tall youths.  Since then you just get used to them; realise they're there to preserve the pretty spectacular landscape around the town.  For that reason I can see why they'd build up as opposed to out.  

Something that I absolutely love is how much effort people make to say hello, or 'annyeonghaseyo'.  If you walk into a shop, more or less everybody will have a go at shouting hello at you, often in unison with a bit of harmony, which is nice.  What's less nice though is when they immediately snigger after your attempts at speaking Korean back, but I imagine I must sound quite amusing so it's understandable.  

Being off the beaten track and two of only a tiny handful of Caucasoids (I'm yet to see another Vanilla in our town, Kaylie's tally currently stands tall at two) we do attract a fair amount of attention, just for being 'different', like a friendly kind of racism.  We had a man come up to use in a supermarket last week, shake our hands and said he was pleased to meet us, before gallivanting down the cabbage isle.  On the flip-side though, just about any man over 40 is likely to hate you for being a white man coming over here trying to steal his women.  Their reasons for disliking Kaylie remain foggy.  I wonder if it's because she's coming over here, stealing their jobs, I'm not sure what the Korean is for "Daily Express" but they must have one.  

So first impressions, it's pretty good.  I have a job where I can wear a shirt and tie and start work at 2pm.  It's not quite Bel-Air, but it could be worse.