First Day

I found out yesterday that I would be teaching at a high academic level high school in a small town here in Korea.  The similarities to my school in Japan are astounding.  The students look the same, act the same, and their abilities are about the same.  It should be great.

In Seoul they told us that we would be teaching on our first day.  On the bus to our town, they said we would not be teaching for two weeks.  At dinner last night, they said we would not be teaching until next week.   On my first day, I taught 3 classes.  Luckily, I had the lessons already made and they went really well and I enjoyed myself. I am told that change is the norm, so take it in stride.

We got to our new "apartment" last night and we realized that they had set us up in a dormitory for a junior high school.  Living in a studio apartment with boys running in the hallway until 11 pm does not work for us.  Since our contract calls for a proper apartment,  I think that everyone knows this will not work out and we will find a new apartment in the next few days.

Where will we be teaching?

We have completed both days of training and will be going to our new schools on Monday. We are expected to begin teaching on Tuesday. One small problem: we have no idea which school we will be teaching at. Could it be a high school...yup. Could it be an elementary school...yup. When will we find out? When our new school meets us at the bus station.

We are told that the reason is that they have not made all of the assignments. Kind of scary.

Hillary's other husband

A true story from class today.

A few years back Bill Clinton was coming to Korea. The Prime Minister, who could not speak English, wanted to greet Bill Clinton in English. The Prime Minister was taught "How are you?" He should expect a response of, "fine thank you, and you?" To which he was supposed to reply "I am too".

When Bill Clinton came, the Prime Minsiter got too excited and said, "Who are you?" Bill Clinton made a joke and said, "I am Hillary's husband". The Prime Minister replied as scripted "I am too."

Update

It turns out this is an urban legend. I guess I should have checked out what they told me before I posted it here. Sorry.

They had a stiff one after their flight

I was chatting with a guy this morning who flew over from the US on a different flight but at the same time we did.  He had a little incident on their flight. ..a woman died next to him. He said it was a bit surreal because part of the crew was giving CPR and trying to save her life, part was still passing by...coffee, tea or grim reaper. The crew put the woman in a body bag,  propped her up in the seats by the bathrooms in the back of the plane and covered her with a couple of blankets.  A short 2 hours later, they arrived in Seoul. Unfortunately, their luggage took a different route.  No sign of it after 24 hours.

We're Here

After 25 hours of travel, we have made it Seoul. Seoul looks alot like Tokyo as we were lead to believe by my Korean sister in law. We have only been here a few hours, but there are a couple of interesting things.

The traffic in our area of Seoul is remarkably light...not sure why. There are lots of guys on motorbikes some carrying big loads like this guy.

A big surprise is the number of flags on telephone poles. On part of the ride in last night there were two on every pole.

The meetings begiin in a couple of hours, so I have to go run and read.

13th Move

Sandy and I are getting ready to move to our 5th country and 13th home. We will each bring a big suitcase and a carry-on. We can take one more each, but it is such a pain transporting them...hopefully this will be enough.

It is much more difficult to move to another country in some ways because you do not know what to bring. Fitted sheets do not seem to be popular anywhere we have been, so now we bring them and hope we guess the right size of bed we will have. I am a little fat compared to asians, will I be able to buy pants? Will they have tampons? In Nepal they did not have them at all. By the way, it is very comical to hear Sandy's stories telling colleagues about the use of tampons.

We leave on the 25th and arrive 23 hours later in Seoul.