Getting to know Dongtan, South Korea

Our first dinner in Korea


Reception desk at LCI.


Brown English Language School. Its cute isn't it?!? Too bad they didn't tell us we work at LCI.


Our apartment building. Its looks like a jail, but its actually quite nice inside. The only bad part is that it's in the ghetto of Dongtan and a 20 minute walk away from any other civilization. grrr


The view of the city on the way to school. Isn't the rice field beautiful?? not

Woke up much happier today! Wish I could call Ariel, Whit, Evan or Joe and talk to them about how overwhelmed I am or see what they are doing. This time difference makes that so difficult! And I can just pick up a phone and call them. I have a feeling that I am going to be on Skype a LOT, just waiting to see if someone will come online to talk to me lol. I'm so glad that Katelan, Chase and Chris are in Korea so I can talk to them and ask them questions! A guy I met in class at WSU a few summers ago is in the building next door, so we walked over to his place this morning to see if he could tell us where to get some food. I knocked on Kevin’s door at 10am, and he didn't get home until 6am, so he look exhausted and we felt really bad, but he was nice and gave us directions on how to get into the city. It’s about a 20-minute walk, which isn’t bad at all. The streets are just like they are in the states and every car I saw was really nice! A lot of Mercedes, BMW’s, Audi’s and Samsung cars- that look just like BMW’s. We walked down the main street in Dongtan to check it out and look for a restaurant that was open. They don't open until 11am or noon on Sundays so it was hard to find one, but we ended up picking a small place that looked good. We went in and sat down, wondering what to do next. A woman came over and gave us menus that were in all Korean. We had no idea how or what to order so we asked for “bop” which is rice, Katie pointed at some sushi and I pointed at a picture of some soup on the wall. All three of us had our Koran dictionaries out so we could figure out what to say. The women were laughing at us and speaking in Korean, so we just laughed, smiled and tried to use gestures to communicate what we where trying to say. The soup we pointed to ended up being kimchi soup, the spiciest substance I have ever tasted! My mouth was on FIRE! I had to drink like eight cups of water to calm my senses down! Tia is a pro, but Katie and I struggled a lot with using chopsticks, but we vow to practice and get better asap. Our waitress was so great! I looked up how to ask for water but she didn't understand me even when I said it in (my version) of Korean, so she came over to read my book and then told us/gestured to where the water was. It was funny trying to communicate with each other without actually saying anything anyone could understand. Katie, Tia and I are determined to get this language down as soon as possible so we can avoid awkward moments like that. Great experience, but I definitely felt dumb LOL.

Later today we hung out in my apartment until Jade’s dad came to fix Katie’s heater. I think you had to be there, but it was the funniest thing in the world for me to watch Katie try to discuss the issues of the heater and het instructions from him. He doesn't speak English and anytime he expressed that he didn't understand Katie, she would repeat what she said, only louder… like almost yelling would make him understand. After a few minutes of a lot of confusion and hand gestures, Katie was able to understand what he was talking about and finally fix her heating problem. I was so proud! ;-) Now all she needs is a bed!

Jade’s dad drove us, in his gorgeous BMW, to meet up with Jade at the school we will be teaching at. We were supposed to be teaching at Brown English Language School, but they were bought by LCI, so the school is in the process of moving across the street to the new LCI building. Jade drove us to the E-mart so we could pick up the long list of items we needed to buy for our apartment. I knew the E-marts where big like our Wal Marts, but dang!! It was 5 stories high! You can buy pretty much ANYTHING at this E-Mart! It was so overwhelming and insanely crowded. Thank goodness Koreans are nice, because we where the only white people in the entire store, getting in everyone’s way, lost and confused on what item was what because we can’t read Koran, and nobody was rude when we where in the way. We get stared at a lot though, especially by little kids. There aren’t many tourists that come to Dongtan, so it’s rare to see a white person. The coolest part about the E-Mart is the flat escalators that take you and your cart up to the next floor. I also liked how they don't use plastic bags; you have to box all your items up. It’s time-consuming and a huge pain, but great for the environment. Just a few of the things I’d like to see more of in the states.

After dropping all of our stuff off at our apartments, we walked into the city for dinner. We saw pictures of food on a sign outside of a restaurant that looked good, so we went inside and sat down. To order our food, Tia and Katie took the waitress outside to point at the sign to show her what we wanted. She laughed a lot with the other waitresses it. We laughed too and gained some more motivation to learn Korean ASAP so we can stop having to order this way. We made sure to say hello and thank you in Korean as often as possible, and practiced a few new sentences as we waited for our food. We read our Korean pocket dictionary, try to pronounce the word and repeat it 50 times in order to memorize it. We decided that each of us have to take turns asking for the check, so after about 10 minutes of practice and 5 minutes of nervous laughter, I decided to bite the bullet and go ask for the check, and she understood me!!!!! I think the waitresses appreciated our efforts, but we all laughed together because we knew we looked ridiculous. As we left, Tia said “맛있은 음식을 감사하십시오” (thank you for the delicious food”). We were very proud of our huge improvement of Korean in just one day. We figure that with this much effort everyday, we’ll speak a good amount of Korean before we leave. It’s going to be rough though!! Korean makes living in Rome and speaking Italian look like a piece of cake, I can’t imagine why I thought it was so hard! If we can get through this, and learn Korean, we can do and learn any language!!!

Start the new job tomorrow! Can’t wait/really nervous!