Dong Jak-ing it

Wow.... it's been a crazy few days.

I left the SMOE training yesterday and met Mr. Song, the head of the English Department at Kyungmoon High School in DongJak Gu where i will be teaching for the next year. After meeting the vice principal, and a few of my co-teachers i quickly grabbed my apartment and some furnishings...

Since then I've spent some time walking around the school, having a few meals with the english teachers at Kyungmoon, and even going for a few drinks with them. As it turns out, these guys love to drink and apparently my 'In' at this school will be the fact that i look like i can drink them all under the table (It's probably kind of true)

In Korea everyone drinks soju... its kind of like watered down vodka and even though Koreans love to drink, their tolerance isn't very high apparently. Being able to go toe to toe with a middle aged korean man is apparently a great way to make friends... sorry ma, if i come home an alcoholic its because i needed to advance my career ;)

Anyways,

What i really wanted to talk about in this post is my place... I live in this crazy little back alley apartment building in Dong Jak (a district in Seoul) which is pretty central and close to all the good major areas (which i haven't seen yet)

The room is.... tiny, the place is called a one room, which isn't really an exageration. I guess technically its 2 rooms, one bed/living/kitchen/laundryroom. and one bathroom/shower. When i got here i didnt have anything in it so my coteachers brought me to furnish it (courtesy of the school). As you can see, for the first night i didnt have a bed (i do now). And no, neither SMOE nor Kyungmoon supplied the adorable Yoshi Slippers...

The pics are of my room, bathroom, and entrance to the alley which leads to the alley which is my street

Chapter 1: Enter Seoul

And I'm here!





I arrived in Seoul at around 6PM local time and got to my bunk at around 10ish. I'm rooming with a guy named Andrew from Hamilton for one week while I have orientation, he's a cool guy so so far so good.





Anyways, first thoughts on Seoul... looks kind of like Vancouver actually. It's pretty overcast and there's lots of mountains and trees so I'm pretty happy with that.



The picture is just one i took of the city from my dorm. Haven't really started orientation yet, but I've met a bunch of really cool people, played some soccer (turns out I'm awful at soccer) and ate some kimchi. I'm sure I'll like it eventually.

This post was lame, but i really don't have much to say right now.

Until next time

First Post aka Problogue

Wow, I think i just set up my first Blog. I've now joined the elite company of Perez Hilton and your 12 year old little cousin. The only difference is I'm not naive enough to think of my opinions posted here matter to anyone besides myself, my momma and maybe a few of my friends.

Anyways, the reason for me rocking the Blog is so that I can keep you up to date with what's what as I travel to Seoul South Korea to teach English for the next year.

As of this post, I am still sitting in my room in Coquitlam BC Canada and won't be heading to Seoul for another week and a half. But any great novel has a prologue, so i guess these first few posts will be my proBlogue. (SHAZZAM!)

My goal is to post something at least once a week (we'll see how well that works out for me) so that I may actively reflect on what I am sure will be a huge experience for me.

Anyways, welcome to the blog, feel free to post a comment (which I'm assuming you can do on a blog) and I will probably post later this week or something to talk about the whole application process.