Official Korean Welcome

We arrived in Korea Friday November 30th, a whole day after we left Canada. It was a 12 hour flight from Vancouver but with the crazy time changes it felt more like we had travelled for 24 hours straight. When we got to the airport we already knew that we would not be greeted and that we would need to take a bus. It's crazy how you land in another country and all of a sudden your native language becomes broken and you start dropping articles and all kinds of important parts of speach which make one sound eloquent. We asked people "Ori Station?" hoping that they had at least heard of it. We founds our bus fairly effortlessly, with all credit going to the well labeled airport doors.

We were very unsure of where Ori station was but were so completely exhausted that we fell asleep on the bus, never for more than 10 minutes at a time due to paranoia. People filtered off the bus and before we knew it we were the last people on the bus and it was stopped. We looked around and all of a sudden a young woman boards the bus and approaches us and asks, " Dana?, Curtis?". To which we replied, "YES!!"

It turned out that the young woman was a secretary at our school and has been sent with a school bus to come and fetch us. PHEW!!! She took us to the school first to meet the other teachers and directors. We then took our things to our humble abode and chatted with the teachers we were replacing as they packed the last of their things. It was such a tearful goodbye for them, it definately had a lasting impression.

Today was our first full day of classes after one day of observations. At times I felt completely comfortable and at others I felt like I was disorganized and unprepared. Luckily for me the former was more so than the later. After the long day, Curtis and I decided to be adventurous and try some authentic cuisine by ourselves. We walked by a couple places and looked at the picutes displayed outside. We stopped at a Japanese food restauant and a head poked out the window and said, "Come on in!" The cook was trying to tell us what kinds of food he could make and then a lady from inside close the the door chimed in as well trying to help a bit in English. We decided to take the plunge seeing as they were so welcoming and friendly. The lady was sitting at the bar with a friend and invited us to sit with them. We did, thinking, hey, we don't want to be rude. The night was amazing !!! It may have had something to do with the whiskey she was drinking, but she was trying to ask us what we liked and helped us order a few different dishes. Curtis got a really good steak dish and I got a couple of different soups and an egg dish with squid. Everything was an experience! The steak was excellent, the egg and squid was good, and the soup was alright. The best part was just trying to communicate with this lady and the cook who were all trying very hard. Huge hand guestures, expressive faces, simple words. It was perfect. When we got up to leave we discovered that when the ladies had left about 5 minutes prior, they paid our bill. I was shocked. The cook looked at me and said " Korean heart" and made a big heart shape over his chest.... wow!!! There couldn't have been a better way for anyone to say "Bienvenidos!"