First Post and I'm Already Behind...

Typical.

Well, as you might have guessed by the lack of invitiation to my funeral, I made it! The flight was relatively uneventful, especially since I forgot my iPod at home! Aaaargh. I have since been informed that my brother claimed it for himself before I even got on the plane. Thanks, Nick, appreciate the support.

When I landed I got picked up by a man who I thought was associated with the school where I teach, but it turns out he was just some random cab driver instructed to pick me up. That would probably explain why he wasn't interested/able to talk to me...

He takes me to the school, where Patrick (a guy who DOES actually work for the school) meets me and gives me some food --ham and egg sandwich?-- and takes me to the hotel where I'll be staying until later this week.

The next day is my mandatory health check, so I get picked up again, this time in a school bus, and taken to the hospital. The clinic was a fairly large room with lots of smaller rooms around the perimeter, each one containing a different station. They couldn't communicate with me enough to explain what each room was, but "You, four!" got me to the right place, and then when a woman came at me with a needle/cup/blood pressure cuff, I'd figure out I was in the blood test/urine test/blood pressure measuring room.

Throughout the entire thing I was wearing Korean hostpial clothes, which was a shirt and pants, both made out of heavy pink cloth. The changing area was like a locker room, with other people getting in and out of their street clothes, which was awkward but I guess I made it through relatively unscathed.

Then I was schlepped (however you spell that) back to the school in time for lunch. The kids all get served first, then the teachers make their way upstairs to the kitchen to get their own food. I was worried about the prospect of eating hot lunch every day, but it's all Korean food made right there by the cook, so most of it is pretty good. A few notable items I've had so far include, of course, kimchi, dried seaweed with sesame, seaweed soup, spicy fried tofu, spicy squid with pickled veggies, and tiny dried anchovies (not my favorite...).

There are lots of American foods available here, like Pringles, goldfish, peanut butter, coca cola... But a lot of the time buying food is a total shot in the dark for me. A lot of the packaging has pictures on it, but those aren't always the most helpful. I got some snack cracker type thing yesterday that I thought would be spicy but actually tasted a lot like those honey sesame sticks you can get at Trader Joe's-- Yum! I also got lucky and the triangle thing I got for dinner ended up being a giant sushi-like thing with tuna in the center! Score... Did I mention it was enough for a meal and cost ONE DOLLAR?

Awesome.