watch out korea! i've arrived.

after a 14 hour plane ride filled with too many "are we there yet" moments and a stressful journey through customs, i found myself being driven through korea in the middle of the night to my little apartment in ilsan. i like my apartment a lot--it's a loft style with stairs going up to a place with a mattress where i sleep and a downstairs area to do everything else. apparently it's a mansion compared to the holes that other english teachers get stuck with so i guess i'm lucky. the couch that came with it, however, is detestable. it's this pastel suede purple color that looks like bad bridesmaids dresses from 10 years ago. a couch cover is on the top of my "to get" list (which is about 2 full pages). since i've been here--which is almost 48 hours now, i've slept about 7. holy jet leg! this morning i woke up at about 5:45 am as though someone had just yelled "A BOMB IS HEADED STRAIGHT THROUGH YOUR KITCHEN!" and that was the end of my sleeping for the night. so i got up and spent and had some quiet time and then ventured into the rain for a run and got thoroughly lost. i ended up gesturing to several non-english speaking koreans on the street that i was lost and just said "byzantium byzantium where?" cuz that's the building i live in. not like i needed to do anything to attract more attention to myself--i don't think i've seen another blonde in ilsan yet. everywhere i go, there are little eyes following every move of my bright blonde hair. and at school today one of the little kids pointed to my eyes and said "BLUE!" like i was an alien. it's really funny. so today i started teaching--well, watching the 3 other teachers--and my idea that asian kids sit quietly and obey every word of their teacher came crashing down within the first 2 minutes of the first morning class. they were running in and out of the classroom to their moms, hitting each other, pushing the drawing boards over, licking the pages of the book the teacher was reading on bears...it was quite a spectacle. needless, to say i was--am--overwhelmed. hopefully more sleep will help. after we got done today, charlie our director took all 4 of us teachers (they're all from canada) and some of the staff out for what i think was a japanese place. we sat on the floor on little cushions and they kept bringing more and more and more food and raw fish and whole fish and fried fish and sushi and pumpkin and fried sesame leaves and some seaweed sort of thing and i seriously never thought the food would stop. or the liquor. apparently it's quite thing for the boss and all the workers to go out after work and drink. a lot. last night josh de groot came up from seoul and we ate at a little korean barbeque place across the street from where i live. it's pretty cool--there's a little bbq in the middle of the table you they just bring you a bunch of raw meat and you cook it yourself. but everything is SOOOO spicy. i feel like i am burning a hole through my stomach. this morning i looked in my little korean dictionary for how to say "no spicy." a-neeyo meoon. i think i'll be using that a lot.

i'll try to take some pictures tomorrow of ilsan to put up here.