인천!!

As you might've guess from the title of this blog, I am in Incheon! I am living in one of many tower blocks in Incheon called 'My Ville' and I'm on the 8th floor. It's near a few subway stations and apparently not far from my school. Here is a professionally made video tour of my apartment: UPDATE - the video is taking too long to upload, so I'll have to upload it when I get the internet in my apartment... but here a few rubbish pictures.

Talking about my school, I met my co-teacher on Friday - and I was terrified. I was all sweaty from nerves on the bus to the meeting and the fact that I was wearing my suit didn't help. They were showing Yuna Kim (a Korean ice skater who is the best in the world and EVERYONE in Korea knows who she is) ice skating on the flat screen on the way to the meeting. I mention this because it was both a distraction from the nerves and at least a scrap of small talk material for when I meet the co-teacher. So, I shuffle into a hall with an auditorium-like seating arrangement and I have to find my name on one of the seats. There was about 20 different co-teachers sitting next to the named seats and we had to, kind of, 'pair up'. By-the-way, I remember it in this much detail because I was panicking at the time and, let's face it, it was only a couple of days ago. Anyway, so I rock up next to this young looking Korean lady and introduce myself and hold out my clammy hand to shake her hand and I realise that she's as nervous as me. Her name is Gracy Lee and she had plenty of questions for me. I had to clear up the confusion that Koreans seem to have with my first name being 'Lee' with the explanation of that it is also an English name and that my parents did not just randomly decide to give me a Korean last name as a first name... I like to say that my name actually means 'the side that is sheltered from the wind' because I think it makes me sound cool :P But, yeah, she seems to be a nice person and I'm actually looking forward to turning up tomorrow, with only a small amount of nerves. I'm not sure what my school will be like, but my co-teacher said they all got the lowest scores in the middle school entrance exams. Worst case scenario: I'll get kicked in the bollocks by a 13 year-old boy. Best case scenario: I'll be the Korean equivalent of Michelle Pfeiffer's character in 'Dangerous Minds'.

If you've watched the video already, then you will see that my apartment is quite small, but it's all I'll need, so I was pretty chuffed when I saw it :) I don't currently have the internet or a phone yet though because I need my Alien Registration Card before I can sign up to contract, apparently. 'So, Lee, how are you writing this blog if you haven't got the internet?' - well, I'm in a PC반 at the moment with a bunch of Korean nerds who are playing Starcraft against each other - 1000 won an hour to be the only white guy in a hot, sweaty room full of Starcraft players... it's quite fun actually.

Saturday: Went to find a pay phone in a subway station to call my friend Rachel (British/Korean), who had the only number I knew in Korea, and I got lost. So, a that should've taken about 15-20 minutes actually took closer to an hour. I managed to blag a meeting with Rachel and my other friend, Jen (American - Michigan/half Korean), and I was so desperate for company that I travelled over an hour (should've taken about 30-40 minutes) to see them. They were meeting Rachel's Dad (Korean), so we went out and he bought us all dinner, which was totally unexpected and the food was delicious. We then heard that Rachel had to go to Seoul to meet up with her family for the Korean holiday, which involves something about a moon (full moon?), and, completely off-the-cuff, me and Jen decided to tag along and hit Seoul with our married couple friends John and Beth (both American - Alabama)! I'll write another blog about this awesome trip another day, but basically it involves a lot of wandering, a lot of drinking, plenty of us being tourists, and me not showering for two days.

It's 7:50pm here now and I'm starving, so I'm going to stumble around my town and see what I can blag to eat.

p.s. go to facebook to see pictures of my trip to Seoul and my apartment!