... and the big city won. I don't know why I felt like Seattle was easy to navigate. But then again, I went to DC and felt that was hard too. Perhaps it was easy because I lived in Seattle for 4 years? LOL.
Someday this will be easy to navigate too, but for now I feel like all I am doing is getting lost. Of course, I have only gotten lost once. But I knew I was close :D The other time was just me looking for a specific place. And since I couldn't read any of the signs and don't know what stores have what, I definitely felt lost. The transit system is super easy to navigate, well marked with English and Korean (as well as some Chinese). So that's good.
Anyway, what day is today? Friday? Oh yes. I am up having my usual chai and bagel. The guy today gave me a point card to use today. LOL. I have been here every single morning since I got here (only three times so far though). I love it. If anyone wants to visit me, I may have a free drink card waiting for you!
Speaking of, food is cheap here and coffee places are trendy. My breakfast (chai and bagel w/cream cheese) costs 5,400 Won which is approximately equal to $5.00 USD. I think in the States my chai cost about $5.00 USD by itself. Coffee places are on almost every corner. They have "specialty" coffee places too. I just found out about a "dog cafe" which you can read about here. I tried to find it yesterday but with no luck. I walked around the block it was supposed to be on for almost an hour and never found it. I'm kind of wondering if it went out of business. I found a cat cafe and when I went to the floor it was supposed to be on, the place looked vacant. So... there may be no dog cafe in my future... :(
So... I arrived here on Monday, spent the night at oppa's, then spent the rest of Tuesday with oppa, then arrived at the guest house around 5:30pm. Wednesday, one of the participants, the coordinator and I went and had lunch. When I first met the other participant (Nicholas) he seemed... very stiff. That's not the exact word I'm looking for, but it'll work for now. Anyway, I went back to the room and then went out searching for an adaptor around this area with no luck. When I returned Nicholas had just gotten back from going to his "facilities" (the places he would teach). Then we decided to go out looking for adapters since both of us were running low on battery on our laptops. I'm glad he decided to go with me since he had an Iphone (with Kakaotalk) and I wouldn't have felt comfortable going by myself. It was a very pleasant evening, although we looked in a dozen different stores looking for the adaptors. But we returned victorious! :D
Yesterday (Thursday), we signed our contracts (the last participant is still sick so he wasn't there) and then I wandered around looking for that dog cafe. I got back to meet our coordinator and look at my facilities. I really look forward to this, although am still nervous. The places are very nice and have more technology than I think most US classrooms do. Although they are still considered low-income because they are solely funded by the government. Korea puts great importance on school and so is willing to spend more on schools than the US. One of the things I thought was very cute was that one of the schools had stairs paired with slides! All of the schools have stairs, but in this particular one, there was a small slide built on the side of the stairs. :D Very kid friendly. They also had great big slides outside of the building, like water slides.
After we got done looking at the three places I would be teaching, we went directly to the Hongdae district to meet the others for our Christmas party at Aloha Table (LOL) because we wouldn't have time to go back to the guest house.
The Christmas party was fun. I was a bit nervous about what it would be like, but there were a lot of adoptees there and it was nice to talk to them. It's so funny that although we all look like Koreans, we totally act like where we are from. There were people from Denmark, France, Germany, Australia, and the States. States represented were Montana (one other girl was from Helena), Iowa, California, Arizona, and New York. If you were to have watched us and not heard us talking, I'm still pretty sure you can tell for the most part who was from where.
I'm starting to relax and realize how awesome this is going to be. So excited to move into the dorms and be able to unpack! :D
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