stumbling through south korea: Day 2 of Orientation

So the last post was Courtney’s version of our trip to Korea. While she was writing away, I was pretty much passed out on the bed, too tired to do anything but email my parents and update my facebook status. While our flight was on Tuesday at 6 am, my vacation actually started on the Friday before that!

I decided to go to Orlando for Islands of Adventure and a Something Corporate concert, days before we had to fly out. Just so you all know, the Wizarding World of Harry Potter was amazing! It was pretty much the best mini vacation I could have hoped for before flying off to Korea. The reason why I was oh so tired here when we got to our dorm is because I haven’t had a good night of sleep since Sunday night!!

So heading to the airport I was already tired having not slept that night before, but everything went pretty smoothly. Courtney and family met up with me and my parents at the airport, and from there it was a whole lot of tears and long goodbyes. I was really sad to leave my mom and dad, but they are both really happy for us! I’m definitely going to miss my parents a lot, they have been extremely supportive of me about this whole idea, and I love them a lot.

First day of orientation was pretty good. We woke up at around 7:30 for breakfast which was our first taste of Korean living. They had kimchi (of course), as well as salad, eggs, soup and some other things. They also had cereal for us, along with coffee and grape juice. After breakfast we have about two hours to kill before our guided tour around campus. We met a few other teachers and walked around along the streets for about an hour. Our tour was very cool but also extremely hot. Afterwards we had lunch which was once again a lot of unfamiliar but tasty food. We had about two hours to kill after lunch before the Opening Ceremony so Courtney and I joined a few other people on a “10 minute” walk to the super market. Well it definitely wasn’t ten minutes; it was more like 30 minutes and in the blistering heat outside also! We got to the supermarket and it was more like at 3 story department store. We got our first look at a Korean grocery store, which was neat because literally everything was in Korean and unfamiliar to us Americans. After some roaming we hurried back to the dorms so we could shower and get ready for the Opening Ceremony and Welcoming dinner. The opening ceremony was really great; they had three performances to start us off. We saw a traditional 5 Drum dance, an awesome Taekwondo show, and another traditional dance that involved fans. The rest of the ceremony was pretty much an overview of what will be happening during orientation for the next 9 days or so. After the ceremony we had our huge welcoming feast! It was an enormous buffet with anything and everything you could possible think of. They had of course the rice and kimchi, but then they had French fries and chicken wings. But wait, there’s more! They had sushi and salad and leeche and about 5 different meats, and bacon wrapped asparagus and soups, and chocolates, and baked potatoes, and tiny sandwich wraps, oh my! The food was amazing and it all looked so amazing. After dinner we headed back to our dorms and I passed out around 7 because I’m still dealing with jet lag/lack of sleep. It was really a great first full day in Korea!