The Kimchi Diaries

Photos: kimchiwi

katie_skatie — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 23:59:00 GMT

some pics from Korea

Arrival in a strange land...

katie_skatie — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 13:46:00 GMT

On board the plane to Korea it hit me... SHIT! I've just left my family, my friends, my comfort and I'm on a non-stop flight to a country that doesn't even speak English as their first language! I've never taught a class of students, I've heardly even had a job! (The post office counts, but riding a bike, sorting and delivering mail don't really count in this instance.) I would have to draw on my experiences as a babysitter, which thankfully I'd been doing since the age of 14, and enjoyed, and had learnt a lot while doing... But, in hindsight - which is a beautiful, but useless thing - babysitting would only get me so far!

So, after a little bit of a cry, I pulled myself together, collected my bags at Incheon airport and went in search of my contact, one Mister Jason Jeon. There he was with a big sign with my name on it! Wow, that was easy! He then bought me a ticket for a bus to Pyeongtaek for 9,000won (about $14nz at the time) and said 'bye'. Wait, what? I just met you and you're telling me goodbye already! How will I know when to get off the bus? How will I get to my apartment when I get off the bus? Huh?

Once on the bus, I sat near the front as I wanted to see where I was going, and also be as close to the driver as possible after making it very clear that I was going to Pyeongtaek and that he needed to tell me when we were there! (Now... 7 years later, I know that the bus was only going as far as Pyeongtaek and there's no way I could've gone further! But, I was fresh off the plane without a clue! How could you blame me?) Well, it was an interesting 2.5 hours on a bus in the first light of a new day in a new land. The temperature was the first difference I noticed, having just come from summer temperatures in New Zealand, to the beginnings of winter in Korea. Under-dressed and under-prepared I was on my way to my new school in Pyeongtaek, a city an hour south of Seoul with a population larger than that of the capital of New Zealand (which I guess is not hard to do in a country of 49 million people compared to 4 million!) The next thing I noticed was that things were not very green here. I was seeing a lot of brown grass and spindly trees. On the way past Seoul I kept imagining that I could see North Korea over the river, I couldn't, that was also Seoul!

So, finally - after one stop (in Songtan) where I thought I was supposed to get off the bus, but wasn't... and luckily the driver had not forgotten my earlier desperate pleading, and let me know using sign language and words that I couldn't understand, that I needed to stay on the bus - we arrived in Pyeongtaek, my home for the next year.

Gingerly I peered out the window of the bus, looking for someone with that searching look in their eye that said, I gotta find me a foreigner and I hope there's only one on the bus look. Luckily I was the only foreigner on the bus, so my new boss had an easy job figuring out who his new teacher was! I was greeted by a Mr Lim, his wife and a younger Korean girl (well older than me by about 5 years, but younger than Mr Lim and his wife) When she spoke she used English!!! Joy flowed up through my body, I had found my new best friend! I thought she said her name was Radio, or Rydia... and it took me about a week to figure out that her name was Lydia! R-L same same but different I guess? She said that they would take me to my apt(sorry force of habit from writing my address, I mean my apartment(for future reference)) where I could unpack and they would then take me to the supermarket to do some shopping. Feeling very overwhelmed and freezing cold we hopped in a car and sped spastically to my new home...

In the beginning...

katie_skatie — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 13:04:00 GMT

It's easy to see now, sitting at this desk in 2011 in the ROK how my love of travel began... First I'll let you in on a little secret... I was 22 going on 23 before I left my home country of New Zealand for the first time. What? That's right... not such a spring chicken anymore by that time! And, compared to a lot of other kids(cause that's what I still felt like at 22) I hadn't been on my big O.E. which is like a right of passage for every young 'kiwi'. SHOCK HORROR!

I had been through design school (4 years of my life which included experiences both valuable and a waste of time), and spent the following year feeling disillusioned, working three shifts a week at McDonalds to supplement my free government assistance, or as we call it, the dole (and I don't mean the pineapple company), occasionally painting(art) and trying to prepapre an advertising portfolio. The latter - even though it was a work in progress for myself and my advertising partner Bex - never really came to fruition as she took a job in a shoe store with aspirations of becoming their Italian traveling shoe shopper person. I on the other hand was tiring of the McDonalds-time wasting routine that had become my life! This was the point at which I opened the newspaper to look at the job prospects and happened to stumble across an ad that asked if I would like to earn $40,000 a year... I sure would, I thought to myself.

The ad stated simply that there were positions available in South Korea, (Where was that? Didn't they host an olympics once?) that there would be a free apartment, and free airfare, and that the visa would be paid for... What could possibly be the catch? I earnestly applied for the position and waited to see what would happen...

A month later, and I had moved out of my flat in town and home to my parents house, well actually to my grandparent's because there was no room at my parents. I painted a lot of pictures and had a mini exhibition at my parent's place to raise some money for my first month in Korea... (you get paid monthly and you have to live there for a month before you get your first pay!) Part of the reason why I was so keen to go to Korea without knowing anything at all about the place was because I was broke, B-R-O-K-E... and most likely in overdraft! So with a bit of cash in my pocket and more in my bank account than there had been for a long, long time (all four years of design school, plus the year that followed, thanks to a penchant for Nike sports shoes and art supplies) I flew off to Korea!