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...
