Arrival in Ansan

The day before we left for Korea I was super stressed, to put it mildly. I was running around town doing last minute errands and trying to squish all my stuff into the suitcases. Our flight left from St. Louis so my parents drove me up there Monday afternoon the 22nd. We got a bit of a later start than I had planned, but would you expect anything less from me? We made it to Holly's house that evening and had a bit of a scare when we looked up the luggage size and weight regulations again for both United and Korean Air. Korean Air is very strict but after a couple calls to United we were assured that Korean Air would have to accept whatever luggage they sent over to them. Potential crisis avoided.

The next morning we made it to the airport in plenty of time for the quick flight to Chicago. In Chicago we had to change terminals and check-in at Korean Air for the second half of the journey. The 13 hour flight was a breeze - they had plenty of movies, TV shows, music and games in the seat back screens to keep a person entertained for at least 24 hours. The plane was really nice. We had to pass through at least 4 different sections of seating before finding ours. Luckily it was not full so we got to spread out across our row to have some room for sleeping. When we arrived in Korea it was about 4:00pm local time, 2:00am according to our internal time clocks...just about my normal bedtime!

Our director sent a van to pick us up at the airport and the driver was waiting with sign in hand just outside of the baggage claim area. Luckily, it was over an hour drive to our school so we both got a short nap. Our school is on the 5th and 6th floors of a large office building. We were a little dazed upon arrival but went upstairs for a couple minutes and got to meet a few of our fellow teachers. The driver then took us a few blocks away to meet our school director, Mr. Kim, at our apartment. Everything else from that evening is a little fuzzy since all I really wanted to do was go to bed. But, I do know that we got very lucky in the apartment department. Ours is really pretty spacious compared to what I was expecting. We have a western style bathroom with bathtub and shower, 2 bedrooms, kitchen/dining/living room, and large enclosed balcony with storage shelves and a washing machine. Our director made sure to show us how to use the washing machine ("small dirty, big dirty"), turn the gas stove on and off, and then he turned the TV on to the Discovery Channel before leaving us for the night with instructions to come to the school at 1:30 the next day.

Remember how I said all I wanted to do was go to bed at this point? Well, when we went to test them out we found that apparently Koreans like their mattresses hard, really really hard. I was reluctant to actually sleep on it but removed the existing nasty looking linens and put on my clean sheets and hoped for the best.

Well, this is what it felt like, minus the sleeping bag and mat. It was seriously like a rock. Needless to say, the next morning I had no problems getting out of bed, which I guess could be a good thing for me. I have since tried to remedy the problem by putting one of the old comforters on top of it for some padding. That didn't really help so we went to a bedding store and I bought another thick comforter to add to the first. It's a little better now but I still wake up a little stiff everyday. You have to make sure to lay on your back because if you accidentally lay on your side then your arms go to sleep because there is no give in the mattress springs!

The next day we were taken by our director to set up our Korean bank account and get our health check-up at the hospital. You can imagine how awkward that was when being done by someone who doesn't speak any English. It was good to get out and see a little of the city we will call home for the next year. Ansan has a population of about 715,000 which is small by Korean standards. We are connected to Seoul via the Seoul Metro Subway system. It is about an hour long trip which we have experienced a couple times already. But, that is another blog for another day.

Below are some photos of the apartment complex, school building and Ansan. For some interior shots of the apartment check out Holly's blog because I haven't taken any yet.

Our apartment complex...our building is next to the one on the far left of the picture.

Building 509 - that's us! We are in apartment #1306.

The view from our balcony consists of lots more buildings just like ours...

...a school (bottom right) with noisy school kids playing in the field every morning...

...and a ginormous church building. Very exciting stuff. Actually the mountains in the distance are a nice plus.

This is the building our school is in.

ECC stands for "English Children's Club"...I think. It's not really club however, just a place where the kids have to study late into the night so they can get a good test score and get into a good high school and then into a good college.

The school building again.

This is the area between the 2 buildings in the previous picture...the "neighborhood" around our school and the area we go to eat dinner or go to the convenience store.

Another view of the street life. Everything is very well-lit!