Let's ROK and Roll: I just woke up in South Korea...

04 December 2010

I just woke up in South Korea...

Well needless to say that is kind of a weird feeling and the fact that I was actually on my way to Korea really didn't hit me until I was actually taking off in the airplane. But I have now officially finished my first week of teaching and it has gone pretty well so far. Most of the students are extremely well behaved and they all speak a basic amount of English so communicating is not too difficult. My job is primarily to work on their pronunciation and reading comprehension. I'm still getting the hang of this teaching thing, but I think I've gotten off to a good start.

I am living in a town called Waegwan (pronounced "Way-gone"), which is pretty small and only has a population of about 30,000. I am however about a 15 minute train ride from both Gumi and Daegu. Gumi has a population of about 350,000 and Daegu has about 2.5 million people. Gumi and Waegwan both have very large foreign populations. Gumi is a hotspot for foreign English teachers and Waegwan has an American military base with about 5,000 troops stationed.

So last night I had my first taste of Korean nightlife and it was pretty fun. I stayed out till about 4 in the morning and honestly I'm not really sure how it got that late. I also discovered Lotteria, which is pretty much Burger King. I also went to a real restaurant for the first time on Saturday afternoon. You sit on the floor at a very low table and there is a fire pit in the center of the table. They pretty much bring the meat out to you and then you are responsible for cutting it and cooking it.

Well, I'm now off to do some more exploring. I will try to keep the blog updated as experience more of Korea. And here are some pictures from my first week.