Entering Daegu!

Yesterday, we arrived in a large bus in Daegu at the student culture center after a 3 hour ride from Jeonju. The co-teachers were finishing up a meeting with the leaders at the Daegu Metropolitan Office of Education. We sat and watched the end of the meeting before being called up area-by-area to meet our co-teachers. It felt like a cattle call, but the most nerve-wracking cattle call you could ever imagine!

As I mentioned before, Gianni and I are both working at middle schools in the southern part of Daegu. We were separated for most of the day because we are at different schools with different co-teachers, so I'll let him talk about his side of things.

I met my co-teacher, Grace, who is really nice and very helpful. She helped me lug all my bags into her car, and we immediately left to go to the immigration office and get my ARC card. She said the lines at immigration are really long, so we wanted to rush there. I got it all taken care of, and I should have my ARC in a few weeks. For the time being, I have my ARC certificate and number so that I can get a cell phone, bank account, and internet. I believe Grace is going to help me set those things up today.

The next stop was my new school! It seems like a really great school, and it's very big--about 1,000 kids (of which I will be teaching half). I met the vice principal and some of the other co-teachers I will be working with. Grace showed me my desk, and I met Naill, the other Guest English Teacher who works at the school. He has been here for 3 years already and is leaving at the end of his contract next year.

Naill and Grace took me to my apartment. I'm on the second floor, and it's a much larger apartment than I'd anticipated. When you come in, you enter your code on a key pad, like at the University, and you are looking at the kitchen. It is a smallish kitchen with a gas stove top, but it has more an enough cabinet space for me. There is a bathroom that is, again, completely tiled. I have to hold the shower head when I shower as of now, so I might need to figure out a better way to do that. I'm also not totally sure how to switch between shower and sink because when I turn the sink on high right now, the shower comes on. The toilet also won't flush. These are all issues I discovered late last night, so I'm going to have to talk to Grace and see what to do about that. There is quite a large living room/bedroom space that comes with an air conditioner. I have a table and two chairs, a couch, a bed, two wardrobes, a few side tables, and a desk and chair. The back wall is a sliding, glass door leading out to a tiled outer area with my washing machine and boiler. Gianni helped me move things around, and I think it looks great. I have the bed and desk against one wall. The side table is next to my bed. In the middle of the room is the table and chairs and the sofa is sort of away from the glass doors in the middle as well. On the opposite wall I put my fridge, a set of drawers with a microwave and toaster oven on top, and the two wardrobes. I think it looks like a real apartment!

We took a while at the apartment getting a few things sorted out with the landlord. Then Grace left and Nail was nice enough to take me to the Korean dollar store equivalent to get a few things for the apartment. In Korea, it is apparently not custom to clean an apartment for a new tenant, so I made sure to get cleaning stuff. Niall went back to his apartment, and I spent some time cleaning. Gianni had some practice early in the day taking the subway and buses, so he knew the area better. He walked over to meet me and see my apartment. Niall came over again to take us to get dinner at a really excellent BBQ place. First real Korean BBQ!!! We had red pork, and it was delicious. Niall then showed us around the area a little more and took us to Home Plus to get even more things for my apartment, and a few things for Gianni's. The area around my apartment is really nice. I'm really close to a bunch of stores and restaurants, which is really great. I had a minor crisis where I dropped the paper that had my apartment code in it! Niall had his phone and called Grace to get it for me. Crisis averted! Niall has been soooo excellent in helping me with everything. He doesn't have to do any of this, but he's being so nice and patient in answering all my questions. It's a relief to have someone here who knows what he is doing.

Today, like right now, I'm sitting at my desk at school. I believe I'm spending the rest of the week watching Niall teach, and then I'll start my own classes on Monday. So nervous!!! Niall has given me the academic calendar, my schedule, and the time schedule of the periods, so I'm trying to keep everything straight. There are some classes that I can teach more freely, and other ones I am going to be teaching from a textbook. I guess I just have to get to a certain point in the book before their exams that seem to occur at the end of each month or beginning of the next month. I'm really only teaching the listening and speaking sections I think.  I'm also going to be editing the school's English newspaper and teaching a class for the teachers at the school who want to learn English. It will be a conversation class. If students enroll, I'll be doing an after school class once a week for the students as well. I think the English teachers are taking me out to dinner tonight. Everyone I've met so far has been very welcoming and kind. I'm also going to go to Travelers, a foreigner bar in downtown, because Niall hosts trivia night there every Wednesday, so Gianni and I are going to go check it out.