The Crazy Begins...

Random uniquely decorated restaurant somewhere on the way back from the Immigration Office

This weekend was a let’s-do-nothing weekened. Even though it was our first time off since coming to Korea, all we wanted to do was sleep….and sleep some more.

But since we just moved in to our apartment, on Saturday we had to venture out to Home Plus (a chain department store here) to get some stuff. I think we went a little overboard even though we were only picking up things we can afford right now. I needed a blow dryer and hair straightner….blanket to put on top of my mattress (because sheets are optional here), stuff to eat and drink….

Before I knew it we had a cart full of stuff.

Speaking of cart…there was this really funny scenario that occurred when we were walking around Home Plus with our little hand baskets (because we thought the carts cost money) and the employees kept looking at us like we had two heads as we tried to hold on to as much stuff as we could. Finally, I was just like…whatever. I’ll pay for a cart. They can’t be that expensive because everyone has one.

So, I walked up to the area where the carts were and looked around to see how you pay for them…well, they weren’t in a device that locks them or anything BUT there was a little coin slot in the handle and I figured it wouldn’t move until I deposited my coin.

Like a dork, I inserted my ₩100 coin (like $0.10) and happily started wheeling my cart away when one of the employees walked up to me and made some gestures at the handle.

Thinking he thought that I didn’t insert my coin, I kept nodding my head and pointing at the slot and saying “I put it there!”

Then he just kind of gave me a look and walked over, reached into the other side of my handle bar, pulled out my coin and gave it back to me.

Yeah. That was my foreigner moment in Korea.

I wish that was my ONLY foreigner moment in Korea.

So anyway, we got our cart and checked out…only then realizing that homigoodness we had a lot of stuff and it’s quite a walk back to our apartment…

And I’m not going to say it would have been impossible for us to carry it all back….but it would have been impossible for us to carry it all back, lol. I guess I just said it.

We had the bright idea of taking a taxi…which, great. But if you don’t know already taxies are not the most reliable source of transportation for foreigners in Korea since they’ve got quite a reputation of just driving off whenever you try to stop one.

In fact, the first taxi we went up to did drive off into the sunset after the driver pointed to somewhere in the distance as if to tell us where to go and then took off like he suddenly had something important to do.

We did finally manage to snag one though, but I think it was more of a (open the door) “We need to go here!” (thrust address at driver while piling into the back seat).

It was the best taxi ride in my life. I mean seriously there is just no way we could have carried all that stuff back in one trip. And do you want to know how much that ride cost us?

…only like ₩2,500…that’s like around $2.00. I have a feeling we are going to get in the habit of doing this whenever we have to go grocery shopping.

There is something else we are quickly forming a bad habit with….McDonalds. Ohmigoodness. It is just way.too.convinent here.

There’s this service called McDelivery and (much like many fast-food places in Korea) McDonalds will deliver right to your door. What’s better is that you can even order online!! WHAT?!

Well, we tried to order online on Sunday. But for some reason, even though the website does have an English version and we also had our address written down in Korean, we couldn’t get it to work. So we did the next best thing…

…called and ordered delivery over the phone.

Sounds simple but….okay, it was super simple. It would be even more simple if you knew Korea but instead I was all like, “Do you speak English?”

The poor girl on the other end, “Ah….ah….ah okay yes.”

I told her our address as best as I could in Korea and tried to Kanglish up my order a bit (like everything is in English mostly…and Quarter-pounder is still a Quarter-pounder….but instead of saying “One Quarter-pounder meal please.” It’s more like “One ko-ta-pa-un-der SE-TU please.” Because meals are “sets” here).

So placing the order was a success! We only had to wait about twenty-minutes before there was a knock on our door. I ran over to open it….but we have like a million locks (seriously there is four) and so it was like

Flip the bar open

Unlock the electric lock

Twist open the dead-bold

Unlock the handle

Aaaaand….it should of opened but one of our locks had not been locked and so I spent a good minute or so trying to figure it out all the while I’m laughing and going “I can’t get it open!” and the delivery guy on the other side was probably wondering why he was unlucky enough to have to deliver to us. Then I finally got it and he gave me our food. I think he thought it was pretty amusing. Probably an ‘oh, foreigners…’ moment for him.

Good times.

Other than that our weekened was pretty uneventful. I was still really sad as it came to a close though because I was dreading going back to work on Monday. Seriously.

But it ended up not being as horrible as I had feared. It’s still a buuuuunch of work because we are adjusting and there are so many different classes at all different levels and we’re required to do a lesson plan for every class for our first month so….it’s just hectic.

But we survived and I think that’s what counts.

Tuesday was even better for me. It started out terrible—and I’m pretty convinced I’m going to haaaate my kinder (morning) classes.

Every week on Tuesday we do a “science project” which is basically a fun little toy we put together as a class…this week was “hovercrafts” and one of the pieces was a balloon…

Picture this, if you will: a bunch of four-year-olds with balloons trying their hardest to blow it up but failing miserably. Spit is everywhere. They come at you like, “Teacher! Teacher! Help!!” and thrust that slobber-coated piece of plastic in your face while looking at you expectantly.

What do you do?

It hurts me to think of it now—physically makes my stomach roll—but I just couldn’t tell them no because…what kind of horrible person would do that? I did try to discreetly wipe as much spit as I could off but…there was no avoiding it.

Sometimes the kids actually did manage to blow up a balloon themselves but those were almost just as bad. I can’t count how many balloons went zooming past me only to project a trail of saliva behind them that would splatter all over my face and arms.

It’s definitely an experience I hope to quickly forget and pray I will never have to relive.  

But as exciting and horrible as that whole event was, my afternoon classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays so far are my favorite. They are more advanced and a real joy to teach. I hope I can continue to keep this opinion of them as time goes by because otherwise I think I’m going to be pretty miserable at work.

I’m so glad it’s almost the weekened. I think I am going to be living for the weekends for a while.