Week 1 Part 2: My Apartment

Here is my obligatory apartment/where I live post. Don't feel like you have to read, you can just peruse the pictures! I'll try to remember to take some in the daylight too but this will have to do for now! (Click any picture to make it bigger)

First off, my neighborhood:

The main drag I walk up.

Chicken!

One of my local bakeries

Beer and Coffee

My actual street:

Place on the corner

My street!

My building (on on the second floor)

My buildings front door

Weird fliers we get on our doors

My apartment!

There is my new iron!

For some reason i'm really into lime green!

Bedroom. Still have to find a place for my suitcases.

The beautiful fan! And my AC.

All the storage I have for now. Might get another shelf. 

My curtain! It's supposed to hang the other way but I made it long ways to fit.

The tiny bathroom.

THE SHOWER. You turn the knob at the faucet

to tell it to change to shower mode. Its actually a pretty

effective bathroom.

Well, that's my house and my neighborhood. Hope you enjoyed the tour! As soon as I have a mailing address I will make sure everyone has it. I want more pictures to change out of my picture wall. Its wonderful waking up and seeing your faces and your cards! 

Week 1 Part 1 - Shopping and a Safety Lesson on Fans

Alright gang, honestly I don't know where to start. It's only been a week but my brain is already fuzzy about the details of how I got to where I am right this second which is...

TODAY, SATURDAY. While you guys were all out partying until the wee hours I was awake and shopping. I met Elizabeth, Joseph, Tiffany (also a teacher at my school and also on the same curriculum as me so she's basically my biggest resource!) and her husband Bryan (or maybe Brian I'll have to check) and we went to lunch. Well Elizabeth, Joseph and I went to get Korean food and Tiffany and Bryan went to McD's. The food was spicy but good.

Then I went to a store called Daiso which is the Korean Dollar Store but its more like a 5 and Below store because everything is much nicer than should be in a dollar store. Here I spent very little money and got everything I need for my kitchen (pot, pan, silverware, cups, knife, you name it!) and a few things for my bathroom and bedroom and some items I used to hang things up around the house. So basically a lot of stuff.

I'm so used to: 1) having my own car and 2) having a cart to roll out to said car. Carrying it all around is not so much fun. I caught a cab home and lugged all my haul into the house. Unpacked a bit then headed back out for the second leg of my shopping extravaganza. Are you still with me? Are you hanging in? I've got a great fan story I PROMISE if you just bear with all the gritty deets.

At the E-Mart I needed some things I couldn't find at Daiso. I hit rush hour in the E-Mart with a throng of crazy Koreans rushing at the sample ladies, standing in the middle of aisles and just leaving their carts all willy-nilly. I headed to the second floor to track down the items I was desiring. One was a curtain. It was expensive but totally worth not waking up at 6 am with the brightness of day shining directly into my eyes. I also jerry-rigged it to hang, like so totally awesome. It will probably fall on me in the night but hey, its doing well so far.

The second, and probably most important item I was to obtain at the E-Mart was a fan. I sleep with a fan on. Always have, always will. I need that lovely white noise and the added benefit of air circulation. Before I came to Korea, and was doing all my research, I came upon stories of how Korean's used fans, but NEVER used them at night while sleeping. No reason was given only that they believe they will die in the night if a fan is blowing air on them. I laughed at that, thought it was some silly superstitious thing in tiny villages of Korea and forgot all about it. Then, while talking to Elizabeth about the things I wanted to buy and where to buy them she too mentioned that Koreans, hard core believe it to be a FACT, that you will die if a fan blows on you while you are sleeping. The way it was explained to her was that somehow you will die of either carbon dioxide/monoxide poisoning from the fan either running or blowing your hot air back into your body. All I can think is that Korea is super technology savvy (you should see the cabs!) and they don't know that a fan running while sleeping won't kill you? I just don't get it.

Anyway, I bought way more things than I could carry, including my delicious new fan, and arrived back at my apartment comically trying to carry all these things into the house. A wonderful lady came up to me in the street as I'm struggling and helped me carry the things up. It was so super nice and I gave her a hug. I immediately began putting the fan together. Of course the directions were in Korean but I figured it out pretty easy but struggled on one part and opened the directions to see if there were pictures that might help. That is when I saw it. On the directions. On the do not do list. Among the don't get water near the outlet, don't knock it over etc,  I saw, this picture:

Apparently, if its in the manual its a for real issue and you shouldn't do it. It is ALSO an actual wikipedia entry found here. I'm having a really hard time no telling every Korean I meet that I am letting a fan blow on me at night while sleeping and there is NOTHING they can do to stop me.

SUMMARY/CATCH-UP/RUN-DOWN

While trying to write a blog post I realize I needed to break it down a bit. Here is a summary of my first week:

Last 5 days summary:
Day 1-2: Arrived Monday afternoon, managed to figure out how to catch the bus AND get off a the right stop in Daejeon. It took about 2.5 hours by bus and our driver didn't speak a lick of English. I don't remember much as I passed out but it was pleasant and cheap. Mr. Lee, the owner of my school picked me up at the bus stop and took me to a hotel and to get something to eat. I just remember rice was involved. He doesn't speak but a few words of English so he was very good at charades. My hotel was interesting. I'll try to remember to talk about that more later.
Day 3: Our school's vice director (VD) picked me up, paid for the hotel, and took me to breakfast at Paris Baguette. We went to school and I ate my lunch in her office. She has snails as pets. I lost some of my appetite. Teachers arrived and I was introduced then Elizabeth arrived and training began! We met kids, went over the schedule and I took lots of notes. Later the VD took me to my apartment. Then some nice teachers from the school who live around the corner took me to dinner. It was very nice and I had a good time. Then I went back to my apartment and started to unpack or at least find my sheets and towels.
Day 3-5: I was trained, taught kids myself, cried a couple times, had delicious food went out for a really fun work dinner to say goodbye to Elizabeth and her husband Joseph (he also taught at the school), was taken to the market by the same nice teachers in my neighborhood, and was constantly overwhelmed. I absorbed as much of Elizabeth teacher's knowledge as I could and fell into a sorta routine. Friday my internet was turned on (yay) and my stove installed (yay again).

I think I hit all the highlights, but if I missed something or I should give more detail on something LET ME KNOW. I go where the reader wants to go.

Arrived... Now with Internet!

Hello everyone! I have made it to Korea and am S-L-O-W-L-Y making adjustments to Korean life. Today I came home and had internet so I figured I'd update you all!

I am an impatient person so after being here only 4 days I expect myself to know everything and it seems that everyday I know less! Well not really, but every time I think I've gotten something down something else comes up that I don't know and need to find out about. It is frustrating and painful sometimes but I know I'll eventually get the hang of things Anyway, this post will be short as I am exhausted and ready to catch some zzzzz's, but here are 10ish things you might have been wondering about...

1. I'm here safely and so is my luggage.
2. My apartment is:
1. Hot. I only get AC in the bedroom and its not super effective. Can't wait to get a fan this weekend.
2. Smelly. Someone used to smoke here bleh.
3. On the 2nd floor.
4. Has a cool lock thing on the door (Seen here. Mine does not have a fob)
5. Has a new two burner gas stove, a larger fridge than expected, a microwave, and a washing machine.
6. Is on a quiet street and my neighbors aren't too noisy.
3. My school is about 15 minutes away and I take a cab each morning and night. The fare is about $3 one way. I will eventually get a bike with my first paycheck. A decent bike here costs about $200. In the winter, the school has a bus pick us up.
4. Daejeon is surrounded by mountains and my classroom looks out on them. Its very very pretty.
5. I have eleven 5 and 6 year old students and they are very cute. They speak decent english, enough that I can communicate with them. The other day I walked in and they were singing and dancing to Gangnam Style. It was awesome.
6. Jet lag or something resembling it hits me at about 3 am here or 2 pm US time. I don't know why. Its weird. Otherwise, I'm sleeping well.
7. All the other English teachers at my school are super super nice and helpful. The teacher who has been training me to take over her class is awesome. I don't want her to leave!
8. So far I have seen 6 different 7 Elevens, a Dunkin' Doughnuts, two Starbucks, and a Baskin' Robbins.
9. On Wednesday, I had a tough day and so I bought myself a Budweiser, went to the "Pizza School" pizza shop and bought a pepperoni pizza and watched Talledega Nights. It was awesome.
10. Anyong IS an actual word and not just made up on Arrested Development. Unfortunately, no on uses it much. I have learned that "yogi" means "here" so I can tell my cab driver where to stop.

Alright, those are the 10 things you get for now. I need to get some sleep and you guys need to get to emailing me! Tell me about whats new or not so new with you. Email me, facebook message me or whatever just stay in touch!

Four Days Away

So we're four days from take-off. Well, really three and a half. So how am I feeling? Pretty much any emotion you think you might feel in my shoes, I'm feeling it. I've had an amazing two weeks off between jobs. Visiting Liz in DC was an excellent vacation and all the lunches and dinners catching up with people have made me feel like the popular girl in high school. I haven't just been out having a good time though. I've also been packing, cleaning, tossing, shopping, weighing luggage, and constantly reminding myself that YES you are really leaving and going across the world to teach English to cute little Korean kids.

I've got a lot of "see you laters" left to say over the next few days and I am dreading them enormously. I've got so many great friends and family and I am just way too lucky. I plan on finding their Korean look alike and then getting my picture taken with them.

Leaving and packing up hasn't just meant saying "see you later" to people but also to places and things. I lived in my apartment for 6 years. 6 years. It never had a dishwasher that worked (it just sat there mocking me for six years) and had lots of weird quirks that I hated and a lot more that I loved. I made a garden. I hung pictures. I had plans for things I never did. It was comfortable. I had lots of good times there and packing it up and turning in the keys was hard. Harder than I expected. I've also got to sell my car. My little VW was the first car I bought all on my own. Its been a good car and peeling off all my stickers today made me feel like she was already gone. All those beach trips, movies, youth group chauffeuring, and days of singing Adele at the top of our lungs are contained within it. It is a keeper of memories as well. She will be missed greatly.

Letting go has been like, the least fun thing. Granted, I don't think I've ever heard anyone say, "letting go and change are the best things in the world! I feel like a million bucks!" but maybe i'm wrong and there is some crazy optimistic person around that does say that. If you know them, don't tell me, but maybe "accidentally" trip them or "accidentally" squirt lemon juice in their eye for me and shove them in front of a bus (that has stopped of course. No one needs to be horribly maimed, just inconvenienced and a little scared).

Building a life and home is kind of what our brains are built to do I think. I mean, I guess some of us are nomads and want to travel around, but I've always been a homebody and I have built myself a pretty fine looking nest. Now I'm putting some newspaper over the top and a keep out sign on my branch hoping that when I come back, some of that nest will still be together. Other birds won't have moved away or changed jobs. Some other bird won't have come and taken pieces of it away to build their own nest leaving me a little drafty. That not everything will have changed. I know that sounds super dramatic and it is in the way that I'm freaking out about leaving and my brain does crazy things, but I've seen my sisters come back from their new locations to see how Raleigh has changed. New places to eat at, new quirks to scoff at, new ugly apartment buildings to question the building of. I want some of it to feel the same when I come home so that even if I change and others change there will still be the sameness that I found so comfortable and so frustrating. The sameness that I'm shaking off now to pursue this crazy traveling and teaching experience. I need it to all be here when I get back so I can snuggle back into it a little and maybe find a same but different place to fit into.

I don't know if much of that makes sense. I guess it's just where my brain is at right now. Bear with me. It has definitely been a bit of a roller coaster these last few weeks. There are a few things that I need to remind myself of now so that when i'm over there I don't feel so lonely. One, is that so many people love me and will miss me. I am lucky to have so many friends who have called, emailed or taken me out that I know I will never be truly alone. The other is distance is not important. Finding ways to stay connected and furiously pursuing them will always keep number one from being obsolete. So stay in touch people. Write me. Comment. Facebook. Whatever. Just say hi or tell me a funny pun even if you know i'll be groaning internally. It will keep me going until I get my "Korea legs" and can dive into the adventure that I know will be amazing, but right now just feels really really far away. We're all going to Korea together. I'm just the one taking the long flight.

Constance's Plans

I've been trying to figure out when exactly I decided that teach abroad was for me. I know that I've thought about it off and on through the years. I know that without a college degree that teaching was an impossibility and getting that degree was a roller coaster all its own. I know that at one point I wanted to be a teacher, then I went to high school and apparently I was all "no way is that ever happening" by the time I graduated.

What changed? What finally caused me to take the jump? I don't know. A combination of things for sure. Work has been... not my favorite. I was applying for other jobs, but that lead me to wondering what I really wanted to do and what job would fulfill that. I saw my sisters following wonderful new avenues and really putting themselves out there. They have found jobs and a life that seems almost tailor made to them. Not that's its been easy for them by any means, but I sometimes observe the way they talk about something or how they are telling a story and I can just see that in that moment they are content. I can say that I've never felt that way in or about any of my "grown-up" full-time jobs.

Other factors? Friends moving away, money, and age. You know the usual stuff that causes people to make crazy life changing choices on a whim. What it came down to for me and still does today is that I just feel/felt too safe. Don't ask me to break that down any more for you because  I don't think I can explain it any better. Everyone will read it a different way I'm sure, but I wanted needed to do something crazy, spontaneous and soul searching. It was a feeling that sort of snuck up on me. When I saw how hard Misha was working to move to NY against some pretty daunting odds and when I saw Rachel and Liz make their decisions, it dawned on me that I could make one of those decisions for myself. I've always loved loved loved to travel and had always felt more alive doing it. Why can't I do that for a job?

I was looking back in my email to see how early I'd written anything to anyone about teaching abroad. I found a funny exchange I'd had with my friend Jacob on December 6th, 2012 where we were signing random names to our emails. I found this paragraph at the end:

 I bought a groupon for a TEFL course to get my certification. Seriously thinking about teaching english abroad. What are your thoughts? My thinking is that I love kids and I think I'd be a good teacher. Maybe get some better direction in my life. I don't know. Whenever I think of doing it,  I get totally excited. We'll see how it goes.

Constance Eugene Foy Stancil

I guess if Constance can do it, I can do it too.