Don't be nervous. Close your eyes.

One of the events I for some reason neglected to mention for some reason (probably trauma related) was my doctor's visit shortly after arrival.  Luckily, it's now happened twice, thanks to my branch not registering me as an employee until after my results expired.  Which is fantastic, because I love the doctor. [/sarcasm]

The locations were quite different, but the experiences were the same.  The first visit was in Seoul, and, being the country's capital, the entire building down to the aglets on the nurses was pristine, glistening, and impressive.  It was the type of hospital medical practitioners could be proud of, and it shone with cleanliness.

The one in Geoje looked like the psych ward from a horror movie.

Oh yes. I feel healthier just being here.

Both hospitals shared the same procedures, though.  Differently between them, the Seoul hospital had us don sterilized ninja gis, and the Geoje branch took my measurements while I was wearing a loose dress shirt, so I'm sure they're a bit innacurate. The primarily similar method that you are exposed to is that you are sent to stations with one or two nurses (wo)manning each, and you're shuffled back and forth across them all depending on which station is available, and you will be confused for other foreigners because we all look the same.

The other shared factor is that you're kidding yourself if you think they have English staff.  They know enough English to do their jobs, but not to address your concerns.  At the first visit, I had to get an electrokardiogram. I've never had an EKG, so I just wanted to know what to expect.  The nurse told me to close my eyes, and not to be nervous, so I did as I was asked.  But while lying down with my eyes closed, I tried asking if I would feel a stinging, or an electric pulse, or anything. Her response was 'close your eyes, don't be nervous.' I tried insisting 'no, no I'm not nervous, I just want to kno-' which was interrupted with 'don't be nervous'.  At this point I was starting to get nervous, considering the nurse wouldn't answer my questions, and was holding me down on the table while she smeared jelly all over my exposed chest and told me 'not to be nervous' and 'close your eyes' over and over again.  Eventually we made it through foreplay and the EKG, but she never did address my concerns.

The Seoul hospital had a dental section which used a small camera and monitor (and the only Korean on staff who could speak fluent English) to show you how disgusting your teeth were.  I left feeling as though my mouth were trying to kill me from the inside out, despite getting a decent bill of health.

This site also had the 'head doctors' on staff, whose job it was to pull you in, ask you questions that you had previously answered on your forms, and sign off on you giving what sounded like similar answers.  Keep in mind that the only English speaking staff were in the dental ward, and understand that the two interviews we were forced through were probably the most unpleasant of the experiences in the process.

The urine test was also trying at both branches.  To admit a personal fact to the internet, I have a shy bladder  in the first place, and although it tends to go away with the introduction of alcohol in my system, the hospital didn't seem to approve of this method. Something about 'skewing the results'.  It was a non-issue in the Seoul test, although it took some careful hand eye coordination to be able to fill the test tube they gave us for the task.  At the Geoje hospital, however, I hadn't really drank any fluids for the day, and having a room full of people cheer you in does no help in this particular task.

The Geoje hospital more than made up for it with the best blood draw I've ever gotten. I quite actually felt nothing as the nurse pierced my skin with the needle, and I feel I'd have a much better relationship with them if this replaced my earliest memory of getting a shot where I had three nurses holding me down while I screamed.

In the end, I received an A+ to my health (as far as I know) both times and happily survived both incidents.  Which is good to know, because medical expenses are far cheaper in Korea than they are in the states, so any optional dentistry, optometry, or more complicated procedures are easily done an a quarter or less of the budget, so once the money starts flowing in more steadily, I foresee corrective health operation rooms as my second home.

Gonna come back home healthy as two horses stapled together.

HEY LOOK PICTURES

BAM THERE YA GO

http://s1296.photobucket.com/albums/ag3/KoreanRoshi/

Buncha pics from Korea.  Unorganized and without annotation.

I'll get to that later, but it's 4:30 in the morning here.

Edit 10/24:  Much, much later, the gallery buttons are updated! One button for the Japanese Gallery, one button for the Korean gallery!

Also adjusted some layout stuff and got rid of dead links as far as I know, lemme know if I missed something!

Further Observations

Geoje City

Geoje as a city is nice.  The main part near where I live is called 'Gohyeon'.  The bars are good, the food is decent.  They keep the place relatively clean (depending on the time of day) and it's pretty accessible to foreigners.  We have the Sea Spa which is a really nice jimjilbang, a movie theater, a few arcades, and a whole lot of clothing stores and barbecue places.  Can't complain.

Okpo

Okpo is... a neighborhood? Another city? I don't really know how Korea works, and less how the island works. But it's on the island.  It's also almost all foreigners.  Sometimes it seems there are more foreigners than Koreans there.  There's an Irish bar with huge beers, and they have the better McDonald's.

Busan

I've been to Busan three times since arriving, twice on purpose, once by accident. I'll tell that story later.  Busan is a nice city, in parts.  The area immediately near Sasang station seems kind of seedy, but there are some good restaurants.  My first time going there I went with a coworker to meet some friends.  I had just purchased a cell phone roughly an hour beforehand (prepaid) and ran around screaming 'WHERE IS A FREE WIFI SIGNAL WHERE IS A FREE WIFI SIGNAL WHERE IS oh there it is' trying to get access to my gmail and contact info for people, because writing things down is for old people.

Busan the first time was pretty good.  We went to a mall that was pretty nice and had a wax museum in it, got some Mexican food at Fuzzy Navel that was pretty decent, and wound up at the beach in Hongdae.  The beach had a videogame tournament taking place which is... well, welcome to Korea.  Wound up back in Geoje shortly after that for a going away party (which are pretty much a daily occurrence in Korea. Somebody is always going away and they never seem upset about it. . .)

Busan the second time was for a friend's birthday, and also was a pretty good time as far as I can remember.  Did some mart drinking, got a hotel room, went to Wolfgang's which has excellent fish fry, and then drank, and then kept drinking, and then drank a whole lot more, and then went to Rock n Roll Club and played beer pong and the rest of the night is pretty fuzzy, but I've been assured that I enjoyed myself, and videos from the night certainly back that argument up.  The morning after I stayed in Busan nursing a hangover, did some shopping (managed to find some Converse only a size too small that have stretched nicely to fit my gigantic American feet), and ate some pretty decent gyuudon at a restaurant next to Sasang station.

All in all, I'd recommend Busan pretty highly.

Mart Drinking

Mart drinking isn't something that happens from my experience stateside, at least if you aren't homeless. Probably cause it's illegal in most places.  But hanging out at convenience stores and getting sloshed is surprisingly not uncommon here. And by not uncommon, I mean I seem to be doing it a lot, I see other people doing it a lot, and the Koreans here seem to be pretty fond of it.

Buying beer from the mart is halfway between buying it at an actual grocery and at a bar, so it's much more affordable.  They provide chairs and tables and they clean up after you even if you throw everything on the ground, and there are public bathrooms or conveniently parked trucks near most of the locations I've been to.  There's also wifi, and access to a microwave.

They tend to be a great place to meet strangers.  Not in a Craigslist sort of way, no, but definitely in a talking to other travelers/teachers/foreigners randomly way.  Everyone goes to relax outside of marts.  I had a good experience in Seoul at a mart at the intersection of a bunch of clubs, sitting and chatting with random foreigners and English speaking Koreans.  They're a crossroads for drunk, friendly people in the country.  Most of the time you'll never see these people again, but for a brief period of time you're all best friends.  Strangers will buy you drinks and ice cream and tell you their most intimate secrets.

Basically, mart drinking is the best.

Garbage

Korea is filthy.

That's really all I would need to say on the matter, but I guess I can add onto that.

Korea is absolutely disgusting.

There is constantly garbage littering the streets.  There are no public garbage cans, for the most part, and the best a conscientious individual can attempt is at least throwing your trash onto the bigger piles of refuse lining the streets, or in front of a mart so that one of the workers will clean it up.

To add onto this problem, there tends to be a rainy season (it was 'right when I arrived' until 'now it's cold'), and there are tons of band flyers and the aforementioned prostitute trading cards slung everywhere people might walk, so they tend to get pasted to the ground via rainwater and the uncaring tread of passersby.  Also, there is a more open sewage system in Korea, where the fetid waters are closer to street level directly under the sewer grates, and the smell can seep through harshly out of nowhere.  There's a spot near where I live where you'll be walking along, enjoying the smell of a bakery, when suddenly you hit a wall of odorous war crime.  Never a pleasant experience.

The silver lining to this, is that all these problems tend to happen later in the day.  Every morning, before Korea wakes up, but after it comes home from drinking (so, roughly 6-9am) a group of workers comes out and sweeps up the streets.  If you're the first one awake in the morning, and then you went back home around noontime and didn't leave again for the rest of the day, you'd have no idea the country got so filthy.

I've heard a few explanations for the lack of trash bins.  The first I was told was a fear of terrorists, which doesn't make any sense, considering the few places there are public receptacles are in the areas of highest transit which would cause the most damage.  The second, more logical reason is simply that they don't have the willing  manpower to collect the bins multiple times a day, so letting it get dumped all over all day and then cleaning it up once early in the morning is actually more efficient.

And it is, but guys, Japan is right next to you and they are pristine.  If you ever had to invite them over for dinner you would be so embarrassed.

Confucianism and its effects

Confucianism has twofold very visible effects.  First, is the age hierarchy.  Somebody older than you is automatically right. No matter what. Even if irrefutable evidence proves them wrong, you're still morally wrong for trying to prove that.  As mentioned briefly with the ajumas that will elbow you into the ocean and spit on your bloated, floating corpse, it comes into play at work as well.  Your boss is your boss, they're older than you, you will respect them.  I've had younger bosses before (only a year or two of difference, but still) that were pretty cool, and this is just not something I could see standing up here.

The other part is your position as an educator.  You get a lot of cred for being a teacher here. People assume you're wealthy, you get treated like a king, mothers are throwing their virgin daughters in your direction in hopes to wed them to such a successful individual...

Well at least people assume you have good money, but that could be because of the foreigner thing.  Huzzah stereotyping!

Let's Do the Time Warp

As I'd like to hurry things along before my memories of events fade from my old age,  I'm going to use this post as a way to briefly give some general impressions on Korea, and the next blog or two is going to skip the days pretty quickly.  I promise work isn't all that exciting, and that's most of what I do.  Elsewise,  this blog is going to be very scattered and disorganized as I try to recollect day-by-days or even weekly chronicles from over a month from now at this point.

Also yes I realize I haven't uploaded any pictures yet.  I don't have a home computer, so picture upload has been difficult.  I'll make my way to a PC Room one of these days and get all that taken care of.

The Apartment

The apartment they gave me is...nice.  It's roomier than I was expecting.  Individual bathroom, separate bathroom, kitchen area, separate laundry room.  There really isn't all that much room to spread out, though.  The main entryway, and the only legitimate room beside the bedroom is essentially all kitchen.  The lease does include a microwave (broken) and a refrigerator (tiny) as well as a washing machine (no dryer, had to buy a clothesrack) and a rice cooker which I'll never use because I'm fine with instant rice like a jerk.

The shower in the bathroom is a hole in the ground and a hose besides.  The shower nor the sink worked when I moved in, and I had to do some amateur plumbing to get them to acceptable levels.  Also, the kitchen sink had bean plants growing in the sink trap that I had to take care of. They sure as sugar went over the apartment before I moved in, I'll tell you.  Regardless, everything is in working order at present, even if it does take forever for the bathroom floor to dry after a shower.  Debating investing in those raised floor...racks? Whatever they are. Water drips through them onto the ground, dry off easily, yadda yadda.  I'd need two for the bathroom (one for the toilet, one for the sink) and multiple for the laundry room (where the air conditioner and washing machine drain onto the floor) and they're 16,000 a pop, so it's really not the top of the list.

I've been donated some furniture, and, with a bit of interior understanding, the place has gotten rather homey, but unfortunately the main area for hanging out is still my bed, which I would like to sleep on and not have people spill beer all over.  Fortunately my work still hasn't gotten me the bedframe I was promised, so it's not much better than sitting on the floor to be on the mattress anyways. Huzzah.

The apartment is also on the fourth floor with no elevator, which isn't a problem until you come home drunk and decide you want to move furniture in and out of the building.

Hey, no judging.

Workplace

After being there for a bit, the place I work is really nice... as a building. Everyone who works there is super friendly, it's always very clean and well stocked, they get any supplies I ask for them.  We don't have an (official) head instructor, so there isn't anyone spying on my classroom to make sure I'm not beating the kids or anything.  I mean, I'm not, but I COULD.

As for work itself, on that subject, 80 percent of the job is student management.  The material practically teaches itself, but getting the kids to sit still and look at it is a difficult task.  You have to balance getting the kids to enjoy class with getting work done, and too far in either direction makes some or all of the kids miserable who will then rat your ass out to the nearest Korean adult because how dare you just try to get through a lesson instead of letting your kids yell in Korean and hit each other and watch music videos on your computer.  Of course, when they complain, they never explain what they were doing wrong (let's face it, neither did we, eh?) so it comes off as you being a terrible teacher at a terrible institute, you risk the kid complaining to their parents and getting pulled out of the place, which loses your hogwan money, which gets you fired.  And we don't want that.  So make the kids happy.

The curriculum itself is...dull.  There is no meat to it, and it's all premade for you.  You teach method. Not speaking method, not listening method, not reading or writing methods. Answer finding method. 9 times out of 10, the kids won't even listen to the question you're asking them.  They will listen for some words that they can find in the textbook and regurgitate the answer they find without even sort of understanding what it means.  You throw them a curveball and ask them a question they need to think about and they cannot answer it, at least not without a lot of leading intonation and help from teacher.  It's depressing, at least for me, because you realize nobody is there to learn a language, they're there to pass tests.  And they do that very well, because the method they know works more often than not.  But for someone like myself with a great interest in languages (despite how good I may or may not be at acquiring them), it's sad to see so many kids just not care about learning the lingua franca.

Which brings me to my next point.

Speaking English in Korea

From what I can tell, there's virtually no reason to learn Korean.  And I've made some attempts, trust me.  I've learned Hangul, going so far as to even study the exception rules, and I've picked up simple phrases (Thank you, please, left, right, how much, etc), and am trying to get at least some basic knowledge of the language as I progress (although let's grant that my first month here was trying to get adjusted to the country and meet people, so I haven't set too much time aside for language study).  With what I know, I can go into a restaurant, order food, pay for it, and thank the person while saying the food was delicious.  The majority of the expats I've met here can't even do that.  Reason being, there is no reason to.  Speaking English is a status symbol here.  If they can speak English to you, they will speak English to you.  You can order something in flawless Korean, and if you look foreign, they will reply to you in English. And you can answer them in Korean, and they'll respond in English again. I've seen it happen.  It's happened to me, in my less than stellar but still comprehendable Korean speaking attempts.

People on the street will randomly talk to you in English. I've had kids stop me on city blocks to practice English with me, just to prove that they can.  I don't mind it, it's great that they're trying.  But it really does seem like a novelty thing that people do.

Not that that's not a thing that happens in the states, I've seen people at restaurants embarrass themselves by attempting to speak Mexican to the waitstaff (and finding out they're Polish or something, oh ho ho).  But it's such a weird thing to have people multiple times a day wander up and say 'Hello, how are you, nice to meet you, you enjoy Korea?, thank you very much, goodbye' for no reason other than to prove that they can. And  where I live there is no shortage of foreigners (some neighborhoods we outnumber the Koreans), so you'd think they'd have gotten over the novelty by now.

Foot Traffic (and traffic in general)

This is a big thing with me.  I hated how people walked in Japan, seemingly randomly, slowly, and stopping for no reason.  They had the luxury of it being explained with the walking patterns differing all over Japan (let's pretend it's island to island) so it's a whole bunch of people from different walking styles all intermingling. I can excuse that, but it still gets irritating.

Korea is quite possibly worse, but in different ways.  People will just shove you to the side.  I shouldn't say people, ajumas will shove you out of the way. Ajumas are crazy old ladies that dominate everything in their Confucian power grasp.  They will stare you down for simply existing as a non-Korean, push you out of the way (even if you weren't in the way), spit on the ground immediately next to you, and do anything they damned well please because nobody would dare tell them to stop.  They will ride their bicycles straight at you and expect you to move, even, and seemingly especially if there is a wide gap to either side of you that is completely clear of any obstacles.  They just want to see you move.

There's also the matter of cell phones.  Cell phones in Korea just...are.  Everybody has one. And they're all using them. Constantly. It's just part of being.  It's not even considered rude to be on a cell phone. Clerks at stores will be on cell phones. People have them out at special ceremonies.  Cab drivers will be playing on them while they taxi you to your destination.  And everyone has them glued to their faces while they're walking around, causing them to just sporadically charge in arbitrary directions as they get distracted watching their latest kdramas.

Other than that though, for the people that are paying attention, at the very least they will walk at a good speed on the right side of the path and it's easy to navigate them.  Although there is a weird tendency to stop at the traffic lights for... forever.  Traffic is unidirectional in Korea.  The light on each four sides of the traffic light will go green, one side at a time.  Which makes crossing on foot take even longer than that, especially if there is a separate timer for the green arrow and the regular green light.  At a crosswalk, Koreans will wait forever until the green man says go.  If there is no crosswalk, nothing can stop the Korean pedestrian.  They will charge into oncoming traffic face-to-cellphone and dare the world to hit them. Which may actually be a dare, because by law anybody hospitalized by a motor vehicle is the lucky beneficiary of all of the driver's money until their hospital bills are paid off.  Which gives you a nice two week vacation as you recover in the hospital.  And judging by the way people drive here, they'd be all to eager to run you down regardless.  So maybe the crosswalks are just an ingenious way to prevent people from playing chicken with traffic.

Food

Dak galbi, barbecue, HOF chicken, street mandu, jjahjangmyon, kimchi... kimchi.  Kimchi. I hated kimchi before I came here. I hated kimchi for my first few weeks.  I'm...starting to come around.  At the very least, it does taste different depending on where you get it from.  Different restaurants will make their own kimchi, and the spicier ones are better from my experience.  Kimchi as a cooking ingredient works better than kimchi by itself, though.  I think it's the addition of heat. Something about cold fermented cabbage is just...unappetizing.  But it's allegedly one of the healthiest things you can put in your body so you eat it regardless, and you keep trying it until you like it.

Street mandu is probably my favorite thing here.  Steamed mandu is the best, little dumplings either fried or steamed or a third thing that are stuffed with meat and vegetables, or kimchi, or what have you.  Some will be sold from carts, some will have tents set up for you to eat at, generally it's great. Beware the vendors that just sort of microwave it.  It tends to be much less appetizing then.

Street food is the best no matter where you are in the world.  Street mandu is great, and even better is just street meat. It doesn't matter what kind of meat. It's meat on a stick. Eat it.

HOF's are just chicken and beer places. They're open late, and they have chicken and beer. They also cost buttloads of money. You're paying about 16,000 for a basket of chicken and chips, but at least the beer is cheap.  It's no worse than three drink minimum bars with 25 cent wings back in the states, but with the beer being the discounted item, it just feels wrong for some reason.

Barbecue is meat. Meat you cook yourself unless you seem to American, in which case they'll cook it for you.  But it's always good.  I've found a place called Dino Meat Barbecue that is all you can eat for 16,000 and I don't know why I don't eat there every day.

Dak Galbi is essentially stir fry that they do at the table in front of you.  You pick the ingredients, and some poor undergrad stays up til the wee hours of the morning to serve your drunk ass the food. Worth it.

Jjahjangmyeon is one of the more popular Chinese dishes in Korea.  It's noodles or rice with black bean sauce, mixed vegetables, and generally some type of meat.  Pretty good stuff, but I'm starting to miss American cuisine.

Jimjilbaeng

Like the onsen I went to in Japan, except you can go in with tattoos here, hey~!  Also the one near my house has a tub with water jets on it. So relaxing~

Naked time is fun time.

Welcome to Geoje

My first night, right after arriving in the city, I wandered around a bit. I was in downtown Gohyeon area, which to this day is where I spend most of my time, so I figured it was important to get at least somewhat accustomed to the area.  I tried to keep a stable direction in my head and come across landmarks here and there, which is hard to do when you're brand new and you pass a CU Mart every 12 feet.  There are mountains and water in every direction, so you can't really use those to judge where you are for the most part either.

I did eventually get oriented, and wandered around the area a bit before turning in, falling asleep with the tv on.

The next day we had our 'work orientation'.  I took a cab in (cabs cost about a dollar here, really), and figured my way into the building.  Our building is swank.  We have an aquarium in the waiting room, we have a waiting room. We have secretaries, cleaning staff, management staff. The building is sterile clean and freshly wallpapered, we have water coolers in multiple locations, showering units in the bathroom for...some...reason... and we've got our own private offices with computers, projectors, whiteboards, markers, pencils... the whole works. It's almost like I'm a real teacher!

At about 1 in the afternoon, we met up with the boss (who is a very nice lady who spoke less English than I thought she would, but still plenty more than is common) and went over hours, wages, reimbursements, living situations, etc.  We were then dismissed to do prep work. For the next.....six hours.  Which was, well, absurd. But it was something I was told I needed to get used to. As per the schedule, I'm at work 1pm until 10pm Monday through Friday, and at least three hours every day is prep work.  What it actually is, is 'deskwarming', which is a Korean job skill that requires you to procrastinate on the internet for a few hours until your class starts.  It take me roughly 15 minutes to prep for a class, I shortly found out, so if I were to do nothing but prep for the whole time they had set aside from me, I would have the entire semester done in a week.

As myself and the other new teacher didn't really have much to do,we were getting prepared to leave about an hour or two into finding our bearings in the branch when one of the Korean coteachers told us to stick around because we were getting free food.  Not wanting to burn through my meager funds, and wanting to sample some good Korean food as recommended by locals, I stuck around.  This backfired because we ended up getting Chinese food. Not that it wasn't fantastic! But, it wasn't Korean.  We got to chatting, and I found out the very uncommon fact that myself and the boss are the only people at work who drink, or at least enjoy doing so.  That... doesn't happen a lot in Korea. Everyone here drinks.  It's hard to walk down the street without seeing a drunk middle aged guy hanging off of his friend. Yes, I know it's eight in the morning, what is your point.

The other new teacher (I hate using names in a blog but it is starting to seem like I'm going to have to) ended up tagging along on the way home with me so that we could do prep work together (we didn't actually do any of the sort at work).  She needed my help, because she was given a class that she wasn't trained how to do, and I was given 5 days worth of teaching the same class over and over, so one of us got the short end of the stick. I'm talking about me, teaching the same thing everyday is tedious.  So I generously helped her out, and retired to Shaun of the Dead with Korean subtitles.

The next morning I woke up at 7am, still on my training regiment, and being affected by the whole 'I'm in a hotel room' thing, where my body doesn't sleep soundly because the surroundings are weird.  So I went to the fish market.  It only took a little wandering around, and it helped that I could follow my nose. Because the smell was awful. Offal, even.  I got there and there were live fish squirming, dead fish cooking, people chopping and gutting fish up all around, and the whole thing is situated right above a sewage drain.  The smell is quite atrocious, but it is a sight to experience for somebody who didn't grow up on the seaside.  Of course I had the unfortunate effects of managing to look at everything as a 'pet' instead of a 'food' for the same reason.

My first class was later that same day, and I went in thinking I was prepared. I mean, this is what they trained us for, right?  Wrong. They didn't train us. They didn't train us at all.

I was optimistic, happy, smiling, thinking about how much fun this would be.  And then my first kid showed up. She looked at me and went 'You my teacher?'  And I said 'Yep!' and she made a...a face. And swore in Korean, and left my classroom.

Well, things were off to a great start.

The whole class was like that. Just very...tense.  Nobody wanted to be there, they just wanted to sit and silently judge me.  See what I was made of.

It was my first day as a teacher, I wasn't made of much.

As we struggled to get through on the prep work I did and the little bit I was taught, the class progressively got a bit better.  We were laughing together by the end and not staring blankly at each other, which is enough progress to make over a three hour class period.

I left my first class feeling pretty drained.  It didn't really go how I had expected at all.  The kids at the private schools here seem to be fully aware that your employment is based on you keeping them happy. If they go home and complain to their parents, they get switched to a different school. This happens enough times, you lose your job.  So there's not really a way to punish the kids, or get them to pay attention other than just being stern and...hoping it works.  They get distracted, they refuse to do work, and 'sending them to the principle' just makes them come back mopey and even less willing to work. It's... frustrating.  At this point I hadn't really figured away around it, and it was just irritating.  I wasn't expecting such a small, four student class where none of the kids listened. It was like teaching in an inner city school back in the states, except with less change at being shot.

Although all the students have knives.  Granted, they're box cutters, but still, was a shock to see that all of them are more armed than I am.

The first week was essentially just that.  Getting to know the kids, getting to know the job, really...not doing a whole lot back home.  Mozying around with the girl from work, going into random places looking for food. I ended up getting japchaebap, which is horribly offensive from a western standpoint but I assure you it's delicious.

The only eventful things that happened during my first week were finding out that Dunkin' Donuts serves bubble tea, and getting into unintelligible arguments with the landlord at the motel I was stationed at.  He yelled at me about how I had dirty clothes in my room, and how I took the key with me when they needed to  clean, charged me for the maid doing my laundry, and then forced me to pay for an extra day (which I got reimbursed for), and all of this via shouting in Korean at me until I understood him.  I'll give this to the people, I haven't had anyone back down on me. Always push forward.  And really, it was the most honest exchange I've ever had in my life. He'd yell and point, and I'd hand him money until he went away.

Aaah, international relations.

I ducked out really early on my checkout day to try and avoid him, managed to successfully, and then set up camp in the apartment I'd be occupying for the next year or so.

It's nice.