Flight was a little delayed out from Heathrow - 40 mins or so, nothing major - and I wish they hadn't explained the reason was "a technical difficulty with the plane"... but nothing untoward happened. It was also ironic that out of around 46460495604956 Koreans on the flight, my seat [window seat on the wing again. Someone smiled on me :>!] was next to another westerner. A New Zealander who was on his way home after a 3 month stint camping illegally by the side of a river. XD Funny guy. He was nice enough though so we chatted when we weren't sleeping [him! I didn't manage to sleep at all on the 11 hour flight x.x despite them turning all the lights off so i couldn't do jackshit EXCEPT...]

anyway, we arrived, i got checked through immigration with the all clear, found my luggage... and then had no idea where to go next. So I just headed towards the exit and lucked out bumping into the guy I was meeting. we had to wait a little longer to pick up another teacher that was arriving but he showed up pretty promptly and thus we headed out of the airport to fight our way through rush hour traffic. It wasn't actually that bad, rush hour traffic. The problem was more all the double parked cars on roads about [------] this wide. And that's coming from a brit, so you know those goddamn roads are tiny XD We hit Incheon first, and headed to the school where I'll be teaching so I could meet the Director. The school itself is quite high up in a high rise place - it's a private school so it's not a separate building or whatever.

The first thing that struck me about Incheon itself, it must be said, was the sheer size. John said it was the fourth biggest in Korea, and dude, he ain't jokin'. When I compare it to dundee, the fourth biggest in scotland..... well, let's just say dundee looks like your average hickville one-street village town thingummy. At a stab I'd put this city around the size of London. The second thing to strike me was the clutter. Don't get me wrong, from what I've seen the city itself is exceedingly clean, no real litter anywhere. It's just tightly packed. Buildings and roads are haphazardly squished together and all of them are brightly coloured and decorated, competing with each other for the consumers' eye-view. Thirdly the smell, 'cause although it doesn't smell bad, it's a different smell in almost every street. It's hot, so it smells of everything around. Herbs, spices, litter sometimes, people, sweat...you name it.

So we meet the director and she's this tiny woman - and by tiny i mean shorter than me by a good inch if not two. She looks around mid twenties on first guess, but the fact that she a) has a masters [that she completed in the US over three years, but has forgotten almost all of her spoken English because it was a ong time ago] b) is the director/principal of a school and c) has a kid of around...hm. maybe 5-7 kinda adds up to at least thirty. She's very nice, but here's where the kinda bad news came in. See, because we're in Korea and everyone wants their western teachers to well, look western >> i'm going to be getting my hair done blonde [or at least as light a brown as we can get it and still look sensible >>] again before she'll even let me meet the children. Same goes for my eyebrows. Luckily I'd had some premonition about this and started to grow them back early last week. No more drawn on eyebrows, I'm out of the house without them for the first time in about six years! Must look very odd. That was the first / second negative. The third was, and is, the most difficult. She wants me to teach the children in an american accent. I felt like saying well why the hell did you hire a Brit then? I'm not allowed to say "not" I've got to say "nat". Luckily, apparently there's another foreign teacher there from America or Canada or something, so I'm going to nail him in a corner and make him talk at me until I can -twitch- turn the accent off and on at will. I really don't like that idea, but eh, y'know. I'm going to deal. Director [I don't even know her goddamn name yet >>] said that she'd take me around to a salon today to get my hair done, and apparently she wants me to buy fencing shoes?! .... although she herself hasn't mentioned that, John did at the airport. It was one of the things I was going to ask her about today.

But we'll get to today later.

We transferred my luggage from John's car to hers, and then she took me to my apartment. Which is a) solitary apartment, and although I wouldn't personally choose the decoration >> isn't too heinous, and I'm not sharing kitchen, bathroom or shower. No phone or internet installed despite John's promises, but really, I'm not too bothered. I can sort that later and with the inet place right around the corner and ...well. every 100 yrds or so!... I'm not going to be starved for internet when I get the time to use it. Obviously it won't be as often as me having my own laptop etc.etc. but this will do me until I have the monies to get the aforementioned. Director apologised profusely on the way there, she said that John only told her I was coming the day before and thus she hadn't had a chance to get any furniture in! No bed for me that night, she said. I was like >> whatever, wont' be the first time I've slept on the floor. I can cope. Her apartment is only two apt. blocks down from me, too, along with a bunch of their other teachers and friends, so I've kinda been shoved into the "community" of which so far seems very nice - despite half of them not speaking any English and me no Korean. They're all being extremely patient with me so far. After that, I met the lady's husband, and then another two people - one of which is the head of the "mothers' society" for the area. In fantasy book villages it would be referred to as a Womens' Circle, I guess! She's very lovely, although I can't remember her name. I can't remember any names from yesterday actually, but to be fair on me I was running on about 24 - 30 hours of no sleep at the time! I do remember one name, Mac, or Mr Gon. He's a maths teacher at a middle high school and extremely sporty. Speaks a little English and a little Japanese, so we cobbled together some form of minor conversation, and he's going to show me where I can get a decently priced bicycle, and when I've got used to it, go cycling with their group over the mountains - that'll help me get back into the shape I've lost over the last 8 years or so, hopefully.

We all went out for dinner to a fried chicken joint called "King's Chicken and Beer". Where I was fed, as you can probably work out, chicken and beer. Nice stuff, although because I was like, dead, I couldn't eat a lot of it, and I didn't drink more than one glass of beer either, because damned if I was getting slaughtered on the night I arrived because I was too exhausted to hold it in XD Director's husband kept offering me soju XD but I politely declined [in the form of O.O -wild shake of head-, which amused him very much]. About half past nine we started heading back up the hill to the apartments, which is when I a) saw the internet cafe's location b) saw a 24 hour convenience store type thing, and c) ...we realised my bed had arrived and was left to lean outside my apt door XD. So we got that inside. It's a western style single bed - I haven't fallen out of it yet - with a tough mattress that I feel will be very good for my back. It was very comfortable despite my fondness for soft mattresses. I've been loaned bedsheets until I can buy my own, and after a faff around with various furniture and whatnot they left me alone for the night to collapse at around 11pm.

As you can imagine, I went out like a goddamned light, with the Director telling me that she'd come get me "tomorrow afternoon" to go get my hair done and stuff.

So I wake up nice and early at 7am >>...and snooze / laze away the morning. Cause I can. Around 12 I'm all ready in smartcas clothing for her to pick me up. No sign of her! Sooo I paint my nails, pluck the short growth of eyebrow stubble into something resembling ...omg. there's no backslash on the keyboard... what am i going to do about A's emoticon, Celley?! .... well. / and its mirror, then. Then read an entire book. No sign of her. 3pm. There's a fresh fruit truck that keeps driving around with its megaphone on the top screaming in Korean. Presumably about fruit! Around 4 I'm fed up of waiting, and so I take my courage in both hands, shove some jeans on and my shoes, and amble off down the street to the convenience store i mentioned earlier. Might I mention I had nothing except tap water in the house at the moment for sustenance...? I tried drinking the tapwater 'cause I'm fine with that stuff, but it tasted nasty...so I gave up on that swiftly. I go in, spot cleaning stuffs, and load up, because the apartment ohgodneedscleaning, shampoo [cause i smartly left mine at home 'cause it weighed a lot in the case >>] and, after deciding I didn't have enough hands to pick up anything foodlike, grabbed a bottle of coca cola instead. I don't normally drink soda, but I thought the combo of sugar and water would chase off the headache threatening to encroach. Cashier babbles at me in Korean of which I understand 0.1%, but I get the idea she's asking where I'm from - England, says I. Ah! says she. babblebabble... cue clueless look. Babble... student? Oh I know that word! No, no I'm not a student. Teacher. English teacher. Ah! The teaching word which I know how to say but can't spell yet. Not going to guess it here.

Then I went home - for it is home for the next year! - and scoured the place from top to bottom. Kitchen, main room, floors, the windows on the sliding doors, bathroom - for some reason the cupboard in the bathroom was full of water >> so i assumed that wasn't some bizarre Korean cultural thing and cleaned it out. I didn't clean the windows or their slidy things yet, I was too hot by this time. I even scrubbed the genkan type area where we shoved all our shoes. There are stains I can't get off some things, but I think constant application of the JennCleaningMonster at her most bored will help those in time. I even washed the floors - taking a tip from the way the girl in Spygirl cleaned her floor XD and grabbing a wet cloth, squirting soap on the floor, putting my hands on it as a leaning post, and running all over the place to clean it XD I dare say it was a hilarious image of me with my arse in the air, but really, nobody was around to see it, so who cares? The kitchen still smells a little of the damp stuff that's in the sink drain, but that should improve with regular use as I cleaned it out as far as I could.

After that I sat around for a bit. Got bored of my nail colour so cleaned it off and reapplied. Still no appearance by Director, so figured after 6pm I was free to at least check out the inet place and see how confusing it is. Answer: very, 'cause I have no idea how much it is yet. I daresay I've got enough money with me though. I was hoping to get a cellphone set up today with the Director, because right now I'm totally incommunicado barring arileid@ email, and John and some other teacher in the area called Katy are apparently going to send me emails... to j@jynxkat. or something. Actually I'll email john from hotmail and make sure he has the right address for a while.

And that brings me right up to now! Sorry about the mammoth update, but I'm sure that's understandable given events.

I will admit that several times over the last 36 hours I wondered whether I'd made a colossal mistake in coming out here - my lack of Korean language, the enforced conformation to the "western" look that the teachers and parents want to see in me because it's "exotic" and more realistically western. Or something. The American accent that I'll have to learn. I'd counted on modifying my appearance to some extent, obviously, but I'd hoped I'd be able to keep dark hair. Apparently, Asian people [chinese, korean, japanese etc.] who are American/British born and apply for teaching positions in Korean schools are actually discriminated against in appearance because they're simply not exotic enough. That was something that had ghosted in my mind before but it was still a kinda :| --- oh i just found the backslash. Yay. .\/. Better --- thing to discover as truth. One of those times to be pretty glad that I'm a) naturally white as a ghost. b) fair haired and light eyed. Not that it'll win me any favours, but the Director goes out of her way to tell me how apparently beautiful I am. I think she's saying it over and over just to make sure I'm not heinously offended by having to become blonde. I'm not, but I don't like it, really. John said it would've been rude to ask it of me before I left the UK, but to be honest I'd've preferred him to say "they'll want you blonde" back in like, june or whatever it was when I applied, 'cause y'know, it was june or may or something when I went back to black. e_e...

However, despite the above negativity in whichever places, so far I'm really enjoying it out here, and I think, given time, I'll settle in okay. I'm definitely not homesick, and although it's weird hearing all the "street noises" outside my apt windows in Korean, and definitely feeling like the alien I'll soon have a card to prove I am, I've obviously got over the fear of "omg i can't go anywhere by myself" which briefly assaulted me today when the Director didn't appear.

This is where I go home and she's been around to look for me. I hope I don't get into trouble! I hung around all day for her so if she complains I might point that out. Nicely, of course. She is the boss, after all, but I'm not a doormat either, yo.

I'm gonna go through my arileid inbox now and type emails out to a few people before I go, so... check y'later, folks :) hopefully with pictures or something, but I'm not sure how I can manage that just yet without any form of uploading them from cameras to computer. We'll see.

Until next time :)