My New Home For the Year

I will add pictures to this entry another time.

I arrived Saturday morning....

My apartment is an efficiency, as I fully expected. I had hoped it would be similar to Michelle's (Michelle being another girl in my training group whose apartment has an amazing bathroom), but not only is it much smaller and less modern, it does not house a SHOWER. Not a proper one anyway. There is a shower head attached to the sink faucet. I am to shower over the sink. I don't even want to talk about it. The rest of the place is as expected and I'm glad to at least have a washing machine. While there is not dryer, there is a drying rack. And I do have a bed and bedding provided and both are nice.

Unkyung picked me up, after I was shown to my apartment, to go to her restaurant. See the previous entry for some of the pictures. I love the one of the grandmother. For some reason, I feel especially affectionate with her. I like her a lot, even though I have no idea what she's saying or how sharp her mind is (she starts to cry every time I have seen her so far. I get the impression she forgets who I am at times or that show knows who I am but just then remembered I am in Korea). I don't know, maybe it's her spirit that I sense and adore.

Unkyung told me that my birth father wanted to come and see my apartment that night. But the restaurant didn't close until 11PM and I had been invited to go out to the bars with some of the other English teachers at my branch. Unkyung seemed frustrated with him for not understanding as he kept telling her to tell me that he had to come that night. He was getting frustrated with her for not telling me. This is all heresay since I didn't hear the conversation, but Unkyung also added that he wanted her to spend the night with me because he didn't want me to be alone.

My birth mother told me that my birth father can't sleep at night because he worries constantly about me and because he is so happy I'm here. She added that this surprised her, and Unkyung wholeheartedly agreed. She said that every time I am around, he is constantly smiling. According to her, he normally has a grimmer look on his face and she has never seen him smile this much. This makes me feel bad but also incredibly loved.

The first night here in the Gwangjin-Gu, Seoul area I went with some fellow teachers out to the bars. We went to a place called Hong Deh (not sure of the spelling). The first bar had live music. Hong Deh is a college area so there were plenty of young people, and a decent amount of foreigners, walking around being loud and drunk. The first band was Korean and did well, but the band that followed was horrible. They were British. There was a big John Lennon poster on the wall of the bar, which made me angry. If they really respected John Lennon, they wouldn’t have allowed that band to continue. But the Korean girls were LOVING it and dancing (really creepy, spastic dances involving jumping up and down and throwing in a couple spins--movements reminded me of the creepy horror movies they have lately where ghosts move in really quick, scary, jerky motions) up front for each and every song. Several teachers bought my beers for the evening, which was nice. But eventually the work of trying to fit in exhausted me and I was ready to leave. I took a cab with a few other teachers and arrived home at 3AM. I proceeded to chat on Skype with people from home until I fell asleep.