Day 11 in South Korea | First Day in Seoul

Orientation week has finished, and now hundreds of new Guest English Teachers have been released to classrooms all over South Korea!

It turned out Orientation was far more fun than I expected it to be. The lectures were all incredibly interesting and relevant, and the people were amazing. It was hard leaving all my new friends, even though most of us will still be living in Seoul. But now, instead of just a quick jog up a flight of stairs in the dorm, we'll be an hour's ride on several subway lines away from each other.

I already miss these jokers so much! But we'll be sure to get together soon!

And these two, too! Our Orientation Class #2 staffers, Olivia/Minah and Thomas/Hojung

Today was spent meeting my co-teacher, touring the school and meeting other faculty members, and getting moved into my new apartment.

So far, I'm really loving my co-teacher, "Yoon Teacher." She's really passionate about her work, and so far, she's been great with answering all my questions and helping me out with all sorts of things, including doing some emergency scrubbing in my unexpectedly uncleaned apartment.

The school, Deungseo Elementary School, is a smaller school, as far as Seoul public elementary schools go. I think there are about 100 students per grade, 1st-6th grades. Yoon Teacher told me that all the students are really excited to have a pretty, female English teacher after several male English teachers for the last few years. So far, the students I've met in the halls have been really sweet and excited to meet me. Tomorrow, I'll get to formally meet several of my classes. I'll be working with two different Korean English teachers, teaching 3rd and 5th grades.

I've been told that many of the students at this school are lower-income, and aren't really too interested in learning, especially English. So that will be a challenge. But Yoon Teacher also says that they're all very innocent and childlike, unlike some of the more jaded, hardened kids she's worked with before.

While I was getting settled at my desk in the teachers' office at my school, I found a letter to me from the previous Guest English Teacher, full of encouragement and helpful hints about life in Korea. He mentioned that my apartment (where he lived last semester) was going to much better than the apartments a lot of my other teacher friends will be living in across Seoul. So as you can imagine, I was quite anxious to see it.

It turns out he was right! It's a studio apartment, but it's very spacious. And the best part is... it has a loft! I'm not sure what I'll use the loft for, since you have to shuffle around on your knees and duck your head when you're up there, but it's still exciting to have a second story in my apartment!

I'll take more (better) pictures once I get a little bit more moved in and add some life to it all. I'm really not sure what do do with all the space, though. It needs some serious furniture. From reports of other (tiny!) EPIK teacher apartments, this was certainly not a problem I was expecting to have!

Another exciting part is that when you get off the elevator on the first floor, you can access several stores and businesses from a back hallway, without even having to go outside. Earlier, I bought my dinner from a convenience store in the building, and now I'm hanging out in a coffee shop with free wifi (and really good lemon iced tea). There are also a few other restaurants as well as several offices.

I'm really excited to get settled in here and start exploring the neighborhood. So far, I've discovered that the studio where the super-popular K-pop music show "Inkigayo" is recorded is ridiculously close by. So yes, this means that top names in K-pop will be in my neighborhood on a weekly basis.

It's still sinking in that this will be my home for a year or more. I hope the rest of my experience in South Korea will go as well as the first week and a half have!