First Impressions of the New Great Unknown

Orientation came to an end sooner than I would have liked, and I said my share of bittersweet goodbyes in Daejeon before boarding the bus to Ulsan.  The next several hours were full of anticipation and worries.  I had only just learned that I would be teaching middle school the previous evening, so my schema of what to expect was quickly dissolving into something unrecognizable.

My mentor teacher picked me up from where the bus left us and immediately took me to get my Alien Residency Card (ARC). Unfortunately, it seemed that every other mentor teacher had the same idea, so waiting in line for an ungodly amount of time was inevitable. After we finally got to the desk, submitted the necessary paperwork, and paid the fee of 30,000 won, she took me to the mart (large department store) to buy a few things for my flat. In the end, I bought a flat iron, milk, cereal, laundry detergent, and a few dishes.

My flat is within walking distance of my school and significantly more spacious than I expected. However, moving my groceries and the entirety of my luggage up four flights of stairs proved to be difficult as the alley entrance to my flat was blocked by a huge marketplace. We had to wheel both suitcases and balance the other items in our arms through a maze of booths selling everything from live crustaceans to colorful socks. Actually, had I not been so exhausted by everything else I would have liked to check out the merchandise at a more leisurely pace. At any rate, I thanked my mentor when we reached my flat and she left to move her car (which was parked illegally next to the market).

I hope she likes me. After all, the job of babysitting the waygook falls to the English teacher with the least seniority, and it’s not optional. I know it was a pretty big hassle to pick me up and take me the places I needed to go, not to mention the fact that I will be needing more assistance as I begin the job.

I have a loft with a TV, and apparently I have DSL internet. Unfortunately, the cable is frayed around the edges so I couldn’t connect to any kind of server. For this reason, I checked out the Paris Baguette café on the next block and mooched off of the free wifi for as long as possible before my tablet died.  Eventually, I returned to my flat to do laundry and process everything that I had learned within the last 24 hours.

I am teaching at a middle school and will have about 20 hours of classes each week. I will only see each (regular) class once a week, so in other words, I am responsible for educating 500+ teenagers. In addition, my mentor teacher explained to me that my co-teachers will be present in the classroom only to keep students’ behavior in check and I will be essentially solo in teaching duties.

Well...  The lectures on co-teaching at orientation stressed that teaching duties are generally split between the KT (Korean teacher) and the GET (Guest English teacher, aka: me). If anything, I expected that I might have less authority as an educator because I am arriving in the middle of the school year and the KT has been with these students for longer than any waygook teacher. To be honest, I was relieved at this thought because I would like to get a feel for the students before having all the responsibility of their education... this isn’t the reality, though.

At orientation, one of the lecturers warned us about what she calls “The Korean Surprise.” In short, this phenomenon occurs whenever life here expects you to immediately juggle tasks you never would have expected to juggle. And yet, she explained, if you take all your fears and frustration and channel it into the image of the Korean sky sprinkling multicolored confetti over your head, it helps adjust your perspective. So, instead of throwing myself onto my bare, unmade bed and sobbing over the fact that my number of students is comprable to the number of friends I have on Facebook, I imagined that sparkly confetti. And it helped.

I didn’t want to spend all evening in my shell of a home so I went back to the Paris Baguette to use their internet and call my parents. I also needed to figure out the location of my school so I could go to work in the morning. When I bought a cheap fruit bar (to justify my usage of the wifi signal), I asked the clerk at the register if she knew the location of the middle school. The girl I asked said something in Korean and went into the back, reappearing with a cute, smiling girl who asked in English if she could help me. After pulling up a map on her phone, we got to talking and I explained that I had just moved to Ulsan to teach English. Soo, as her name turned out to be, gave me her phone number and offered to introduce me to her other migook friend over the weekend. She was so sweet and welcoming, and told me that she "very wanted" to be my friend. So, I made my first Korean friend in Ulsan on my first evening as a resident. Things were looking up already. :)