It just keeps on getting better....

 

I had been meaning to post this pic for awhile... WTF is this??? A smoking fetus?

On Thursday evening we found out our placements for the next year.  The towns were all written in Korean next to our names on a paper on the wall.  Fortunately at this point I can read Hangul, so I could sound out the name of my town.  I had never heard of it before.  I had to whip out the map and scan for a town that sounded similar.  Sangju... it's about smack dab in the middle of South Korea.  This entire time I felt like I could deal with any placement, so long as it was near water.  I'm as far as humanly possible from the oceans.  To add insult to injury, I only see one small river outside of town on the map.  The town is also pretty rural, at least by Korean standards.  I'm pretty bummed.  All my friends are being placed in Pohang, Andong, Gwanju... all bigger cities near water in my province.  Not me... I'm in the middle of nowhere!  I try to take a deep breath and think positive... 100,000 people might be small to Koreans, but it's still quite large by my standards, right?

 

Goodbye Jeonju!

On Friday we had a three hour bus ride to Gumi, where we ate lunch.  We then drove another five minutes to a big parking lot, where all of our co-teachers were waiting to pick us up and drive us to our new homes.  As I was getting off the bus, I saw a sign that said "Welcome Jenna Rahm" and was nervous to see who my co-teachers would be.  If there was one resounding message during our orientation, it was that our co-teachers can make or break our experience here.  You can imagine my shock when I noticed the women attached to my sign were Nuns! I guess I won't be going out for Soju with my coworkers.  That's right everyone, I will be teaching English at a Catholic all-girls middle and high school.  It is in a very small town, not even in Sangju, with a population of 10,000 at the most.  In addition, I will also travel 45 minutes away twice a week to teach at two other rural middle schools in towns even smaller than that.  Luckily, the nuns had the foresight to put my housing in a slightly larger neighboring town... I can't remember the name of it right now...

My apartment is quite nice actually.  It's a cute little studio with a separate kitchen, laundry room and bathroom.

My co-teachers did a bit of decorating for me, but everything is pastel pink so I'll have to do some redecorating after my first paycheck so I don't feel like a five-year-old girl.  I just got cable and internet.  The only channels in English are an ESPN-like station, OnStyle (it's like a Bravo/Oxygen knock-off) and Animal Planet.  I think I'll be a qualified zoologist when I get home with the amount of Animal Planet I've been watching.

A few other notes about the apartment: Nick, I found out what "bring Western sheets" means... can you see how my mattress is exposed? That's because their sheets don't tuck in at all, they just sit on top of the mattress.  I guess those will be coming in my care package :).  Also, yes, that is actually my shower sitting above my toilet.  And it gets luke warm at best.

I walked around my town yesterday for a few hours.  It has an interesting outdoor market on the weekends, but other than that it feels like it's just a bit of sprawl.  There was some water....

....nothing to write home about obviously.

I found one other white person.  He ran up to me with so much excitement because I get the sense there aren't many of us out here. Then he started talking and I realized I didn't understand him.  He only spoke Russian (boooo!).  I'll find another foreigner soon enough.  There's a rumor that one lives in my building, but no one seems to know if it's a guy or a girl or where this person lives or if they speak Russian or English, so I'm not sure if it's just some sort of urban myth. :)

Anyway, it's going to be an adjustment to live out here for sure.  It's not what I had envisioned when I signed up for this, but I suppose nothing in life ever is.  Thank god Ramy is just an hour away... at least I can escape on the weekends.  I think I'm going to go buy a goldfish.  I need a friend.