Orientation ended on Monday morning (August 26th) with everyone grabbing their belongings and heading onto a bus to get to their new cities. I was pretty lucky in that my bus ride was only about an hour or so away from the orientation site. Others had hours on a bus to get to their cities (some even had to get on to a plane to get to their cities, here's looking at you JeJu peeps) so I was feeling okay. I was a little nervous as I was unsure who my co-teacher was going to be and what my school was going to be like.
We arrived at the location of where we were to meet our co-teachers and be introduced to Daejeon. We were stood in front of the room with all the Korean teachers spread out. I was trying to guess who was there for me, but I didn't really have a clue. There were Korean teachers who had flowers for some of the native teachers and I thought that was so cute. As I was a middle school teacher, I was one of the last to be called and introduced to my co-teacher. As it so happens, my main co-teacher was not actually there and one of my other co-teachers came in her stead. The nice woman named Da Rae had picked me up due to the fact she had a car and my main co-teacher did not. Da Rae was super nice and was making conversation with me even though I could tell she wasn't completely comfortable with English. We stopped at her apartment so she could grab something real quick then we headed to Immigration.
After some time in Immigration filling out paperwork for my ARC, we headed to the suburb that the school is located in. This area is called Seo-gu. We stopped by the school briefly to pick up my main co-teacher (Sae Bom) and then headed to my apartment. Once there, I met the owner of the building. He was and still is the sweetest! He had brought me an orchid as a welcome gift and then made me leave all of my belongings for him to take up to my apartment while I went to go meet the principal.
I went to the school and met the principal. I thought she did not like me as I did not speak Korean at all (I have since learned otherwise) and she did not really talk to me at all. I was given a mini-tour of our floor of the school and the where the auditorium in which I would be introduced to the students on the following Monday. The rest of the week I was pretty lucky in that the cafeteria was being renovated so we were not starting classes until the 2nd. So my first experience of desk warming began.
That's it. That's all there is to the first week of living in my new hometown. Stay tuned for the next installment (My First Week Teaching)!
