Our First Week in Korea

After travelling for over 30 hours, with no sleep, we arrived at Incheon airport and met our agent, Doyle, who told us ‘Korean people very hurry up’ – I think he was hinting at us to get a move on. Doyle didn’t speak very much English and quite clearly just wanted to get rid of us and get his commission.

All we wanted to do was to lie down, anywhere, and sleep. But we had to go straight to the school and meet people. Then finally we were shown to our apartment.

Our New Home

Our apartment is so much nicer than either of us had expected. It’s much bigger too. We’ve turned the living room into a bedroom-come-living room as it’s the only room with air conditioning, and we’ve even made a “chaise-bed” out of our spare bed. We’re are using the little bedroom as a walk-in wardrobe. There’s plenty of room for the two of us. I love it!

When people warned us about getting culture shock when we arrived here I didn’t expect it to happen to me, I’ve lived abroad before, I’ve travelled loads; but it really is a whole different world here.

Cultural Differences

• If you go into a building, you have to take your shoes off. This means in restaurants everyone is barefoot, and at work we teach wearing our slippers.
• In restaurants you sit on the floor.
• There’s a certain way to pour a drink, and a certain way to receive a drink. You cannot pour yourself a drink.
• When somebody gives you something you have to accept it with two hands. Where you put your hands is determined by how well you know the person and how polite you wish to be.
• Eating with you hands is social suicide. Eating with a knife is unheard of. For the first three days I was very hungry because I couldn’t operate a pair of chopsticks. I’m getting better though.
• Flagging a taxi as we would in England is rude, instead you have to make a kind of camp flappy hand gesture. You never, ever, get in or out of a taxi on the driver’s side.
• You bow to greet people.

The first week has been non-stop. We went out every night: meal with the boss, meal with all the other teachers, drinks with the other teachers, a meal just the two of us… and I’ve been observing all week at school so I didn’t even get chance to recover from my jet lag until weekend.

Me and Ric getting into the spirit

And now is my first day of teaching!!! Wish me luck!