Surprise!

Well, yesterday was a long, frustrating, exciting, emotional day. Our alarm, which was set for 6:30, didn't work, and I was woken up at 7:30 by the sound of high heels in the hall. 7:30 was the time we were supposed to be in the lobby to load our luggage onto the bus. I jumped out of bed and showered and dressed in 10 minutes, and told Anna to just take her time because I could handle loading our luggage.

Since we were meeting our co-teachers, I was dressed up nice and all of our other clothes were packed away. Then I got down to the lobby... At this point I should tell you that we have 7 bags that way over 300 lbs total. They made us drag the luggage 1.5 blocks, uphill, through the rain, to where the buses were located. The day starts.

The bus ride to Gumi to meet the co-teachers was uneventful. When we got there, however, our co-teachers had driven together in the same 4-door sedan. Fortunately, we were able to fit all of the luggage in w four people by holding bags on our laps for the hour long drive. :)

When we arrived at our destination, we realized we were going to be living in downtown Daegu, about a half hour from Seongju. Daegu is a city of 2 million people, roughly the aread of Minneapolis and St. Paul combined. If you want a good visual of what cities in South Korea look like, think Time Square. In Daegu, it's Time Square with shorter buildings.

The first apartment we looked at was completely unfurnished, with a Kitchen, a living room and a bedroom. The second and third were still inhabited, and not good, so we actually selected the first. We were sitting in the rental agency very frustrated and upset while our co-teachers signed the lease, because we thought w would have to go buy all our own furnishings.

Later, we found out that our co-teachers had already arranged for all the furnishings to be delivered today. Although small, our apartment will actually be very nice, and we will potentially get another $400 allowance for choosing a smaller apartment for the two of us. Our situation is obviously going to be a lot different then we were expecting, but we are in an area that is very close to anything we could need, including trains to other major cities and areas.

I can't pronounce my co-teachers full name, but I call him "Che." He has been teaching in Seongju for 22 years, he has a 9 year old son named One-Young, and he likes to play tennis and smoke. I will be teaching in 2 buildings that contain a total of 4 schools. Both are middle and high school combined, and both are very small (one has only 40 students). This is nice because it is likely that I will not have to move to different classes; instead, the class sizes should be significantly smaller then the national average, and they will all come to my room.