That’s a strange thing to think about whenever I get down to it. That everything around me will be my virtually constant surroundings for a year. The significance of that fact has not fully sunk in. When and if it does, I’ll let you know.
I arrived in Seoul late on Friday (local time), after some long Northwest flights from Charlotte to Atlanta to Tokyo and finally to Incheon International, which is the nicest airport I’ve ever seen. You could eat off of the floors. Mr Hyung, who works for the school, picked me up and drove me the hour to Bundang. So my first glimpse of Seoul was at night, complete with 11:00 pm traffic jams and blazing neon. Oh, and everything was written in hangul, the Korean alphabet, though there is a lot of English on signs. We arrived in Bundang, which is southeast (roughly) of Seoul but still a part of the metropolitan area. I was hustled quickly upstairs by Jae-Mo, who is the academic supervisor for the school. He got me settled in and then left me until this Thursday when I begin my training.
You see, they’re afraid I could have H1N1. Apparently some teacher at another school contracted it on a plane flight and ended up with a full-blown case, which caused not only his school but all the other schools in the franchise to shut down. So, given the threat to public health that I might cause (and also the obsessiveness of Korean parents), they prefer for me to be left alone until they see whether I’m wracked with feverish chills and vomiting blood.
The jet lag is doing a number on me, no doubt. Saturday and Sunday were spent almost exclusively sleeping. Then I lay awake at night tossing and turning, getting up ridiculously early, wide awake. So I haven’t had much of a chance to explore.
I would like for you to see an interesting contraption from my apartment:
Korean toilet blaster
This electronic gizmo is basically an electronic bidet that is permanently attached to my toilet. It has lots of functions that I will probably never use. I thought the device only operated when you specifically turned it on. But, as I discovered with great surprise, it senses whenever you sit down and goes to work, spraying cold water into certain unnamed places. It is a most disagreeable feeling. And, because the instructions are in hangul, I can’t figure out how to turn it off. This was the first indication that things will be more difficult here.
Even more absurd is the loudspeaker on the wall which comes on at random times of day, with no warning or particular reason. At first I thought it was yelling at me for opening a window. Apparently it’s delivering information about the building for the benefit of the residents. It’s rather Orwellian in how it interrupts your daily life for the supposed benefit of all and closing with a polite “ham-sam-nida,” as though a thank you makes it okay to exert that sort of control over people. I think I’m going to cut the wires to the speaker, apparently one of the other teachers says that works well.
I’ve done a little bit of exploring, wandering up and down streets, getting somewhat lost in the process. Bundang is large, well-laid out, and repetitive, in that the same sorts of buildings go on forever. Scores and scores of high-rise tenements loom over small shops and restaurants for miles and miles. For a city, though, it’s quite verdant, much more so than most American cities. Streets are clean, construction is solid and new, technology proliferates. If you want to live in an Asian country that is dirty and dingy and rough, don’t look here. Korea has everything that most Western cities do.
This country is hot and humid. Unbelieveably so. Temperature-wise, it’s no worse than back home in North Carolina. But the humidity is out of control. Stifling, enveloping, permeating. There’s no breeze, so the summer midday just hangs on you like wet laundry. And they don’t understand the concept of central air in a lot of buildings. Some big ones like malls keep the air on but it’s nothing like the veritable deep freeze of most American structures. My apartment building (the Royal Palace Housevill; that’s right, no e on the end) certainly does not have it. The halls feel like a sauna some days, though thankfully I have a wall air conditioner which helps keep things bearable.
So that’s about it at this point. I haven’t seen or experienced a whole lot yet but hopefully I will have some more to talk about and better picturs, particularly once I venture into Seoul itself. Til then, here’s a view from my window:
Nighttime Bundang from my window.
1 Comment
June 22, 2009 at 11:05 am
this blog is so rock’n'roll
also, nice bidet-like thingy