Going through immigration was pretty painless, baggage claim was quick, and customs was a breeze. I changed most of my cash at the counter before walking out to the main part of the airport. There were a bunch of people with signs so I scanned for my name but didn't see it. I wasn't surprised - I was told I would be met about an hour after my flight landed and it had only been about 30 minutes. (Yes. 30 minutes for immigration, customs, baggage claim, and money changing. I wasn't kidding when I said it was easy.)
I made my way over to the exit where I was supposed to meet people from the school and sat down to collect myself. I really wanted to go to the restroom and freshen up a bit, but I didn't think I was supposed to take my whole luggage cart in...so I had a great mental struggle for about 10 minutes before I decided I was just going to do it anyway. I no sooner got my cart in the door than I heard my name over the announcements. Gah. I checked the time - I didn't think they'd be here for another 10 minutes or so, but if they were using the announcements they had probably been waiting for a while.
I found them pretty quickly...turns out the sign had two names on it and I had only read the first one before moving along. Whooooooops. It didn't look like two names when I was scanning over it. My bad...
But I found the people I was supposed to meet, and that's what matters. I met the other new teacher (there are only 2 of us) and we got along right off the bat. She wants to do a lot of traveling as well and our personalities seem to work well together. We had the whole taxi ride back to Eunpyeong-gu to chat, which was nice. She's fluent in two languages and has intermediate proficiency in two more, and I'm definitely jealous. She doesn't know any Korean though, so I've been helping her out with that and I'll be giving her more resources once our schedules settle down. She also hasn't been to Korea before, so I've got plans to show her some of my favorite places after work over the next couple of weeks.
We got to the motel and lugged our suitcases into our tiny rooms. We were there for about 5 minutes before the owner of the school showed up to make sure we made it in okay and get us settled in. She gave us the schedule for the next day and told us we'd get a more detailed schedule once we got to school. Her husband brought by bread, bananas, and milk for both of us so we would have food for breakfasts, which was really nice. She also said she'd be calling in the morning to remind us that someone else from the school would be meeting us around 8:40 to take us to go get our medical checks that are required for our visas/Alien Registration Cards (ARCs).
After we showered, Ingrid and I went out to explore the area around our motel a little bit. We found a few restaurants that looked promising, a Paris Baguette, multiple cafes and clothing stores, a couple small grocery stores, an E-mart where we'll be getting stuff for our apartments once we move in, and a pretty little park. We didn't stay out very long since we were both exhausted, but it was nice to get out and about for a little bit.
I did try to sleep, but my body was having none of it. I slept from about 9:30 to a little before midnight, but then couldn't sleep after that. After a certain point I just gave up and stayed up all night, knowing full well how difficult it was going to make the next day.
I have to get ready to leave for work now, so I'll write about day one in another post. Bye for now!
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