A Brief Summary of my Activites to December 1st

First, let me say that I can whole-heartedly recommend Singapore Airlines. Friendly staff, decent food (with menus no less!), free drinks, and individual video screens with on-demand programs. At first I thought Top Gear was just for Euro-nerds like Dean but I think I'm converted.

We arrived in Seoul around 6pm and headed straight for the hotel. For reasons unbeknownst to us they decided not to put Brenda and I in the same room, but luckily my roomie Dave was a perfectly nice chap who didn't steal my kidney. Training was rather intense . . . they really cram a lot of information into a five day session, but that method is of course preferable to the "Welcome to Korea, start teaching!" method used by some other schools. My practice teaching sessions went well and I passed the training with flying colors. This may have has something to do with the fact that through a combination of jet lag and boredom I got to bed around 10 or 11 every night. Apart from a Thanksgiving Day bash (which we did not attend) there were no major partying incidents.

While in Seoul we were able to meet up with Josh from Expeditors Seoul Branch. It was fantastic to meet him after years of phone and e-mail correspondence, and not just because we had someone who could actually read the menus we were looking at. After eating some Shabu Shabu for dinner, we grabbed a few drinks at Hooters, as Josh said that was the only place in the area he thought we could get a beer . . . I remain skeptical. Yes, they have Hooters here, and yes, it's just like at home. However, they had Irish beer (including the elusive Kilkenny I haven't seen since I was in Denmark) so it was a wise choice.

Immediately after passing our training course we hopped on a bus for a two-hour journey to Daejeon. We were met by two CDI instructors in a dedicated CDI van (nice touch!). They took us to our apartment, which was surprisingly spacious and surprisingly inexpensive. Brenda's school is quite literally a 3-minute walk away. I need to take the subway but compared to Seattle traffic I'm perfectly fine with that. We got to meet a few more instructors out at a bar that night, all a very nice bunch.

We went exploring a bit in Daejeon the following day. Basically, it's a constant battle not to look like idiots, given that we know maybe 10 Korean words between us. Luckily the supermarket has a good number of products with English written on them. We're rather short on cooking utensils anyway so we've mostly been eating out. We will likely attempt to scrounge up a few furniture and household items from departing instructors. Once we get the apartment set up a bit more we'll post some pictures.

Will update you all on the first week of teaching soon . . .