The first three days

So, I have now been in South Korea of two full weeks. My cities name is Dongtan and about an hour southwest of Seoul. The flight from the states was actually not as bad as I expected. We flew from Seattle to San Francisco and then San Fran straight to Incheon Airport in Seoul. Taking off from San Fran knowing that was the last time we would be in the States for at least a year was mind blowing. My last American meal besides the plane food was Burger King. We figured we needed to go out with something juicy, fatty and that tasted delicious. Especially because I had no clue what I was going to be getting myself into over in Korea when it came to food. The flight was my first ever international flight and it took about 12 hours and I would say I slept about half of the flight on and off. After we took off, it took Daniel and me a while to fall asleep because of the excitement but then as we began to watch the little screen in front of our seats that always reminded us of how much longer we had, we quickly realized we were in for a long flight and got some sleep. The food on the plane was surprisingly really good. The first meal I had was chicken in some gravy, mashed potatoes, corn and a cookie. After a little napping, some phase 10 (a LONG, fun card game a little like UNO and gin rummy if that is possible), traveling cribbage we were given a snack which was pretty much a cup of noodles. They came by with the hot water to cook it. Then after that, some more sleeping and watching movies, we were given another meal and it was the choice of either pasta or a turkey sandwich. I took the sandwich and was very happy I did. It was delicious. We landed in Seoul and it was a surreal feeling walking off the plain and seeing most things written in Korea. We had to go through immigration and customs but for the most part, it did not seem too much different than what I was used to in the states. We got our luggage relatively quick and had a taxi service pick us up through our recruiter and he took us all the way to our apartments and it was about an hour and a half drive. He spoke no English and had a sign with my name on it. It made me feel pretty important like I was being picked up by a limo service. Our flight took off Wednesday morning from the states and we landed in Korea at 7:30 PM on Thursday. We were so exhausted in the taxi that we slept the whole way. Once we got to our apartments, we met up with our school director, Jade. She gave us a tour of our places and then let us be. Our apartment complex has three floors and six studio apartments. I am on floor four and it is a lot bigger and nicer than I expected. I made my bed, turned the heat on and went to bed. The next day was Friday and Jade picked us up and took us to the school where we had lunch with the students, met the other employees and became acquainted with our place we call work. We were there maybe an hour and then we went to get cell phones and Jade got us a great deal; a free phone but we pay a monthly fee. It should very cheap. When we got home later that day we had bicycles waiting for us and they are awesome. We ride them to work, to the park, to the store and anywhere else we may need to go. It was Friday night we hung out with our other foreign teachers that live in our complex. Their names are Tate, Jillian and Dave. Tate and Jillian are a couple from Canada and Dave is from Athens, Pennsylvania. They took us to a really good Korean bbq place where we ate lots of pork and had unlimited sides and a couple Korean beers. On Saturday we woke up and rode our bikes around trying to find the Central Park we had heard all about. We found it and it was massive. It has three full basketball courts, badminton courts, tennis courts, a walking trail, a kids playground, skating center (not ice), and a weird type of golf game with big balls and big clubs. We will get full use out of this place. After touring the park, we went to find a place for lunch. It was our first meal in Korea on our own. We found this place and it had a sign on the door that read "open" and in English. We figured they may speak some English so we took our chances. We walked in the door, took our shoes off and sat on the ground criss-cross apple sauce. The waitress came up to us with a pen and pad and stared at us. She began to talk Korean and Daniel and I just looked at each other. We asked for a menu and she said "no menu", we asked her for pictures and she said "no pictures". Daniel looked at someone else's food from behind us and it looked good so he just told the waitress to bring us two of them. We have now found out that some places here don’t have menus or pictures and RARELY speak any English. Sometimes when this happens, we just take a chance and hope for the best to come from it. It kind of makes eating a little more exciting in a way. After lunch, we had to get home to meet the cable/internet guy to let him in our apartments to set it up. So, within the first day and a half of being there, we had bikes, cell phones, cable and internet. Saturday night, Dave took us to a town near by to get some sport things like a basketball and a football. We are dinner there and came back to a bar in Dongtan that was very nice and trendy called they Alley Pub. They had couches as seats and served beer in these big, tall, three liter tubes with ice in the middle of the tube and a spout on the bottom to pour the beer. You can see this better in my picture with it. On Sunday, we did not do much again, I was still adjusting to the time change and got some sleep and unpacked everything and set my home up to the way I wanted it. We had to prepare to start work on Monday. Something new for me that I am definitely not used to. I will write soon to tell you about the first full week of work and what we have done. I am sorry this is so long and will definitely not make them as long as this again, I promise!!