All Quiet on the Eastern Front

     So let's go back to that walk I was taking to work at the beginning of the last post.
 
     I got up on Monday after being in bed for about 6-7 hours but sleeping probably just 4-5. I'm not sure but I might have been too tired to sleep. Either that or the new environment and the fact that a certain cat was bouncing around the room were probably contributors to a rather unrestful night. I don't know. But I got up around 7am and unpacked a little. I then decided it was time to take a shower and was not so pleasantly amused to find that getting hot water was not as simple as just turning on the faucet and moving the lever to the left.
     Some of you might remember that my first shower in Japan was a cold one because I couldn't get the flame started to heat the water. Well, it turns out that my first shower in Korea was also a cold one. Ami got up and told me that what I thought was a thermostat on the wall behind the tv was rather a control to turn on the floor heater (more about this later--in another post, most likely) and to also turn on the water heater. So we turned it on and tried the water....nothing. Then we turned it to a different position...nothing. Then again...nothing. All of this was taking time, of course, and I didn't want to show up to work late, so I said some expletive that I will let you imagine and told her I'd just wash my head in the cold water. So I did and then grabbed my backpack and took off.
     Armed with just a memory of the maps I showed you below and the location of the sun, I started walking. I knew I had to go north and west and I knew that I could probably get there in about a half hour. As a runner I am intimately familiar with how long it takes me to run and walk certain distances.  So I headed to the main street north of my apartment, took a left and walked until I could see a park to the north between the buildings. I then crossed the street, walked up a side street and followed the perimeter of the park until it put me on a somewhat busy road.  All was going well until I got to another major road and thought something was wrong. From memory I thought that my school was just before the next major road. "Hmmm," I thought, "Maybe I need to head west until the next major road." So I headed west but was disappointed not to find my school where I thought it might be.
     As I had left with an hour to spare and thinking that it would take about 30 minutes to walk there, I knew I had time to figure this out. So I looked around and took a deep breath and tried to figure out what I was doing wrong. It was then I remembered the laptop in my backpack and the maps that I had posted below saved on a file in "my documents". So I stopped at a short wall, set the laptop on it, and found the images. "Ah ha. I needed to go more north after the park." Turns out that my school isn't at the first major intersection but the second one. So I went back and corrected my mistake.
     Ten minutes later I was walking into the building and up the stairs. The school is located on the 4th and 5th floors of what looks like an office building and as I walked up to the front desk, I reminded myself of all the time and effort and money it took to get this job so that I could live this adventure. And now, I was finally walking in to my new place of employment. Job well done.
     A few minutes after telling the receptionist that I was there to see Greg, he came out and we finally met--after months of emails. He seemed like a good guy and we went into his office to talk some more. We talked of my flight over and the apartment for a little while and then turned our attentions to the job. He then gave me a tour of the school introducing me to people along the way. I met a few teachers, some of the staff, and said hi to a few of the students who looked at me with curious looks in their eyes.
     At noon Greg asked me if I'd like to go to lunch so we went across the street to a small Vietnamese place where I had curry noddles and after that we came back and I went to observe two classes. Both classes went well and I came away from them thinking that there were many similarities to the school in San Jose I'd just come from: students the same age, classes about the same size, the feel of the place pretty much the same, and even some of the same textbooks. All in all it seemed like to was going to be an easy transition.
     After another short meeting with Greg, I took off to walk home. This time I didn't take any wrong turns and was home in about 30 minutes. Upon my arrival, Ami informed me that the problem with the hot water was that we had no gas coming into the apartment. She had somehow figured this out during the day and had the gas guy come by to get things up and running. So we both took a hot shower and then headed out. Ami had gotten herself a cellphone while I was at work and we both walked down to get me one--my first smart phone. It's got all sorts of apps, most of which are rather useless to me as they are in Korean, but perhaps I'll learn enough Hangul to understand them someday. In the meantime, I enjoy the GPS, subway, weather, and chat apps.
     After we got home, we ordered a pizza and I had one of the beers that my school put in my fridge (a gesture that didn't go unnoticed by me). And that was the end of my first full day in Korea. A good day methinks.