The first 24...

WOW where to even begin? Well after I endured 2 long plane rides and a 4 hour bus ride I finally made it to the place I will call home for the next year; Gwangju, Korea. I guess you can say my adventure really began when I got to the Incheon airport in Seoul. I got my 2 huge suitcases and wheeled them around on a trolly until I found the Transportation Information center where I purchased a one way ticket from Seoul to Gwangju. The nice lady at the counter let me borrow her "hand phone" so I could call the Principal of the school who was going to meet me at the Gwangju bus terminal. We had a quick conversation, telling him I arrived safely and was boarding the 5:30pm bus which means I should arrive by 9:30pm. The woman at the counter urged me to move fast as the bus was departing in exactly 3 minutes!! I ran as fast as I could with the trolly, loaded up my bags under the bus and sat down with a sigh of relief... I was finally finishing the last part of my journey!! Suddenly, something clicked in my head... how the hell was the Principal going to find me at the station? We did not come up with any meeting spot and I was told that the termial was huge! I started to worry a little... that was until I loooked around the bus and realized that I was literally the ONLY caucasion person there. Clearly the principal would have NO PROBLEM finding me. Once I arrived, Mr. Ryu (the principal) helped me with my bags and drove me directly over to his school (which he kept referring to as his "institution") so I could email my family and let them know I arrived alive. He then dropped me off at a motel which was literally 1 block away from the school, since the teacher I am replacing did not move out until this morning. I woke up around 6am (jetlagged) and decided to watch a movie on my laptop. My Ryu came to pick me up around 10am, we had a bite to eat at the school and then he dropped me off at my new home!! I can't really complain... I means yes, its small, but it pretty much has all the necessities (bed, stove, oven, washing machine, tv, microwave, fridge, etc..). However, the bathroom is a whole other domain that I haven't tackled yet... the shower head basically rests ontop of the toilet so the seat must stay down while I shower or its soaked! Ill let you know how that goes once I try it out...
Anyways I think I pretty much filled you in on everything so far... i'm going to start unpacking and then take a nap! I'mn still unsure of how I feel... there isn't one emotion that is surfacing more than the other... just a range of emotions I guess. I am really excited about what's to come though! Another foreign teacher at the school lives just above me so he is going to stop by later tonight and we may go out with some other foreigners... its thanksgiving here so big parties tonight!! Write more soon...

Signing off,

Gillian