First post!

I can't believe it's allready been almost two weeks since I arrived in Korea. It seems like I landed just a few days ago, but at the same time I feel like I've been here forever. The day after I arrived, I spent the whole day (noon to 8:00) at my school, YBM ECC Hwajeong, observing my Tuesday classes. The following thre days I had a crash course of teacher training (8 hours a day) in Seoul which is about a 40 minute subway ride from Hwajeong. There was certainly no time for easing into the time change and culture shock. But somehow I survived my first few days and then thankfully had three days off to catch up on sleep and have my brain process everything about this foreign place I thrust myself into.
Friday night I met up with Jay and Jessie who live and work in Ilsan, Korea's "new city", which was built within the past 10 or 15 years and has a population of about half a million people (considered "the burbs" for Korea). It is host to Asia's largest manmade lake, a huge flashy shopping area called La Festa, lots of tall shiny apartment buildings and crazy Korean drivers. We walked near the lake, took pictures of giant spiders, ate greasy croquettes from a fake French bakery, and had a couple beers at a bar in La Festa.
Monday was our last free day so we decided to take the subway into Seoul and explore a bit. What we expected to be a day spent in Seoul ended up being a day under Seoul. Anguk Station, our destination to get off the subway, came upon us a bit sooner than I expected. Just as I realized I left my backpack on the shelf above my seat, the doors of line 3 closed and the train was gone. We went to an information booth and tried to communicate to the guy working there what had happened. He pointed in a direction for us to walk. After leaving the information booth, several different Korean men tried to show us where we were supposed to be going. One guy actually ended up walking us all the way to the other end of the station to show us to the Anguk security office. Once at the office, a man that worked there had me speak to a translator to tell her the situation. Jay, Jessie, and I waited for a couple hours on a leather sofa sipping free vending machine coffee, practicing our Hangul, and watching people move about the subway station on a wall of video screens. We finally got the call that they had found my bag! The only thing was that we would have to retrieve it at another security office on the last stop of line 3, about 20 stations away. So...back on the subway...lots of sitting...finally arrived at Suseo station. We walked around that station for another half hour or so until we finally found the Suseo security/lost and found office. The guy working there must have spent some time in the states because he greeted me with a "Hey, what's up man? Are you the American?", handed over my bag and said "take it easy, man". Despite what seemed like endless hours of waiting, I think the whole expereince turned out to be a great lesson of Korean culture. In the subway of one of the largest metropolitan cities in the world, not only was my bag not stolen, but there must have been close to ten different people throughout the day who played some part in helping me get it back.