My first night/morning in Seoul!

I promised you an exciting blog, and here it is! I will start by saying that Korea is very colorful. When I was driving home from the airport through Seoul, there were so many neon blinking lights. I almost felt like I was in Vegas at first!!! EVERYTHING is in Korean. The only English words I saw on the way home were McDonalds and Outback Steakhouse. Under my apartment is a restaurant, and some other stores on the other side I think. My boss met me at the apartment and showed me all there is to know about it. It’s a little smaller than I imagined. They did leave my sheets and a comforter, which I first thought was ugly, until I realized it was reversible, and the other side isn’t so bad. The apartment was pretty dirty too. The bathroom was really gross. The shower has a glass door that was covered in scuminess. When I opened the fridge I was impressed that the school put in some OJ and water, until I looked on the shelf in the fridge, and saw a syringe.

I was freaked out, and knew I couldn’t eat or drink until I cleaned everything. Luckily all of the dishes, pots, pans, and utensils were all brand new and still in the packages. These are some of the new things I found in my kitchen:

As I was walking out of my apartment, I saw a boy at the elevator waiting for it to go down. I said “Anyohasayo” (Hello in Korean) and I guess he wasn’t buying the Korean accent because he said hello back in English! I told him I just moved in and told him my name was Kelly. He said his name was something real Korean that I can’t remember, but then he said, “you can call my Tiger though.” I almost lost it when he told me his English name was Tiger! So we were in the elevator and I had a map in my hand, and I asked him which way to Homever, and he said he was on his way anyway. I haven’t really had the entire Homever experience yet, and I think that will require its own blog later on. So Tiger showed me where cleaning supplies were, he got some fish and juice, and we walked back home. I’m so glad to have a friend who is a real life Korean, and so soon!!!
After I got my cleaning tools, I started tackeling the fridge, and found out that the syringe was just a part to one of those teeth whitening kits, the one where you fill a tray with a syringe of gel and put the tray in your mouth like a mouth guard. I spend a good long time cleaning the fridge and the bathroom. I took a shower this morning, and the pressure is good and the water is hot. They left m these shower sandals that are really goofy looking, ill show a picture of them later.
So last night when I went to bed, there were mobs of girls across the street camping out. Tiger said they do this so that in the morning they can see someone famous walking into the radio station. (At first Tiger said production, but it sounded like prostitution, but we cleared it up…) This morning about every 30-40 minutes the girls would start screaming. I can’t tell if they saw someone, or if it was a false alarm, because it only lasts a few seconds. I hope this doesn’t go on every weekend!!!
I have a TV in my room, but all the stations are in Korean. I was up late last night, cleaning and stuff, and I found one station that was in English! It looked to be some kind of soap opera, and I was cleaning and stuff, just listening to it, and then when I sat down to watch some of it, I realized it was soft porn!!! You know, the kind with the really cheesy storyline. Right before I went to sleep I did see that Law and Order was on. A girl I work with told me that there are more stations, and she would give me a list of them. Thank god!
This morning I started unpacking a bit more. I need to buy hangers today, and until I do I’m just going to keep my shirts in my suitcases. Everything else I think I have found a home for! I don’t have a night stand which is a MUST for me, but I’m thinking about trying to find some kind of hard surface to rest on my empty suitcases which fit into each other. It is the perfect height, and it would work out great because I need to find a place to keep them anyway! My bed is hard, really hard. It is almost like one of those display beds they use at Penny’s, the ones where when you go to sit on them, you realize it’s not a bed at all, but a box shaped like a bed. That’s almost how my bed is. I’m going to try and find a mattress pad today. This is my bed:

Last night at about 12:00 I got hungry. I also needed to find a phone card. I knew there was a 24/7 little store, like a 7/11 type of thing, underneath my building. I bought two things, in case I didn't like one. One had a picture of rice with this sauce over it, I figured that can’t be tooo bad. On the back of the package it showed the rice being boiled and the sauce being poured over the rice. The next thing I bought was like an oodles of noodles, but it was refrigerated and the pack picture showed empty pouch into bowl, pour in boiling water.

First I had the oodles of noodles. I opened it up, and there were three pouches: a brick of something, one was powder, and the last was sesame seeds and chopped up seaweed. I boiled the water in my new kettle (bottled water of course...) and poured the water in. It turned into this fishy water with fake fish floating in it. Nasty. The noodles themselves weren't so bad, but they were SO slimy and I couldn’t pick them up with the metal chop sticks!!! So I threw that all away and decided to just have the rice, and if I didn’t like the sauce I would just eat plain rice. I put on the boiling water, looked in the box, and it only had the sauce, you have to buy the rice separate. So that wasn’t going to work...... It's a good thing I packed pretzels and peanuts for the plane!!! I have a feeling things like that are going to annoy me the most. I can’t just go to the store and buy something, because A. I don’t really know what it is, and B. if there is no picture, I don’t know how to make it!!! And everything is written in characters, so it’s not like I can even use babble fish to look it up if I was desperate! Last night I got a Coke from a machine. The can was tiny, like a Red Bull can. It costs 700 Won, which is about 70 cents. I did see a half of a two liter bottle(It wasn’t just a one liter, it was tall like a two liter, but skinnier!) for 490 Won I think in Homever. So that is only about 49 cents I’m going to do some major shopping today, and hopefully with the help of the other teachers from my school, I can figure out what to eat!

I love you and miss you all. Patrick and Derek are going on the scavenger Hunt I set up for them in Portsmouth, and I’m really sad that I’ll be missing it. I miss just being able to pick up the phone and call someone, even though I didn’t do it often. Just knowing I can’t do it drives me nuts! I especially go crazy when I see someone talking on their cell phone and I don’t have my cell phone. “I AM NOTHING WITHOUT MY CELL PHONE!!!” That is a famous quote from me, hysterically crying in the back seat of my car after I lost my cell phone at a party Freshman year. Mr Kim, my boss, who is a Quiet Talker, said I can get a cell phone and bank account and wireless internet in about 20 days, after I have my alien card. He is taking me on Wednesday to have my medical exam. I THINK that is what he said, but his English wasn’t great, and he was talking soooo quiet I could barely understand anything he said!
OK, it is time for me to get ready to go out on a tour of the city with a girl from work. Expect another blog soon!!!