The First Day in Nowon-Gu

As I write this, I'm at my new school sitting in the most posh chair I've ever sat in. As I lean back, the two back panels fold inward, creating firm back support while simultaneously massaging my lower lumbar. I will be sad to leave this chair next July.

Yesterday, after the final farewell dinner at the orientation site, I boarded a bus bound for Nowon-gu (or, as I prefer, Nowhere-gu - gu means district) located as far North-East in Seoul as you can get. That is, I might end up in the DMZ by mistake someday.

There were about 18 teachers on my bus that were headed to Nowon-gu and neighboring Dobong-gu (originally, the same gu but then they divided in to two a few years ago). There was a central meeting spot where our co-teachers would come, pick us up, and then take us to our schools and apartments. On my bus, there was another teacher (Korean-American) named Sarah Yun. I'm sure you can imagine where this story is going.

When we arrived at the bus stop, I heard them calling for a 'Sara(h)' but when the other Sarah answered the call, I assumed she had double checked and made sure she was being picked up by the right teacher. So I waited. Said goodbye to Kelly when she was picked up by her teacher. Ad waited. And finally the chief-teacher in charge asked me what my name was and what school I was going to and realized the mistake. We all laughed over the similarities and my co-teacher came back to collect me and take me to my new office-tel (studio apartment).

After being showed around my apartment - this included a detailed explanation of how every light switch worked. Two of my new co-teachers took me out for galbi for dinner. (Let's just say, that I'm going back to the same restaurant again tonight.) After dinner, I was walking back down the street with the younger of the two co-teachers, the other having taken her daughter home, when I look up and see another wai-gook (foreigner) walking down the street - it was Kelly! We found out that we actually live right across the street from each other. With this good news, we headed back to our apartments, my co-teacher heading to the subway, and did respective showings of our new homes.