Seoul

Seoul

Monday, November 16, 2009

How it all Began!

In previous posts you might have remembered us mentioning how exhausting, confusing, and at times terrible our first couple weeks in Korea were. We would now like to explain these first weeks in graphic uncensored detail, just so you can share a bit of our pain.

Lets start from the beginning....After 14 hours of flying we landed in Korea. At this point we only had one hard fact regarding what was awaiting us upon arrival: a van from our school was going to pick us up at the airport and take us to a hotel. However, once we got through customs and the swine flu check we sadly realized there was no such van waiting for us. We had no phone and there were no pay phones. Thankfully, a nice Korean man let me borrow his cell phone and I called the one Korean number I had brought with me, that of an employee at Chungdahm headquarters.

She proceeded to tell me that we needed to take an hour bus ride from the airport to a bus depot, and that our mysterious van would be awaiting us. So, carrying our 8 pieces of luggage through Incheon airport we found the appropriate bus and actually made it to our hotel without much more incident.

Upon arrival at the quite plush Hotel Prima (this is when we actually learned we would be staying at the same hotel together) we were given the keys to our room, along with a pair of thermometers and complementary Chungdahm coffee mugs. Not knowing what the hell the temperature checkers were for, we gladly accepted them, found some dinner, and promptly passed out on our extra stiff bed.


Once morning arrived we finally received an email detailing the course of events for the next week and a half. We already knew that our training didn't start for another five days, but we had no idea what was happening during the interim. We now found out that we were technically in "quarantine," which meant that we were strongly discouraged from leaving the hotel and had to email our body temperature twice daily to Chungdahm headquarters. Since the hotel was the only place we knew where to get internet it was Chungdahm's way of insuring we couldn't venture far from the hotel.


Thus, we spent the next five days connected to the hotel by a moderate leash and spent most of our time discovering the immediate surrounding area, sleeping and waking up at odd hours, and trying to hunt down some semblance of a western-style breakfast. It wasn't until over a week later that we learned our hotel had a massive and delicious free breakfast buffet every morning. (This fact apparently got lost in translation.) Therefore, most days we spent our breakfast time walking nearly a mile in the rain to Dunkin Donuts, spending almost $20 on shakes in the hotel lounge, or buying orange juice and pastries from 7-11.


After five days of aimlessly milling about we started training. Training was a week long event from 9:00am to a little before 5:00pm every day. Once back at the hotel after training we usually had to do about 3-5 hours of studying and prepping to prepare for the following day. The actual training day consisted of hours of mindless structural memorization and unrealistic mock classroom situations, followed by intensely stressful periods of practice teaching and evaluations. All of this was endured on about 5-6 hours of sleep as well. But I guess we should have expected nothing less considering Chungdahm condenses what would be a year-long program in the U.S. to a mere week. Oh, and did I mention we had to wear stifling face masks the entire time and get our temperature checked multiple times, along with continued hand sanitizing.


After our final day of training, which consisted of grammar tests and a final extensive mock teaching period we were finally told we had passed training and were officially Chungdahm instructors. Literally minutes after hearing the news we, along with all our belongings, were jammed into a cab and sent across town to our school, even though the cab driver wasn't exactly sure where he was going, but somehow it worked out. Exhausted, semi-delusional, and still extremely nervous we arrived at the front steps of our school. We were immediately carted inside, and given the introduction to at least 20 people. Then, we were whisked away again by two Koreans we didn't know, and who didn't really speak English, to our temporary apartment. (Which was just a small room with nothing inside except a bathroom.) We dropped off our bags and then were told that it was time to have dinner with the owner of our school.

Stomachs still sensitive from the Korean food we'd been eating all week, we made small talk and had what would have been a quite delicious meal of barbecued meat, if we only had the energy and stomachs to enjoy it. I just worked on keeping my composure, eating all the food on my plate, and trying not to look unappreciative or foolish in front of my new boss.

After dinner we were dropped off again at our room with no bed, no food, no toilet paper, no blankets, and no idea what was going to happen next. All we knew was that we started work in two days. Thank god our friend Dan was working at the school. He came over and gave us pads to sleep on and blankets, showed us where to get food and toilet paper, and took us out to breakfast the next day. If we didn't have him I don't know what would have happened!

And as they say, the rest is history. We have now been technically teaching for almost 4 months and we are about to start a new term. Starting in December we'll be teaching some of the highest levels Chungdahm has to offer, so we'll see how we like it. Those first few weeks in Korea were extremely tiring and difficult and something we never want to repeat again. But everything worked out well in the end. Still, every Monday Leslie and I pray for those poor souls who are about to embark on their training process and have no idea what lies ahead!

2 comments:

  1. Interesting experiences yawl had. Mine was different, of course. I had to share a room with this eccentric Irish dude who kept me up all night bitching about everything and who almost got fired during training. I literally got like no sleep when I had to stay and sleep like 1 foot away from him. Training was training, but I trained with no one else, so it was just me and the instructors the whole time talking about sports and shit. After training was laborious! I finished like at 1pm on Friday and was then told to go all the way back to Gangnam and wait for a car to take me to Seodaemun. The only problem was I had to wait until 7pm! I had to kill so much time, walking around with my head cut off, and still could not go anywhere to sleep since we had to checkout in the morning that day. Once the dude showed up, I went through the same process as yawl with the dinner with Michelle and everything. I had it easy though because they went and bought a yo and water for me. The next day was this excursion of everyone to the woods to play sports, get drunk and eat. I can't really relate to those that have a lot of problems with CDI because I really haven't had any bad experiences. I disagree with a few policies, but I can still come to work and focus on the students, which matter the most to me. Yawl will have fun teaching Eagle and Alba. I prefer Mega and Par the most though, but I hate Giga and Bridie. Yawl should definitely check out Seoraksan and Sokcho sometime before it starts snowing. It's a good day trip!

    ReplyDelete
  2. This was the most detailed summary I've read about the CDI training hell week. Thanks! Do you know if things have changed over the years? This is the first time I've heard of the quarantine process...though that would definitely help the jet lag period.

    ReplyDelete

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