Sara Teacha

After a fairly uncomfortable night's sleep (my bed is only marginally more comfortable than the hard floor), I started my first day at Seongan Elementary! I was warned that I would be introducing myself on the morning broadcast, so that was first on the agenda. Jenn brought me to the broadcasting room and once we walked in, we were greeted by the 10 or so students. Bow included! I don't think I'll ever get used to students bowing as they say hello to me. The broadcast went alright, considering the paragraph or so I prepared to say got cut to about 2 sentences and a malfunctioning microphone to boot. Jenn brought me up to the English office, where I met Joy and Soo, who also teach English. I will be co-teaching 5th grade with Joy, and Soo and I run the after school programs. They are both super sweet ladies! Jenn then said I could sit at my desk. So I did that. The rest of the day. Korea has something called "desk warming," where you literally sit at your desk and just warm the chair. I caught up on my blog and did some facebook chat, since I had yet to be informed on what I should be preparing. At one point, Jenn came in and said the 6th grade class wanted to meet me NOW so I went with her to the classroom, all the while wracking my brain as to what to say to the students. She pushed me in front of the class and said to introduce myself. Once I began talking, Jenn booked it out of the room. Great. I asked what the students wanted to know about me, after a brief introduction, but ended up pulling some Gangnam Style dancing. We'll see how effective it was. I'll start teaching these students on Monday, so hopefully it goes better. I ate lunch with Soo, and she's absolutely wonderful! She's been extremely helpful throughout my first few days at school. Great English, super friendly.  I brought ramen for lunch (wahoo!) since Jenn told me to bring my own, but Soo didn't have it. The school lunch was surprisingly delicious! It had rice (of course), a spicy tofu dish, a really tasty fish soup, and lots of kimchi! Soo was surprised I liked it, as apparently everyone thinks it's awful. I guess I'm easy to please.

Later on in the day, during what would be the 'after school' hours, 3 adorable girls came in my library to visit! They've visited me every day so far, and their English is wonderful! We've chatted about the weather, k-pop artists, and their hobbies. One girl in particular, Bonnie, is especially bubbly and friendly. She's hilarious! Every time I see her in the hallway, she greets me and we end up chatting about what's going on in school.

My 3 daily visitors :) Bonnie is in the green! 

Jenn and I left school a bit early to apply for my Alien Registration Card, and open my bank account. This was the first time I really got to experience main Ulsan. Traffic was NUTS, and Jenn is a crazy driver! We made it to the Immigration office and ran into many fellow EPIKers doing the same thing! It was nice to see familiar faces, even though it had only been 24 hours! My ARC is on the way! (Jenn is my hero!) We then headed to KEB, the Korea Exchange Bank, to open my account. It appeared to be closed, but Jenn was determined it shouldn't have been. She made many, many phone calls to get us in. Meanwhile, I met another foreigner (shout out to David!) trying to get in the bank so we chatted for awhile. It was nice to run into another foreigner going through the same process. He came over with Footprints recruiting, and mentioned there were about 25 other newbies that came over with him. Hopefully I can meet some of them soon and make more connections! Jenn got us in some sketchy back door, but I have a Korean bank account! (Again, Jenn is my hero!!) If the day weren't long enough, we headed to Home Plus to buy a few more groceries to get me by, since the convenience store close to me doesn't carry much. Jenn and I had dinner at the food court (bibimbap! yum!) then did some shopping. I ended up getting suckered into a few new tops, since I stupidly underestimated the amount of short sleeve teaching shirts I'd need. Very happy with my 5 shirts, and they actually fit me! Take that, Korean sizes! Some of my grocery items included bananas (thank god for fruit!), noodles and spaghetti sauce, and a 6 dollar jar of Skippy. Ouch.

Long, long first full day in Ulsan. Many more to come :)