Rost in Transration

My sincere apologies for only posting now. We haven’t had internet access besides the ‘PC Bang’ across the street, so my chances have been limited. Excuse the extremely long post.

I started this blog as a way to share our experiences with people we know, and anyone interested in reading it. So I think it’s important that I be completely honest about what’s happening.

The last few days have been the most difficult I’ve ever had. As I said before, we were feeling the stresses of culture shock and being so far away from home when we were in Seoul, but we were dealing with it. When we arrived in Daegu, we were excited. Carmen met with the vice-principal of her school, as well as some other important old men and her co-teacher, Sun. After the meeting, Sun brought us to our apartment. What we were expecting, and told to expect, was a clean, furnished, warm home. What we saw was an empty, dirty, cold place. There were two small twin beds, and nothing else. No table, no chairs, no couch, no dishes and no cooking utensils. These are all things that are to be provided when a foreign teacher arrives. Panic started to set in. Check that. Panic instantly overwhelmed us. We had nothing – and no way to contact anyone. For Carmen and me this would seem manageable, but we have an 11 month old daughter to worry about. Sun realized we were worried and confused and offered to take us to Home Plus, which is like a five-story Wal-Mart. We were also told that we couldn’t get phone or internet until we received our Alien Registration Card (ARC), a process they said could take two weeks. Also, pay phones are basically non-existent here so that’s not an option. So we were in Daegu with an empty apartment, no way to make food, a baby that had slept a total of about 15 hours in three days and absolutely no way to contact anyone. On top of all this, every time we get in a vehicle, Cate throws up from car-sickness; something that’s never happened before.

We made it through the evening after buying a few things at Home-Plus, and after Sun let us use her home phone to call our families. We woke up the next morning thinking we’d made the biggest mistake of our lives, and also angry at the situation we’d been put in. How could Carmen’s recruiting agency let this happen, and how could her school think it was okay? The school had made no plans to help us settle in, but in a normal situation, the school prepares everything for you including setting up lines of communication (phone, internet etc.), as it would be impossible for us to do anything as we don’t speak the language and don’t know how to find the things we need. On Wednesday Sun took us to get ARCs and we met with Carmen’s principal and some of the staff. We came home for lunch and talked about whether or not we should stay. We were prepared for culture shock and being homesick. We weren’t prepared for complete abandonment, which is what our situation felt like. Carmen went back to school and I, with Cate, found a PC Bang and called my parents on Skype. We talked about what was happening and I was able to start to think clearly and rationally. We had spoken with the recruiting agent in Daegu and he said they were doing everything they could to make the situation better. He would arrange for furniture to be brought and would help us arrange for a phone. On my way home from the PC Bang I just thought about positive things, and looked around at how fascinating our neighborhood is. I stopped at the corner market and tried to speak a little Korean with the cashier, bought a can of Coke and some Shin-Raman and strolled Cate home. I was feeling alright. Carmen felt the same way when she got home from work. We talked through our problems and began to just live in the moment and realize things would eventually fall into place.

On Friday Carmen’s vice-principal bought us some furniture, and now we’re just waiting for a couch. We met a Canadian couple in our building and they’ve let us use their phone and are showing us around the area – where to eat, where to shop and all that. Carmen really likes her job so far, and on Monday will be teaching the Korean teachers some Beatles tunes (story to follow). All in all we’re at about an 80/20 ratio of positive to negative feelings. Posts will be shorter from now on. I promise. View all our photos at Flickr, just follow the link in the right sidebar.

- David