The Land of the Morning Calm

Hello! / 안녕하세요 (Annyeong Haseyo!)
It’s been only a week since my parents and Eddie dropped me off at the security line in the Louisville airport,


but it feels like I’ve been in Korea for a month at least. My days have been packed with immersion Korean classes (which means no questions in English), teaching and culture seminars, and a little bit of exploration of my place: Jungwon University in the city of Goesan, Chungcheongbuk-do province.

The 13-hour flight from Chicago to Seoul left at 1 a.m. central time and arrived at 4 a.m. Korea time, so with leaving Friday and arriving Sunday morning, Saturday was kind of left at the international date line. Flanked by Korean businessmen, I had no conversation partner during the few illuminated hours, and then the lights were dimmed and the windows were closed, and an eerie quiet overtook the inside of the plane. A flight attendant told me to put myself on Korea time while in the air, and this put bedtime seven hours away, so I spent a surreal while awake and alone in a cabin full of sleepers.


My first sight of Korea was the space station-like terminals of Incheon Airport appearing sluggishly out of the gloomy dawn. My fellow future teachers and I filled up two buses and settled in for the three-hour ride to Goesan, passing what seemed like endless high-rise apartments and low but jagged hills (also a rice paddy complemented by a billboard bearing a casino ad and Pierce Brosnan’s smiking face, haha).

Once we got to Jungwon, the 73 English teachers-in-training settled into our rooms before a full day; they wanted to get our jetlag over with all at once. I’ve never felt jetlag like that, either: wobbly legs and a feeling in my head like I was on a boat.


Between classes and catching up on sleep, I’ve been able to explore the beautiful new campus – Jungwon was built in the past three years and is almost entirely marble inside – make some awesome new friends, venture into town, and keep up with people on Skype.



There’s so much that I want to write about, but I know I can’t just transcribe my day-to-day life here. I’m planning on breaking my experiences down into sections on topics like teaching prep/Camp Fulbright (more on that later), my Korean class and teachers, Goesan’s five-day market, food (my favorite), and others as they arise. In the mean time, I'm uploading pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/eryan390/

Good night!