First Post in Daegu

So...for those of you curious about how life is here in Daegu, South Korea, or just about me in general, I'm hoping to post weekly what's going on here. I suppose I should start with what exactly I'm doing and how I got here, and then I'll describe my work and apartment.

Around March I decided I'd like to do something a little different for this school year, so I looked at a number of different schools around the world. I got in contact with the Wall Street Institute in South Korea, and after a few emails and a phone call, they decided that I could come once the school year finished out. After months of gathering documents and calling consulates and mailing paperwork, I finally got a Korean visa and headed off to Korea. I arrived in Daegu on Tuesday, July 29.

In addition to providing the airfare and visa, the institute arranged my apartment. The apartment came sparsely furnished: it had a bed, a wardrobe, a washing machine, and a fridge. Last night, though, I was very blessed. A friend of mine that Kris introduced to me via email came by my work and told me that her neighbor was getting rid of some furniture, so she had her brother-in-law and another friend load it into a van and drive it to my apartment, and when I got home last night, it was there for me. God has been taking care of me. This same friend and her sister also drove me to the only Costco in the area, and I was able to get some essentials for the place. I'm still lacking some pots and pans, but I'm not in a hurry for those things. Anyhow, the apartment is about 15 minutes walking distance from my school. I walk through a pet store district, past an Outback Steakhouse, and then underneath an intersection to get there. Amazingly, the underneath the intersection is a massive underground mall, so my daily walk to a from work is quite varied.

My job is fantastic--better than I could have hoped. I work for the Wall Street Institute, a company that caters to adults needing English for work and school. Many students here are also enrolled in nearby universities, and the others are business people who work with foreigners. Here's how our system works. A new student comes in and tests to see what level (1-48) they are in English. Once that is determined, they are given a workbook and told to do some corresponding multimedia lessons in the computer lab. It generally takes a student two weeks to do all the computer and workbook lessons, at which point they schedule a class with a teacher (me or one of the other five teachers here) who then check their fluency and abilities with the vocabulary and grammar they were supposed to have learned in that lesson. So my job on a day-today basis is to ensure that the students are progressing well on their lessons, and when no one needs help, to just talk with them about whatever. The school also hosts social clubs: fun activities that assist in learning different cultural quirks or idiomatic expressions. The other teachers are quite fun and friendly. Two are Canadian, two American, and the last British.

I think there are a million more things I could write, but I'll leave it at that for now. I'll hopefully post more in the next few days. Oh, and here's a link to my first photos, if you aren't facebook compatible. http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=46357&l=622dc&id=561241295