Arrived!

Well, I'm here. We were supposed to have internet in the apartment, but apparently the engineers need to register our computers, and they don't work on the weekends. So maybe Monday I will have internet.

I almost missed my connection in Detroit, because my flight out of Baltimore was delayed. I had to sprint from gate A2 to A54 in the Detroit airport, but somehow my luggage and I both made it. Then when I got through customs in Korea, there was no one waiting for me. She showed up after about half an hour of me standing there, trying to use a pay phone but not being able to use it, and then waiting again. I got on a bus with two other teachers, who are also my roommates (Sara and Rebekah), and got off the bus three hours later, in the dark, with no one to greet us again. Luckily Sara had rented a phone and had the coordinator's number, so we called him, and he showed up a little later.

The apartment itself is nice, and I'll post pictures when I have more reliable internet (for now, coffee shops are my saving grace). The other teachers all seem pretty cool, but the administration here is completely unprepared. They did admit as much though, so at least they're honest. But I was told I would be teaching a one week course in Astrobiology three times, which is what everyone else is doing for their own subject. But the director pulled me aside yesterday to tell me they actually expected me to teach one week on Astrobiology, one on Planetary Science, and one on Climate Change. I told him as politely as I could that that couldn't happen, but he just said I should do what I can. Which is literally almost nothing. So we'll see how all this goes. He also said that the kids would probably not be fluent at all, but we shouldn't tone it down for them, they would just catch up as best they could. It seems like there's been a huge lack of communication in general, but all the teachers are feeling the same. Many don't have lab supplies they were promised, so we're all sort of making lesson plans up on the fly.

We have an opening ceremony thing this afternoon to meet the parents and get introduced to the students, so we'll see how that goes. Hopefully I'll have more reliable internet starting tomorrow, but this coffee shop is only a ten minute walk from the apartment, so I can at least update from here, even if skyping might be awkward.