The First Week

Getting used to a new job is always stressful.
Changes in an organisation’s staff/routine are always stressful.
Moving is always stressful.
Jetlag is always stressful.
Culture shock is always stressful.
The inability to read, write, speak, or communicate in a local language is always stressful.

Suffice to say, my first week here can best be summed up in one word. That word is not “chesterfield.” To be honest, though, the culture shock and severe adjustment that I knew I would have to be making to a place about as different as can be from the one which I left was actually not nearly as uncomfortable as I had thought it would be.

Rather, it was certainly the new job and its own particular circumstances that left me struggling to catch my breath after my first full week here. First off, March 1 marks the beginning of a new school year in the academic calendar. Arriving one full week into classes (that is to say, one full week later than I should have), I was already slotted to be playing catch-up for the first little bit anyway. My fellow teachers who arrived 2 weeks prior to me had a full week of observation time in class wherein they watched the other teachers who had already been here for a year – picking up some useful tips of the trade in the meantime. Since I did not have this luxury, I was to observe these brand-new teachers in their first few weeks on this job, as well as oversee a few other veterans who have been at this for some months now. That’s all well and good.

Enter snag.

I already discussed the mind-bogglingly tiring first day I had here. I got a good night’s sleep on Monday evening but still woke up at around 4am because my body was still stuck in Montreal time. (Dude, like, what is time, anyway?) Tuesday was still tiring but luckily not much was expected of me beyond faithful observation/note-taking and not passing out mid-day. (The last of which proving the more difficult task). Wednesday morning, however, was a whole new ball game. Apparently one of the teachers who had been here for about 6 months just up and left in the middle of the night without any prior warning to the staff at the school. I met her during our one day overlap and she seemed like a fine person, but she had some sort of job offer or school offer or something of that nature waiting for her back in the US. The complete motives were never entirely clear to me, but regardless of the reasons her absence left a gaping wound in the school’s schedule.

Note – apparently this ‘midnight run’ (or so it’s called) tends to happen fairly frequently with ESL teaching contracts in this country because of the specifics of the employment offers. Most schools require you to reimburse your flight here if you cancel your contract within the first six months, thereby ‘encouraging’ the problem of not giving your employer prior notification of departure (since if you leave without telling them it is easier to avoid having to retroactively pay for this ticket). It’s an inherent flaw in the system but most people are kind enough to hack the duration of their contracts so it’s not as big of a problem as it could be.

Anyway, the gap left by the former teacher meant that by Wednesday afternoon I was up and teaching in front of my very own class with no training beyond the previous day-and-a-half’s worth of observation. This was a situation with which I was less-than-pleased but I realise that it was entirely circumstantial and was not the school’s fault in any way. (Indeed, they seemed quite apologetic to me let alone mega-stressed with the bureaucratic headaches themselves). As I knew instinctively and was told by pretty much everyone else there, it would only get easier over the course of the rest of the week and indeed it did. I am still adjusting slightly to the job but each day is definitely much easier than the last and I am finally falling into the ever-important daily routine.

If underprepared teaching wasn`t too great, at least one awesome thing happened on my first Wednesday here: my lost bag from Asiana finally appeared. Around 11pm (man it was a CHORE to last that long with the jetlag, let me tell you), I got a knock on the door of my apartment. On the landing stood a short, huffing, and extremely flushed Korean man carrying my 70lb bag in his aching arms. The beaming smile he flashed upon seeing I was home implied he was less happy to see that the bag had finally been delivered to its rightful owner than he was at the prospect of not having to lug the behemoth back down the 3 flights as he would have had to do had I been out. Everything in the bag was safe and accounted for; I`m now happy to report that I’ve finally got all the toiletries and fresh undies I could ever need. Sweet.

Back at school, one fantastic thing about my employer that I really had not expected when I came here was that it offers us teachers free lunch every day. It’s simple and fairly cheap traditional Korean-fare, but it’s decent and convenient and there is a quaint little rooftop terrace upon which we enjoy it daily. (Also, did I mention it’s free?) The odd thing about this rooftop (aside from the fact that it is completely carpeted in Astro-Turf) is that it offers us an open ear and eye to the sky. This wouldn’t be strange at all, but the fact that it is constantly being patrolled by imposing military helicopters these days makes us all feel just a little bit less at ease than we otherwise would be. In case you’re not up with world news, tensions along the most heavily-fortified border in the world have been mounting over the past few weeks in part because of a routine-ish annual drill being launched by the joint South Korean/American armed forces in the area right now. (But due in larger part to Kim-Jong-Il’s hilariously dangerous and deranged megalomania). In fact, the BBC front page headline from the day before I left Canada informed me that my flight here might be diverted slightly because of the turmoil, and indeed it was. I already feel like I’m living a part of history – I just hope it’s as a passive witness to the curious swan song of the cold war, not as one of the first civilian casualties in the world’s next hot one.

Neighbourhood views from the roof of my school

Safe to say the week was a crazy whirlwind of adjusting and generally flying by the seat of my pants in pretty much everything I did. Between catching up to the rocky new job, settling into my new apartment, and getting over the jetlag I didn’t have a second to spare to even think about petty culture shock. Perhaps the pleasures of adjusting to that aspect of Asia are still to come, but so far everything I encounter is little more offensive than ‘novel’ or ‘illogical’. Plenty of time to get enraged remains, though.

NB. I’d just like to say that I truly appreciate and eagerly anticipate all of your comments on all of my posts. Although I do not respond to them directly, please know that it is great to hear back from all of you. I will try to answer as many of the post-specific questions as possible in this and future updates . Otherwise I just give a heartfelt thanks and send my best to everyone.