Concerning the real day one, or The Longest Thursday of My Life

In the previous post, I talked about the day before the day I discussed as if that were the real day one. This day was Saturday.

It's hard to call this an actual day, as it involved me landing in Inchon at that wee hours of the morning having already lost a day from crossing the international dateline. We then drove the two and a half hours to Chuncheon, passing through Seoul and some marvelous country side. The whole day was a blur for the most part as I had only slept for a few hours on the plane (which means only about 3-4 hours of sleep over a period of two days by the time I was finished on Saturday. Really, it felt like it was a part of Thursday, the day I left St. Louis on a delayed flight to LAX. It was all very surreal. So, this post will concern the longest Thursday of my life.

As I said, we arrived in the wee hours of the morning (around 4:30 am) and it took us a couple of hours to get our bags, get through customs, and make sure everyone had arrived. We were given a little time to mill around the airport and get some breakfast if we wanted (our first meal would be lunch in about 6 hours, and our last meal had been 3 hours before on the plane) and exchange some currency. I skipped the breakfast, opting for the snack they promised on the ride over, which turned out to include some Nutrigrain bars and those Salty Penut bars from Nature's Valley. American food to ease our transition? Probably not, as we had also had shrimp flavored chips.

Upon arriving, we got our room assignments, packets of information with insurance cards, nametags, our weekly spending allowance (35,000 won. I'm rolling in the dough!) and our very own number for the sake of ease in taking attendance. (We shout our numbers in order whereever we assemble, as campers sometimes do at camp, though I usually avoided this as a counselor if possible because, as is happening here, no one pays close enough attention to make it a smooth process.) As I said in a previous entry, I have a roommate, Ray, who wants to find a church in the area as well and knows how to survive in Korea using actual Korean instead of speaking English with a plethora of hand gestures as I do, which by all accounts may be offensive. (I really have no idea, though I'm trying to avoid pointing with my finger. Apparently this is always offensive.)

We were then given instruction on what Fulbright would be like, which was basically a three hour lecture on schedules and extracurricular activities, etc. so we could get through Sunday easily enough. One of the more interesting points on the lecture, though, was that we can't flush toilet paper here. The toilets don't have enough pressure apparently, or wide enough pipes, and can easily be clogged. Instead, we are to place our used t.p. in a little bucket beside the toilet. This is cleaned out eventually, though I'm not sure exactly on what kind of regular basis. As one of the presenters yesterday said, it messes up your rhythm, and I've already had to pull a piece out of the bowl for rhythm's sake. We were also instructed on how to do the most formal bows (insa, in Korean) so we could perform these for our language instructers. We were also told that it would be appropriate for us to do this in the halls as well as a sign of respect (they live in the dorms with us), though we are to refrain from performing full insa in the bathrooms as they would feel obliged to return the curtosy (though not bowing as deep as we are), and it could be awkward if they are brushing their teeth (it requires both hands at the side), or, I imagine, during other bathroom occassions, though these were not mentioned by the orientation team leaders.

I had dinner and turned in around 7:00. This was not necessarily good jet lag wise, but I couldn't stay up any longer. It was, after all, the longest Thursday of my life.