I arrived in Ulsan on Monday, 23 August at 21:00. My recruiter took me to my apartment where my director was waiting for me. He told me, via his son (he can't speak English) that his wife will pick me up the following morning to take me to the hospital to get the health check done. You need to get a health check done in order to get your Alien Registration card. I met Mr. Bek, the director, at the hospital at 13:00. To our disappointment the hospital didn't do health checks between 13:00 and 14:00 and we couldn't wait, because I needed to be at the school by 14:00.
We rescheduled for the next morning. After the we were finished at the hospital I thought we were going to the school, but no, Mr. Bek had other plans. We took a bus from the hospital and got off near the school, walked right past the school, around the block and into a Korean restaurant. My stomach turned a few times as we entered the restaurant. The smell of the Korean food wasn't very pleasant at that moment. We sat down on the ground at a table that was about 25cm high. After a few minutes Mr. Bek's wife and his niece joined us at the table. I met his niece the previous day on the way back from school. She is an exchange student in the USA and was visiting for the summer. Luckily she could speak English.
As they started to bring the food my stomach started to turn again. The stuff that was on the plates and in the bowls was not what I would call food. To be honest, and I'm not trying to be rude, I thought for a moment that I was in an episode of Fear Factor or Survivor. Seriously, it didn't look appetising at all. Mr. Bek's niece tried to explain to me what everything was, but since she was using the Korean names of the food, it didn't help at all. To my surprise the food didn't taste as bad as it looked. Some of it was actually tasteless. It was quite an experience though. After the we finished eating I went to the school to start teaching the day's classes.
The next day I went to school with a bus. Luckily I went with Zac, a foreign co-teacher at the school, and he showed me how to take a bus to the school. We took a bus back home again, so I was starting to figure out how the buses work.
The Friday night after work Zac and I went to Samsan to eat dinner at a restaurant with some of Zac's friends. I met quite a few foreigners that night. At about 2:30 I decided to go home, and because the buses stop running after 23:00, I had two options: take a taxi or walk back home. According to Zac taxi's can be quite expensive, since we were quite far from home. I decided that I needed to get to know the place and walking back home would be the perfect opportunity to do that. I just kept walking straight for an hour and a half, without resting, and eventually I got home at 4:00, soaking wet, because you sweat like a pig in this humidity. Into the apartment, into the shower and straight to bed. I slept until 14:00 that Saturday afternoon and stayed in bed until 15:00, pondering what to do for the remainder of the day.
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