A Less Than Warm Welcome

I expected my first days down in Busan to go a little smoother than my first days in Daejeon did. I mean, I understand Korea better as well as speaking some Korean. I didn't need nearly the amount of help I got the first time around.

Which is good, because I didn't get it.

After the less than fun subway ride (see below), I lugged my bags up the hill toward the university. It wasn't easy. My bags were weighed down with pretty much my entire life. When I got to the Foreign Language Center, I was welcomed...by no one. People knew I was coming, but they didn't bother to tell me exactly where to meet them.

I stopped the first white guy I saw and asked him if he was a professor. Low and behold, he was. He took me up to the offices and helped me to find a desk. He even was kind enough to take me to the meeting place, the location of which was nicely left from the directions.

The meeting was long and boring. Very little of it had anything to do with the new professors, but instead was mostly going over old business. Nearly a whole hour of the two hour meeting was spent explaining to the other teachers why two of their fold had been fired the previous semester. All of the other teachers seemed to already have at least a vague idea of the reasons behind their termination, but the stories continued anyway--as did some arguments about the details.

The arguments were my first impressions of the school, and they certainly weren't positive.

After the meeting, I caught the boss to ask him about the details, most importantly, where I was going to live. The answer was nowhere: they didn't have my apartment ready yet. After two months of living out of suitcases, this was the last thing I wanted to hear.

The entire staff was taken to dinner after the meeting. Up until working at the university, I had met VERY few vegetarians in Korea, but oddly, I now work with four. Because of this, the place we went to dinner was very vegetarian friendly, which I really appreciated. I also appreciated the free food, since I was pretty hungry.

After the meeting, I asked the boss about my temporary accommodations until my apartment was ready. There weren't any. Since technically I wasn't under contract until the next day, the school wasn't obligated to provide me with anything until the next day. That was a problem since I was short on cash. I let the director know this, and he was kind enough to give me a loan from the petty cash, which I appreciated (begrudgingly).

The hotel I stayed in was cramped, but comfortable enough. Before settling in, I went over to look at my new apartment (still half finished). It was trashed--completely trashed. I assumed this was because of the remodeling and shrugged it off. It would be better the next day when it was finished.

On the way out of the building, I was stopped by some other of the professors on the stoop. They were trying out their homemade beers and offered me some. I gladly accepted and chatted with them for a while. They were good people, really. Andy, a guy in his late 30s that had been in Korea for a while, was already drunk but quite a character. Peter and Tim, twin brothers, I found were the only people on staff my age (everyone else was over 30). They're great guys, and two of the four on staff vegetarians. They've been terribly helpful in that respect.

After sampling the beer, I headed up to work on my syllabus for the next day and then called it a night.

The next morning, I rushed around to make copies for my classes, then proceeded to teach as best I could. I found the students to be at a higher level than I expected, which meant I could do a lot more joking around and goofing off with them, which was nice. Classes went really well (and have since too), but that afternoon was a bear.

After completing my classes, I talked to my boss about the apartment situation. He found out that I should be able to move in at 4, so I resolved to have a good lunch, grab some groceries, and then move myself in.

I asked Tim, one of the twin vegetarian brothers, about local vegetarian places and he filled me in. The day was hot and the walk was long. I made it all the way over to the location of the restaurant, walked up and down the street about 10 times, and gave in to the heat. Instead, I just stopped into a nearby grocery and got a few things, then headed back to the university. By this time, it was about 3:45, so I headed over to my new apartment. Not only was it not done, it wasn't even started yet.

I had no place else to go, so I headed back to my office. I checked my email, looked up a few things online, then sat, and sat, and sat. It wasn't until almost 8 that my apartment was done. I lugged my baggage over and found that most of the mess wasn't from cleaning, that was just the apartment. A few points of note:

--The hotplate Korean-style stove had at least a half inch of old black grease under it (no exaggeration).
--The bathroom was terrible, the highlights of which include: yellow scum all over everything, spiderwebs covering every corner, a rusted out drain completely clogged with hair, and as a nice touch, no hot water (that wouldn't come for about 5 more days).
--The bedroom was dusty and the bed had no sheets. I had to borrow some since I didn't have any money to actually buy any.

Needless to say, I was pretty appalled. I mean, I'm not a terribly picky person, but I don't like living in filth. The least the could have done is have the place cleaned for me, and I let them know that.

After the bare minimum of cleaning, I unpacked a little and went to bed. At that point, I was ready to just give up and find a new job, but I stuck it out.

As I said, it was about 5 days before I got hot water. The simply wouldn't get the guy to come over and fix it, and to top it all off, EVERY person I talked to blamed the problem on me, saying I had fried the boiler. I hadn't touched anything since I got in, only asking for help from the maintenance man and getting an "I'm sorry" after a few tries. The water was never working.

After a lot of bitching and complaining to everyone I knew could do something about it, I finally got a response. In another odd twist, the response didn't come from MY complaining, but instead only came when the maintenance man came and complained for me. To get the boiler going again, a man came out, replaces a tiny part, and was on his way again.

The introduction of hot water allowed me to finally clean up the rest of the apartment, which doesn't look half-bad at the moment and will look even better once I get a few dollars to furnish the place with some chairs, some bedding, and maybe a shower curtain.

In any case, the rough spot seems to have ended, and now it's just easy teaching, nice views, and beach access from here out.