Arrival in Korea

I made it here safely. It was a long trip but I was a little delusional due to sleep deprivation so my memory of it isn't too horrible. I left Duluth at 6am and it took about 2 hours to get to Detroit where I had a 4 hour layover before heading to Tokyo. The flight was listed as 13.5 hours but we made it in a mere 12 hours of which I was able to sleep 4 or so. I only had to wait about an hour and a half in Tokyo before heading off for the last leg to my final destination, Busan. Ironically, we left the land of the rising sun just after dusk. It was cloudy leaving Tokyo, but had cleared up by the time we were approaching Busan. I'm really glad the skies were clear because it was beautiful coming into the city. It is Korea's largest port and largest coastal city. There is a ton of development and lights everywhere with beautiful lit bridges and traffic. Flying over it seemed to just keep going and going, we could have been in a holding pattern, but I'm pretty sure it is actually just that big. It was really an amazing view that I will not forget. By the time I landed I had been traveling for about 24 hours.

I was told that a man was to meet me at the airport and pick me up to go meet with my school's director. After passing through customs and picking up my luggage I headed out and looked for someone holding a sign with my name on it. I found a man who had a sign that said:

JAMES BLOD
-----GELT

I didn't recall being affiliated with any GELT organization, but I figured that the first part was too similar to my name for this not to be the right guy. I was told that he wouldn't speak English, so there was no real way to confirm that this was my man but it seemed right so I went with him. After riding in the back of the van and looking at the sign sitting in the passenger seat for a while I finally realized that the driver had just put my last name on two lines and misspelled it.
The traffic was crazy and it took us about 45 minutes to drive from the airport to our first destination, which I thought would be the school. Instead, we went somewhere else where a package was waiting for me. Inside was my cell phone that my recruiter had procured for me. I had been told by other people at my school that it was a common practice for the new teachers to live in a motel for the first week or two so I was expecting that we would be heading to a motel. We went to an underground parking garage and waited around for about 5 minutes while the driver talked to people on his cell phone. It seemed like we were in the right place and just waiting for our contact.

A guy named Kenneth, who apparently is a Korean guy who speaks English and works at my school, came along with a guy I happen to already know, Joel. (Joel is a cousin of one of my Carleton friends and we all lived together in Minneapolis after we graduated, so I had met him a couple times back home; coincidentally, we are both now working at the same school and living in adjacent buildings.) So we get in the elevator and go up to floor 9. We stop at one of the first doors near the elevators room 909--Joel told me it's easy to remember because of the Beatles song--and head inside. I was still under the impression that it was my motel room, but for whatever reason I was placed in my actual room right away. It was bigger than I expected and a little more modern. Unfortunately, it wasn't totally clean. I'm not sure If I would have really noticed if I didn't have that practice deep-cleaning dorm rooms last Summer. My room is still quite messy, as I don't have any hangers, But I have a couple photos of it and will post some more once I actually get settled in.