out of the house!

I slept for 11 hours last night! Wide awake at 2 AM again, but I popped some melatonin, got a drink, and watched a little tv and was able to get back to sleep. It was actually hard to get up at 7:30! Why up so early? I wasnt sure when I'd be picked up for my checkup, so I wanted to be sure I was ready. Turns out he didn't come till almost noon!

My HR guy, Mike, came to get me and the other new girl, Emily. He drove us to the hospital for our medical screening, which involved a short questionaire about diseases, vision check, blood and urine samples, and a chest xray. Cost for all this without insurance? w60,000, or less than $60. Now that I'm cleared to work, if I had to get the same checkup, it would cost me maybe w12,000. They did all the lab work then and there, and gave us certificates to declare us ready to work!

After the checkup, we went for lunch to a little restaurant which has locations all over Korea, didn't manage to retain the name. We had a big bowl of be bim bop to share, which is rice with chili sauce, assorted vegetables like bean sprouts and soy beans, and a fried egg on top. Chop it all up, stir it around, and everyone eats from the same bowl. It was delicious! We also had some sushi-like rolls containing cooked tuna, pickled radish, lotus root, carrot, and egg, and some steamed meat dumplings. And, of course, kimchi. Total cost for 3 people? w11,000. (Not even $10! But it's easier to think of 1,000 won as one dollar, you come out ahead that way, so even with rounding up it was less than $4 a person.) Also, you cannot tip at restaurants, they take it as an insult. It's like you're saying "Your food is not very good, and I can see you'll struggle for customers. Here, have some extra money." We ate with metal chopsticks except for the rice dish, which they use spoons for. Metal chopsticks take some getting used to! I guess they're a little easier than the lacquered ones at Chinese restaurants though, and you have the added bonus of being able to use them as a crude knife, like to chop and stir up the egg in the be bim bop.

Learned a few new phrases, so I'm up to 4 total! Aside from "hello" and "thank you" I can now say igo jesayo, or "I want this." You can say this and point to a picture of food, or someone else's plate, to tell the waiter what you want. And yogi yo means "here, please!" you can summon a waiter that way, and maybe tell a taxi that you're at the right place to be dropped off. I'm not 100% sure about that one. Also learned some etiquette: use both hands when you hand something to someone, or else use the right hand, with your left hand at your elbow. The youngest person (or least senior, since a boss can feasibly be younger than you) at the table passes out utensils and makes sure everyone has water, while the eldest will probably pay. And never leave your chopsticks in a bowl of rice, it's only done at graves and is tantamount to summoning ghosts. Expect a little old lady at the next table to come over, yank them out, and start yelling at you! (No, this did not actually happen, because none of us committed that particular breach of etiquette.)

After lunch we went back to English Village and set up our bank accounts, there is a little makeshift office on campus who got us started, and can help us do things like convert money or wire it elsewhere. We also went to the main staff office to get our fingerprints scanned, but the guy wasn't there. Your timecard is your fingerprint here! How great is that?!

Other fun innovations: to ride public transit, you load a little device with T-Money (no, it's not a rapper, it's transportation funds) and just zap it on buses, subways, or taxis. This device can be card, a cell phone charm, a ring, or even contained in a watch or an MP3 player!! There are buses that go right from English Village to Seoul, or to Ilsan, the nearest urban center, or to Gimcheon, the nearest not-quite-urban center. There's also a shuttle to Ilsan for free, to the subway stop there. The subway looks comparable to Manhattan's!

We did a little more walking around the village, Mike told us about a few other things, like where we have full staff meetings, where other staff live, etc. Our one daily meal provided is, it turns out, not limited to the cafeteria like I assumed. Instead, we get w80,000 per month, or about $4 a day towards a meal, direct deposited into our accounts. So we can by a meal ticket for the cafeteria for all-u-can-eat Korean and "English" food (they really do try, Mike says...) or else buy a meal in one of the little restaurants around the village. There's pizza and pasta, Chinese "Fusion" (many, many things claim to be fusion, which basically means "with Korean food integrated), burgers and fried chicken, etc. Or we can just keep the money and eat in our own apartments, although sometimes it's cheaper just to eat out.

We parted ways around 2:45, Emily and I are getting a ride with a guy named Greg to E-Mart tonight, Korea's version of K-Mart I guess. I promptly went for a walk outside the village, wandered down the main street and picked a direction at random. There's not a whole lot on the streets, we're pretty suburban. But it's beautiful around here: there's mountains all across the horizon, lots of greenery, and North Korea off in the distance!

I got lots of other information today from Mike, but maybe I'll wait to post about it until I see it for myself. Now to enjoy the rest of my free day until shopping time!