Macgyver comes to Korea!: My new home

So....here I am, getting off of an airplane in South Korea, and jumping into a job teaching English to a bunch of high schoolers. I honestly never gave much thought to the idea of coming here to teach English, but after doing my Teaching English as a Foreign Language certificate (TEFL, for those in the know) in Prague, I quickly realized that this might be a good place to start off my stint in teaching English to people who want to know it. I actually knew little of Korea before coming here, except that they hosted the World Cup in 2002, they border a country run by a talking puppet (America....F*&% yeah!!!), and tons of people come here to teach English and sock away some cash. They must be onto something, amirite? Hence, here I am, in Korea, and waiting for some dude with my name written on a sign at the airport to take me to my new home for the next year.

(I must admit, I don't like bad for someone who just traveled for 20 hours)

Anyways, after changing into my Men In Black suit (all I was missing was my sunglasses and my device to wipe your memory clear of this blog), I met the dude with the sign waiting in the airport arrivals lobby. We traveled about 2.5 hours in traffic to a small outpost called Daesan, where I would be teaching public high school. Daesan is southwest of Seoul, and about twenty minutes from the (relatively) big city of Seosan, where the population is a whopping 150,000. I was met by one of my co-teachers who then took me around the school and introduced me to the top brass. OK, so this is where you learn about the name of the blog. I was being introduced to the VP of the school, and he's talking in Korean of course to everyone else around him. He's pointing at me and he seems very impressed by the cut of my jib, and then my co-teacher says, with a straight face, "You remind him of a famous actor from America. His name is Macgyver." I was floored. Speechless. What a compliment.

Thinking the day possibly couldn't get any better, I was taken to my apartment, fully furnished and paid for by the school. I expected a dump, to be honest, with my bed doubling as a desk, and my bathroom barely giving me enough room to take a shower. I couldn't have been more surprised. The place is the size of a respectable studio in DC or NYC, which is saying something. I always thought that the Koreans did more with less space, much like the rest of the countries in the world not named "America," but this was different. I guess when you get out of the larger cities here, they have more room to house native English speakers who are used to abnormally large beds and bathrooms with two sinks.

The coolest thing about the apartment though, by far, is not how big it is or how I have 78 channels of Korean television (I'll get to that later), but is the previous tenant. Now, I don't usually bestow sainthood on people too often, but this person did something that only an angel from heaven could do. He left me a box full of Amy's Macaroni and Cheese. That's right, the best organic mac and cheese that doesn't even require me to put butter in it. I don't know if this guy had to bolt out of here in the middle of the night and leave his most precious belongings, but I believe he has good karma coming to him in the near future due to this. He also left some other cool stuff, such as liquor and a set of weights, but those aren't as important as mac and cheese. The previous tenant was actually the guy whom I replaced at my high school, so maybe I'll track his address down and thank him 1,000 times over for his kindness. I almost feel like I should do something great now for someone, like that kid in "Pay it Forward." We'll see about that.

Check back here often for updates on my life as a teacher in Korea, and all the cultural mishaps that are bound to happen. For now, enjoy the pictures!