Let the dispatches from South Korea begin!

I left the US last Sunday morning, and arrived in Korea on Monday evening. I’m back in Daegu – the city where I’ve lived and worked during each of my previous trips to the peninsula – and I’m working at the same place I worked from 2006-2007: the school owned by my childhood friend Gwen and her Korean husband. I started teaching on Wednesday, although just one class. My full schedule starts this coming Monday. (Not many of the kids I taught last time are still at the school, but the ones who are have grown so much; all the little kids have become teenagers in my absence, and it’s really kind of amazing.)

Things are a little different this time. For starters, Gwen currently isn’t working because she has a six month old baby! I’m really not a big on babies at all, but I think Sahn is really quite cute. Take a look:

I’ve been staying at Gwen’s place since my arrival, although I’ll be moving into my own apartment tomorrow. Gwen and her family live in a brand new, huge, hyper-modern highrise complex located a five minute walk from the school.

This is the view from Gwen's apartment at night.

Gwen’s apartment is actually located in the place where the old, abandoned Banyawol Train Station used to be. The train tracks have been torn up (and the rail bed is now home to numerous private vegetable gardens), and the old train station has apparently been moved a mile or so down the road, where it is now the centerpiece of a new park. I have yet to see it, but given my obsession with old trains, old train stations, and anything that might possibly be termed “ghost train” you can bet that I will!

Rail-bed veggie garden

Our neighborhood is named Banyawol, and it’s located near the eastern edge of Daegu. In 2006-2007, Banyawol was a sleepy backwater, so much so that I even created a flickr set entitled Decay in Banyawol. Since I’ve been gone, Gwen’s new apartment complex isn’t the only one to have popped up. I haven’t taken any pictures yet, but an area that in 2006-2007 was nothing more than an empty field has sprouted numerous gigantic apartment complexes home to something like 4000 new apartments… AND one of the biggest shopping plazas in all of Daegu.

Another difference between this trip and my last one is that the school now employs three foreign (ie native English speaking) teachers, and once Gwen comes back from maternity leave there will be four of us. Last time Gwen and I were the only foreign teachers. Her school has doubled in size (if not tripled) in my absence, and they’ve expanded their facility as well. Of the other two foreign teachers employed by the school, one has been there for nearly two years now… but the other the day after I did, AND he’s my cousin, George!

I won’t be living in the same place where I lived the last time I was here – the villa apartment in the four-apartment complex owned by the Yu family – instead, George will be living there. The two foreign teachers who George and I are replacing are a couple, and they had lived in the Yus’ apartment. They left this morning, and today the place is being cleaned and re-wallpapered. George will get to move in tomorrow morning. Here’s what his place looks like from the outside:

(He'll be living on the second floor)

Meanwhile, I will be living in another villa apartment just down the block. This is what it looks like from the outside:

(I'll be living on the second floor.)

That’s pretty much it for now. Stay tuned – you know I’ll keep you posted!