Day one Aug 27

How in the hell do Koreans sleep on hard surfaces? No matter how exhausted we are sleeping on the floor just sucks. After about 4.5 hours prone on the floor our nerves wake us up. It's Matt's first day of work! It's about 5am and we are getting ready. My next culture shock is the bathroom. Thank god we have a western style throne, which we have plenty of toilet paper for by the way, but the shower is quit different. There is no shower stall that incloses you. Instead it is right above the sink and it is open. You turn the sink on, switch to the shower head up three or four feet and there is a drain in the floor of the bathroom. It's actually not too bad. Surprise number one today, our toilet paper stayed dry during two showers.
We had no idea how we were going to get Matt  to work this morning. His job is about 4 to 5 miles away, so we left super early thinking we would just walk with our handy GPS. Surprise number two, a cab was going down our street at 6am and he stopped after my modest cheerleading move. Again thank you God. Can you believe our cab ride was only 5 dollars!! Thanks to the excellent taxi service here, Matt was tearfully early to work. No one was around, but the buildings were thankfully open. We found his teaching area and sat and waited.... and waited.... and waited some more.  Finally, we hear foot steps and surprise number three....... its's an American named Kevin from Phili. Oh and number four, he has COFFEE in his hands. - Cue the angel choir.
After showing us how to get coffee from the vending machines, we sit and talk. He is soooo helpful and encouraging. Matt felt so much better after talking with Kevin. He was so nervous and fidgety. Soon more staff arrived, and everyone spoke such beautiful English, maybe it was just me. Anyway, here is a little side note I have to gush over. For the first time, Matt introduces me as his Fiancée. The word was spoken aloud, in public, to a group of people. Ahhh it's the little things, yea know? Okay, moving on. Matt's first day was awesome. He was back in familiar academic territory surrounded by English speaking teachers that have all the answers. They were so nice to us and helped us out so much. Matt only had two classes today, none of which he taught. It seems the first week few show up for. They said this can be common the first week or so, due to add and drop out period. Just before his second class, his boss said to meet for 10 minutes and let them go. What a painful job right? We were hoping to go home though so we could process all we learned and of course, sleep (still hate jet lag). Surprise number five, instead of letting Matt and I go home, his Boss asks us to go to Ulsan (40 min bus ride to another city) to get his alien card. I still don't really understand what the hell this is, but apparently you need it to get a cell phone, bank account, and insurance. This was an adventure we were not to confident about. However, all went smoothly and Matt was able to apply for his card. Getting home was where our journey got interesting. We had to take cabs to and from the bus stops. We easily caught cabs and on our final cab ride back, we find out that the address for our complex does not work in the drivers GPS. He can't speak English and we can't speak Korean. Holy Crap!!! At this point our phones are about dead and only mine has enough juice left to show a map of our neighborhood. The driver is so patient and understanding. He glimpses the map and he again takes off at warp 10. I was so proud of Matt. He and the driver worked so hard and well trying to figure it out and communicate.  When we finally arrive, the driver tries to tell us something. We aren't sure what it is, but we are fairly sure the address that my supervisor wrote down was slightly wrong. SURPRISE!! We get home around 6pm and thanks to jet lag, pass out.