Orientation - Last Day, Then Off to Ulsan

Our last night at orientation started off with the closing ceremony, in which they showed us a music video composed of many of the pictures and videos they had taken over the course of the orientation. It told about everything we did during orientation in order like a story. It was really well done and people cheered everytime they saw someone they knew in a picture (so for every singe one).


Post by August 2014 EPIK Orientation, Daejeon.

Be sure to click "HD" if you watch it, it's way better!
(I'm not in it much except the group photos and way background shots, but if you're curious, you can see me at 1:41, 1:45, 5:17, and 6:28)


After the ceremony, we had our farewell dinner. And by dinner, I mean feast. There was more food that anyone could possibly eat and it was all delicious! Our class leaders, Suzie and Jun, went around to all our tables to take one last selfie with us.



The following morning we all left Daejeon. For me and the 4 other Ulsan-ites from class 1, we loaded our luggage onto one of the two Ulsan buses from the long line, ate a quick breakfast and then were the first ones to leave because we had the longest drive ahead of us: 4 hours. (although it would have been way shorter if we hadn't had to take like 4 stops)


When we arrived in Ulsan, the buses and luggage truck parked in a large parking lot next to the soccer stadium on the edge of the city. Here, we all stood in a circle for the next hour or so as our Korean co-teachers arrived to pick us up one by one. Each time a new teacher pulled up, everyone looked up full of anxiety, worry, and judgment: wondering if they would be the next to go. Each time a new teacher approached holding a sign with someone's name on it, everyone would yell out the name and look around to pick them out and send them off. I got lucky and didn't have to sit through this agony for too long; I was the 11th or 12th to get picked up (out of about 65).

My co-teacher came with one of the other English teachers from my school that was more confident in and spoke better English. I saw my name as soon as they held up the sign, but everyone still yelled out, "Nicole..... Nicole Mekker!" After an awkward handshake and greeting, my friends helped my load my suitcases into the back of their car. I gave some quick good-bye hugs, not knowing when I would see my friends next and drove away into my new life in Ulsan, South Korea.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Korean Wedding

Image
Two weeks before the event itself, the landlord of my apartment (whom I know very well and am friendly with) messaged me to invite my neighbor and I to his son's wedding! This surprising method of invitation was the first of many things I would learn about Korean weddings. Firstly, there are 2 types of weddings: "traditional" and "western". Traditional weddings are extremely rare, barely anyone opts to have them anymore, but many of its little practices still show through in the Korean interpretation of the "western" wedding. This is the wedding hall in which I attended the wedding. As you can see, it's very showy. The center aisle and the front area is actually a stage. These giant halls are rented for just the ceremony. A business or building that runs them usually has several and on a given day (especially Saturdays), there are usually many weddings going on at the same time, and 3-4 lined up in the same event hall for the same day, get
Read more

Korean Baseball Games

Image
Now that spring is here, one of the fantastic must-have experiences in Korea was a baseball game. And, wow, are they exciting! It's nothing like baseball games I've been to in America. First off, you're allowed to bring in whatever kind of beer and food you want - no having to settle for gross and ridiculously overpriced beer! Secondly is the ambiance. Each side has one of these stages with several dancers and an announcer. The home team gets to advertise theirs on the big screen, but each team is equally loud. They cheer and sing and dance through almost the ENTIRE game. When your team is up to bat, the whole crowd (on that side that is rooting for them) stands and chants, sings and does hand motions all lead by the announcer and the dancers. In this particular game our team, the LG Twins, was losing by quite a bit. But even in the last inning, no one failed to cheer their hearts out at the top of their lungs. If anything, they cheered LOUDER because we were l
Read more

Seoul Trick Eye Museum

Image
Our last day in Seoul for the long May weekend, we went to a couple places. The first, located in Hongdae, was the Trick Eye Museum. It's an amazingly fun place set up purely to take funny and awesome photographs due to the optical illusions painted in the space. Each work is accompanied by instructions and an example photo to show you how to take the best picture illusion. Here are some of the ones we took that worked out the best.   In addition to our purchase of a ticket to the Trick Eye Museum, we received a complementary admission to the ice museum next door. This place was smaller, but it was fun, too. It was SO COLD inside though (obviously it needed to be).
Read more