Now I Know How Mr. Ed Felt

24 August 2012

Today we awoke at 5 am to meet everyone in the lobby by 6:30 to get on a bus (or “coach” as our recruiter calls it; he's British), and head over to the Education Center in Cheonan for orientation.  We slept through the entire night, which was great, but 5 am is still early in any time zone, in my opinion.  Our group had grown in number from the last time we were all together after a few later arrivals, but we finally accounted for everyone and set out.  There is a lot of building going on in Korea, as we saw on the bus ride.  The high rises here are huge, as big as any in Manhattan.  It’s so funny to see them situated in the middle of trees on the side of mountains.  We finally got to Cheonan, dropped our things at the Education Center and left for the hospital for our medical checks.  We waited for at least an hour to begin and then they checked our eye sight, height and weight, blood pressure, and then measured our bust lines.  Just the bust line, though, nothing else.  I stood there, waiting for them to measure my waist and hips, like they do when taking measurements for costumes, but apparently only the bust line is important.  Sounds like a lot of guys I know.  Then we had to get x-rays to screen for TB.  Also they gave us a dental check, withdrew blood, and checked our urine for drugs.  I felt somewhat like a horse up for auction, especially when they were checking my teeth.  We were finished after that although some people had to go back to have their blood pressure checked again as it was too high, and no wonder with all the poking and prodding.  Fairly stressful, eh?  (I think I've been hanging around the Canadians too much.)  After that, we all loaded back up on the bus and took off for the education center.

We hadn’t eaten since the night before and now it was around 1 in the afternoon, so when they said lunch was being served in the cafeteria, we all pounced on the opportunity.  Sure enough, they had rice, kim chi, and other Korean culinary items.  I tried a little bit of everything.  Still not used to the local cuisine, though.  Hopefully, I will start developing  a taste for it.  After lunch, we began a plethora of meetings and training sessions that lasted until around 8 pm, with breaks for dinner and restroom.  At about 9:30, we both fell into bed, once again exhausted after a VERY long day.

P.S.  Korea is Gorgeous!

At the Education Center in Cheonan. Looks like a putting green, but it's just regular grass.