adjusting

I'm finally starting to be a little less shell-shocked, I think.

When I was in Tokyo the first week, it seems like there was no English or Roman letters anywhere. After returning from Aizu, I was able to see that there were a lot more cues that I just hadn't been able to see.

I feel like I am already starting to be able to notice those cues here, which makes me feel a lot more confident in my ability to function reasonably well in this environment independently. I also am getting better at least with the consonants in Hangul, and while a lot of the time the vowels still throw me for a loop, I am getting closer to being able to figure stuff out.

My roommate here lived in the part of town where I will be teaching and living, and there is a good likelihood that I will even be in the same apartment she had while she lived there. I feel very lucky to be able to ask questions about the specific location and was able to see pictures of the neighborhood where my home-base school will be located.

I know this will sound kind of silly, but I never realized exactly how "American" I actually am until I was surrounded by so many Canadians. It seems that I somehow have a distinctive "accent" (or maybe I should just start working "eh?" into sentences more often...) and while I don't have a good way to explain it, we are pretty different. At least the guy from Atlanta makes my accent look positively neutral. :)