The Arrival Store

The Arrival Store will get you what you need as soon as you land in Korea. I swear you won't regret it. (source)

If you're about to embark on this crazy journey halfway around the globe to teach in Korea, then I could not recommend this site enough (and no, I'm not being paid). I experienced how incredibly without means people can get when they don't have any way to contact people except some unreliable wifi network. I'm still the only one with a phone in my orientation group of 16 and someone lost contact with us so I had to call our manager to call the police... Anyway, big scare, and these situations make you realise how incredibly dangerous the world can be without any means to contact people.

So here's how The Arrival Store works: you choose the kind of package you want (check; your school might have a deal with them), pay, and then when you get to Incheon airport, you pick up your package at Hanjin Express which is in the airport itself. When you exit customs, it's basically all the way to your far left. Don't make the same mistake I did because I went right and almost missed my flight out of Gimpo because 1) I went to the right instead, 2) Hanjin Express was super busy, and 3) the limousine bus took its sweet time arriving. So. Left you go.

What you're picking up at Incheon is your cellphone and assorted gadgets, a transformer, some adaptors, and maps. Don't believe the guy from the store because it won't fit into your handbag -- so make sure you have some room in your backpack or handbag because I had to check it into the baggage hold at Gimpo and I was terrified they'd mistreat my box and I'd have basically paid for a broken cellphone. A broken smartphone, at that. Yickes.

Right. So that's that for the first package. They won't send you the other half until you have your permanent address (you go through teacher training for a week and you live in a motel or dorms before you move into your own place) so once you move in, ask your co-teacher for the address in hangul (Korean) because the postmen here probably don't read English well and it will avoid a fiasco. But, in fact, what I would recommend is that you give the Store people your school's address because while Korea is a super safe country, I wouldn't trust anyone not to run away with a big box into the sunset...

Anyway. So this is an example of what you can probably expect from The Arrival Store:

 

 Tomorrow: CLEAN UP TIME. Much needed.