Saturday, November 22, 2008

Layin' Low

It is Friday night here and Alison and I are both laying low tonight.  Alison is feeling a slight bit under the weather, it is probably just allergies, but she decided to stay in to get some rest just to be make sure it does not get worse.  I am just hanging out in my apartment because I don't feel like spending any money.  South Korea has not been immune to the economic downturn, and in a sense it may be hitting us harder being here rather than back home in the states.  Compared to nine months ago when we arrived the exchange rate between the South Korean Won and the US dollar has dropped over 30%.  So, if we sent home 1 million won in February, we would have gotten $1,000, but now we only get $670.  OUCH!!  We are hoping that the economy gets going in the right direction before we have to send all of our money home in three months.  It certainly won't be back to the rate it was at 9 months ago, but hopefully it will make a small rebound.  But we are not letting the bad exchange rate keeping us from making the most of our time here.  Like I mentioned before we are going to get to go to Japan on a four day weekend in January.  We will fly into Tokyo, probably spend a day there, then head over to Nagano to see the snow monkeys.  From there we might head south for the remaining two days before heading back to Seoul.  It will be a quick trip, but it would have been disappointing if we did not make it to Japan.  We have also decided that we are going to go to Vietnam and Cambodia(at least) immediately following the end of our contracts.  Our employer allows us to delay our flights out of Korea for up to 30 days after our contracts expire.  So we will fly to Vietnam, travel for ten days, then fly back to Korea, spend a night in Seoul, and then catch our flight back to the states the following day.  

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