Getting Adjusted

It's tuesday afternoon here, and Alison and I have both been thrust into covering another teachers classes for the rest of this semester(which ends this friday). In an unfortunate situation involving a fellow foreign teacher, his sleeping pills and him drinking alcohol with said sleeping pills, we will be covering his classes following him being fired yesterday. Strange situation, but anyways, we spent this morning preparing, and well, we feel prepared, imagine that. We are actually very glad to finally be teaching as observing classes is probably the most boring thing ever. So that's that, we will let you know how it goes.

In other news, we are getting adjusted, we have found our local markets, been to the giant e-mart, which is very similar to walmart, except of being spread out on one floor, it is a bit smaller and 5 stories. We also visited techno-mart. OH DEAR GOD! It's like technology heaven. I swear, every piece of technology currently on the market is in this massive 7 story building. We have learned how to say our favorite Korean meals, so ordering at some local restaurants is quite easy. We each purchased a beginners korean language book, so we are working on those. Hmm, what else, it snowed last night about 2 or so inches, enough to cover the sidewalks thoroughly. Other than that we are really starting to call this our daily life. We will post more about our teaching experiences in the next week or so.

Virtual Tour Part 2

Welcome to our humble abode. (Sam's looks exactly the same, except he has rearranged his furniture a bit. Yes, he also has the velour happy heart bedding and actually refused to use it for 2 days until I finally convinced him that no one would actually think he bought it for himself.)

The kitchen. Please excuse the trash. You have to buy special bags for your neighborhood to put your trash out and we haven't located ours yet. All in all pretty functional. If only we knew how to actually use the washer.

The mysterious Korean thermostat. Anyone?

The other side of the apartment. Just to give you a feeling for the size.

And, last but not least, the much discussed bathroom.

So, there you have it. Small but very functional. You should definitely come visit :)

A Picture is Worth 1,000 Words

These are the Olympic Peace Gates that are about two blocks from our apartment and directly across the street from the Tom n Toms coffee where there are ridiculously overpriced drinks and free internet.

Our subway stop.

Our home. The "Good Office" building.

The alleyway.

Ah yes, the "Love Motel". These rooms rent by the hour and the long flaps are so that people driving by can't see the license plate numbers of the cars parked inside. We are sandwiched between about 12 of these on our block.

Blogger is being annoying, so I will have to make a separate post for the interior shots...

First Thoughts

So, the last few days have gone by in kind of a whirlwind and I feel like now is the first time I've had to really sit down and process what has gone on. We have seen and done and tasted so much over the last 72 hours that I honestly don't even know where to start. All know is that I really like it so far. Almost everyone we've met has been friendly, I love being able to walk or ride the subway everywhere, there are a million places I want to go and see, and I love that not being able to be fully understood is really driving me to learn the language.

I will give you the biggest tip that I have learned since we got here: If you ever decide to go and live in a foreign country make sure one of your good friends has gone over 5 months earlier and has learned just about everything. Well, not everything, but we'll get to that later. Now, I'm sure it is entirely possible to get through those first few days completely on your own, and maybe I'm just a giant wimp, but in any case Jordan has been a life saver! It's been really nice to just jump into going and doing things from the start instead of struggling to find everything. Over the first few days we have tried most of the traditional Korean dishes... and one that we weren't so much expecting. You see, Jordan knows quite a bit of Korean, but when we decided to try to the restraunt that is on the first floor of our apartment building he didn't exactly recognize anything on the menu, so we decided to take a risk and order the cheapest thing on the, pretty pricey, menu. After the meal Jordan texted one of his co-teachers to find out what exactly we had eaten. Turns out it was either pig or cow intestines and liver. It was a actually pretty tasty, but I think that will probably be the last time we eat first text later.

So far we've mostly done shopping related trips. Sam and I ventured out to Emart yesterday to buy some home necessities. Think Walmart but in an up and down foremat (7 floors!) I was able to replace my straightner which I managed to almost burn down my apartment with the first time I turned it on. Even though my converter box had a picture of a straightner on it. Technology hates me. Also, being with Sam and Jordan I wasn't too surprised to find myself at Technomart within the first 72 hours of being in town. Technomart is nuts (I'm trying to get out of the habit of saying "crazy" because apparently that has seriously negative connotations here). It is 10 floors of every single electronic on the face of the planet (except converters, which was the whole "reason" for our visit) and is, I think, actually what heaven looks like for Sam and Jordan.

Anyway, now that we know where the free internet is we will attempt to post photos in the near future to give you a visual of things like showering over the sink (which, really, deserves an entire post of its own) our school and neighborhood and such.

First Day Teaching

It is friday here and we were both scheduled to have three classes of observati0n(which, while useful has already proved boring after two classes of observation yesterday) but one of the other teachers called in sick, so we were asked if one of us would cover one of his classes at the end of the day. We said yes, wanting to be willing and helpful new members to the team, but nervous enough that neither of us was really confident in saying yes, so we decided that there was only one way to solve the dilemma...rock paper scissors. The series went the distance to three games with Alison prevailing, leaving Sam excited but nervous. I just observed the same class(same as in level and curriculum) so I have an idea of what to do. I now have the next two periods(75 minutes each) to prepare. I feel ready but nervous. Alison is observing right now and will have her break the next period, in which we will go grab some dinner. There are dozens of restaurants in every city block, so its just a matter of choice. Nearly every restaurant posts pictures of their menus in the windows, as well as the prices(usually between 4000 and 8000 won) 1 dollar converts to roughly 900 won, but we are slowing moving away from comparing the won to the dollar. It is really great that Alison and I can both eat out for less than 8 dollars. The servings are gigantic, there is no such thing as going hungry. Some places are even cheaper, although you really have to search for them, but meals can run less than 3000 won. There are also street vendors every where, we havent had a chance to try anything from them yet, but it looks tasty. Hope everyone back home is doing good. If you see our parents give them a hug for us.

Surprise, we're here!!

We made it! After relatively good flights and a total travel time of 27 hours we have made it to Seoul. The only hiccup was our non english speaking cab driver not being able to find our apartment building at first. After stopping the car three times to ask for directions, we finally made it. Alison has adjusted to the time change better than I have. I got a little sleep on the flight, but somehow managed not to be tired enough to sleep through the night last night, I only slept from about 12:45 till 4:30. I am definitly feeling it now. We have already met up with my BFF Jordan, he took us to lunch and showed us his favorite coffee shop. We are currently at our school, we both observed two classes today and will do more of the same tomorrow. I am lucky enough that my height is an instant ice breaker with the kids. They all want to know how tall I am, so I tell them 1.9 meters, and they all thinks its the craziest thing they have ever heard. We are now off to grab some dinner(kimchi chugae) basically kimchi soup.

Departure Date

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

Well, we finally have the flight iterneraries in our inboxes and will be leaving Tuesday, February 19. Again, later than expected, but it wouldn't be any fun for things to start happening on schedule here at the end, would it? So, we'll be headed out early on Tuesday morning and will fly to Detroit and then Tokyo and finally end up at Seoul's Incheon airport at 9:15pm Wednesday.

Since I'm terrible at converting dates and times and Sam isn't here to help I'll give you the general breakdown by hours. According to our itenerary we will be flying for close to 19 hours with 2.5 hours for layovers. That's a lot of flying. And not a lot of laying over. We only have an hour and 10 minutes in Tokyo to change planes. Yikes. Not that I've ever been to the Tokyo airport and thus have no way to judge whether this is sufficient time to actually change planes... I'm sure it will be fine.

So, if you have any ideas for how we should entertain ourselves for those 19 hours, suggestions are welcome!

EDIT: Sam is not, as he claims in the comment section, the only one that is good at math. I cannot add hours but am perfectly comfortable with regular integers. So, there.

Finally!

We have received our visa issuance numbers! We'll be heading to Houston early tomorrow morning to turn in our visa applications and have an interview at the consulate. After that it will be another waiting game to receive our stamped passports back in the mail and find out our flight schedule, which is slightly complicated by the fact that it's the Lunar New Year, one of the country's biggest holidays, so everyone is off of work until the 10th. We're pretty good at waiting by now, though, and knowing we passed the test at Korean immigration is a pretty big weight off of our shoulders! We'll keep you posted as to our actual departure date!