First few days in Korea.

Kyle's karma has finally turned around.  He is at the Daehwa school, which has an organized director who seems to care about his school, and is about a 15 minute walk from our apartment.  I, on the other hand, am teaching at the Baekseok school (which is 5 subway stops away = 30 minute subway ride), which is run by a different lady (although she owns both schools and another), however she doesn't seem to be too organized, enjoys avoiding her foreign teachers, and doesn't speak a whole lot of English.  There is a Canadian guy, Jordan, who lives in our building and works at Kyle's school.  He's been very helpful in showing us around.  I have made friends with two guys, Mike and Tim, who work at my school and are very nice and seem eager to show Kyle and I around also.  All of these guys have been here for at least a year if not 2, so they are quite helpful, especially when it comes to speaking Korean.


Kyle and I are having very different experiences with our school.  His school really cares about what you are teaching, whereas mine doesn't really seem to mind.  I foresee lots of games in my future....  The kids are very similar to American kids.  You have the few who want to learn and the few who don't want to be there so they will try anything to make you pull your hair out.  Some of the kids are just adorable.  (There's a little 3 year old girl who looks like Jenny Merritt, if only Jenny were Asian).  I got to give the 3 year olds American names.  I, of course blanked on all American names known to me, so Congratulations family members!!!  There's a small Korean child named after you!  (Hopefully it's one of the well behaved ones, or we're in trouble).  Also, the name Jenny wasn't given to the little girl who looks like Jenny.   =(

As for our apartment, the Korean way seems to be to move out and not clean your apartment, so we will be cleaning that this weekend.  Heat is really bizarre here, the floor is where the heat is, but that doesn't really work when heating the entire apartment, especially our loft.  So our first purchase was a comforter.  


Food hasn't been as scary as I thought it was going to be.  I'm slowly, but surely building up my spicy tolerance!  Yay!  There's a Dunkin' Donuts across the street from our apartment, so we've been eating there for breakfast.  Not ready to face kimchi at every meal of the day yet, but kimchi soup is quite delicious.  We had Korean BBQ for dinner, so good!  Here is a picture of all the food you get (Korean portions are HUGE)!

I have no idea what we're doing for my birthday, but hopefully something fun.  We've been invited out, but we're still adjusting to the time change, so we'll see.  I turned into a pumpkin at 10pm last night!!!  Maybe we'll just spend the weekend getting adjusted to Ilsan and finding our way around.  


Miss you all!  Love, Monica