Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween everyone! We will be chaperoning the Yeosu foreigner Halloween party on Friday, then having a weekend in on Saturday and Sunday. Expect photos of our costume. All I can reveal is... Milk and Cereal!!

Dave's Hagwon students

Finally brought the camera into the classroom on Friday October 17th. I had my really cute kindy level class get a photo, and a few other classes through out the day.

The kindergarten class can make or break the day. Today it went really well, we played a few extra games (hokey pokey, duck duck goose (gray duck)) because they were really wound up from the photographs. On days were they do not want to behave, or someone hits some one, some one spits, etc... Well I know it will be a long day!

Here is the link!

Now and Then 10/17/2008

I have about two minutes before I have to go to work so I thought I'd write a quick blog about some of the things that have changed in the daily life here in Yeosu. Just an idea of how our comfort level has grown here, and how this place is becoming a second home versus a place in which we are visiting.

Typical Weekly lunch selection:

Then: Spaghetti Noodles / Pasta Sauce, PBJ Sandwiches, Mondu(dumplings), Ramen

Now: BBQ Chicken + Veggies and Rice / Curry + Rice / PBJ + Fried Shrimp / Eggs and Pancakes

As you can see the diversity of what we eat, as well as the deliciousness has grown significantly. The ability to cook your own homestyle food makes you feel just a bit more at home. There is quite a few times where you cannot get the things you want (tacos) or things just right (the taste of cheese), but we some creativity you can make great tasting western style food every day!

The only problem is all the Korean people complain that we don't eat an Korean food. Well, we eat it for dinner everyday, and we don't know how to make any. For now we'll stick to our new menu!

Approaching Three Months

We have now been here for well into two months. The time has had it's ups and down, but I try to be an even keeled person when it comes to personal things, although some might have me pegged as a bit impatient, or spastic (a spaz) but we are still here. It is harder then I would like to keep in touch with people, and that has made my life slightly more lonely here as of late, but there is always something to help you get your mind right. This weekend it was a fun day with Hana and Sara, last weekend it was going to Seoul and getting some re-exposure to Western culture, next weekend who knows what it will be. There are times when I feel like I could spend many years abroad, and there are times, sometimes during the same day, where I feel like I cannot wait to get home. The weather is beautiful, the scenery is beautiful, but we will see. Who knows what will happen in the rest of our year here. For now, we will sit back and enjoy it.


As far as details of what we have been up to since the "Night of the Living Slugs", I will try to keep it brief. Last weekend we took our first trip out of Yeosu, going up to Itaewon, the foreigner district of Seoul. Anthony "Upscale" joined us. It was a lot of fun. We got Mexican food, Subway, Middle-Eastern Food, delicious late night eats, met some new people from all over the place, and basically felt like we were back in America for the weekend. At the same time, it got played out fast, people trying to get you to buy things, prostitution, etc... That stuff can get old. It was a great place to visit, but it made Megan, AJ and I appreciate the exposure to Korean culture we are getting in Yeosu. It gives you a slight feeling of pride to know that you've made it in a place where there are less then .01% people like you in the population, and not many things that bring the comfort of home. At the same time, it made Yeosu feel like a home away from home - the feeling you get after arriving back to your apartment or house after a long weekend away. There was also some cool perspective for me because I visited some shops, and remembered some alleyways from when Mom and I visited Jeff back in 2003. I cannot believe that trip was five years ago!!

I think Megan and I are beginning to be settled in at school. I am not going to claim that teaching the students is by any means easy, but we know what to expect. I now know what a good day teaching entails, what a bad day teaching entails, and at least have some ideas of how to make a class go smoothly. In the grand scheme, I know that I can handle what I deal with on a daily basis for the rest of my time here, but that doesn't always mean it's easy. I think anyone here can get a new found respect for teaching, and realize how exhausting it really is. I come home exhausted everyday, but I also have a feeling of satisfaction for conquering the students that day. I know it's a strange way to put it, but sometimes the kids can manipulate you, and really hurt your feelings if they want to. At the same time, a fun lesson coupled with interested students can make the day fly by... Sometimes that just isn't possible with 7 different leveled classes rotating day by day, but when a class is fun, it is awesome!



This weekend we kept it low key. We both were in no mood for an exhausted Monday, so we stayed in on Saturday night. Megan caught a cold, so she has been battling that, and I was just plain tired. We hit up the open market to get some Curry, fruits, veggies, and the whole sale store to pick up chicken and some frozen snacks. We snapped some photos of an experience that is becoming strangely typical... We hung out with Jeff, HG, and the Girls all day at Dolsan park, which was a lot of fun. The weather was about 72 and sunny all day. We have a lot of photos, and will get them up soon. We hit up Lotte mart on Sunday morning and made a much needed upgrade to our food supply. We are finally getting a feel for what we actually eat and what is just a waste of money... Sunday afternoon was a "Canadian Thanksgiving" party, thrown by the many Canadians in town. We came expecting kind of a show up and say hi affair, but we ended up staying for about 3 hours. We played Frisbee, catch, and just had a great time with another beautiful day of weather. The local Yeosu-ites were in awe to see such a large group of foreigners out. Many people stopped by to say hello, try throwing the Frisbee, and to check out what kind of food "wayguks" eat.

We will see what this week brings, but a few things an English teacher can begin to depend upon: The sun will rise in the morning, the people in the town will stare, the kids will shout hello, the Yeosu traffic will still be counter intuitive and our students will show up for English class. Looking back at my post, I hope I didn't come off negative, positive, I am just writing off the top of my head. Some days it seems difficult, and life here can be hard. Most days are good, but it is hard not to miss your good friends and family... However - There are still those moments in which you are walking down the street, looking out the window, teaching a class, shopping at the mart, where you just take a step back, give yourself that deeper perspective and think to yourself... "Wow, I am in South Korea... That's pretty incredible!"

Here are some photos...

The trip to Seoul... 12 photos.

Open Market, Beautiful Yeosu, Dolsan and the Cart Man... 40 photos.

Slugs . . .

So I had to say that last night I ran into a little problem. I got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and when I walked to the kitchen to wash my hands I was surprised! There was a slug on the soap dispenser! Luckily I saw it otherwise I would have had slug hands. Well after getting up enough courage to scrape it off and throw it away (mind you this took awhile but luckily Slugs are slow) I managed to open the door to the garbage and it was a sight from a slug horror movie. A slug fell down when I opened the door scaring me half to death. I had no idea where it came from at first and ran away thinking the ceiling was going to collapse and slugs were going to fall on top of me. I had enough and decided to wake Dave out of his slumber for help. When he pulled out the garbage there was another big fat slug sitting in the garbage. Our Slug count is now 3 (small one on the soap dispenser, big one on the floor, and another huge one in the garage). Well ,Dave was not very happy with me waking him up so he put the top on the garbage and said it was fine and walked back to bed. I, of course, knew something more had to be done. I carefully placed the slugs that escaped back in the garbage with the rest of their family and lifted the garbage bag up to tie off and place outside, but to my surprise there was a slew of slugs! There must have been at least 5 other huge slugs all carefully, slowly, and slimly crawling their way up. I quickly tied off the garbage and placed it outside. I felt like I stepped out of a dream. How could there be that many slugs in our house? I have never in my life seen a slug, but now I have seen them all.

Not in a million years would I have thought I would be surrounded by slugs! What a gross and useless bug! I can't even imagine what else can get into our house, I'm just hoping it doesn't get worse!

Well, I envy all of you non slug finders and hope that you will never come across slugs late at night on your soap dispenser and in your garbage! haha. Hopefully there will not be a sequel to this story.

Slug killer,
Megan

South Koreas got Seoul!

Hey everyone. I have a few minutes before I leave for the hagwon, so I thought I'd let everyone know what we have been up to. Last weekend we went out with our Korean co-teachers for a beer, and then went to Ellui, the foreigner hangout in Yeochon. There were quite a few people there and it was a lot of fun. As usually, everyone stayed out way too late (since the bars do not close) and we ended up getting home quite late.

The next morning we were up bright and early to go babysit the best nieces, Hana and Sara. They behaved perfectly all day and did not fight one time in 12 hours! We made brownies, went to the playground, and played all day. At the playground, one young Korean boy said "Hi" and started talking to us. Soon we had a throng of 30 kids surrounding us asking us questions in English and Korean. It was quite an event. They thought Megan and I were Hana and Sara's parents, and that Hana and Sara didn't speak Korean, only English, because they were American. FINALLY Hana stopped being shy long enough to tell the kids (in Korean) that we were babysitting them. It was pretty crazy...!

Sunday was a lazy day highlighted be Megan and I cutting our hair. We have some pics that we will put up later.

This week is a short week for teaching. We have Friday off for Foundation Day. Korean flags are popping up in the neighborhood left and right. We are taking advantage of the off day with a trip to Seoul, Itaewon to be specfic. The foreigner part of Seoul. Expect a recap soon! We are going by train because the train station in only two blocks from our house, pretty nice!

Here are the latest pictures. The first few pictures are of Megan's students, then from Friday night, and then a few pictures from babysitting. Hopefully we can get some pics up from the haircut soon too...

Check out the pictures on facebook!!

Weekend update!

Hello again, I’m back! Here is the biggest update, Dave and I purchased a car! It is a ’96 Hyundai Elantra with awesome seat covers, working windows, and of course the essential air con (air con is Konglish for air conditioner since Koreans think the word is too long to pronounce). Last week on Wednesday, Dave and I test drove 2 cars. One of them started, the other needed to be jumped. Based on that, and some other minor details, we decided to go with the one that started. Now that we knew what car we wanted it was time to figure out how to get car insurance. Our boss kindly helped us out with the insurance before school. He took us down one floor to talk to car insurance people, pretty convenient eh? Even though we are 23 years old and have 7 years driving experience back in the states, Koreans must be 20 years old to drive. This means that we essentially have only 3 years of driving experience. This “lack of” experience made our insurance rate higher than what we thought. Luckily while we were figuring out the insurance, one of the other car salesmen, who worked at the car dealership we went to , happened to come in and he undercut his coworker by giving us 100,000 wan off of the car. A 700,000 wan car ($600, booo to U.S. economy) was exactly what we wanted after hearing how much insurance would be. We accepted on the spot and by the next day were driving our way around town. All together the car/insurance cost us about 1,600,000 wan ($1600) which was lovely.

On Saturday we went to the open market in Yeochan, near our house. It is about 2 blocks of vendors selling vegetables, fruit, seafood (alive and dead), and side dishes. The seafood is so crazy to see. Next time we will have to take pictures! There are live octopus, crabs, eels swimming in tanks and/or buckets everywhere you look. There are old Agima’s ( old women) squatting down cutting up fresh fish as you walk past. It is quite the sight to see. Seeing as we have no idea how to cook half of the things we say at the market we opted for the essentials: fruits and vegetables. We bought peaches, apples, carrots, potatoes, onions, green/red peppers, and curry for about $25. Then I took Dave to a whole foods place that my co-worker Liz showed me. This place was great! We were able to get boneless chicken breasts along with many other frozen foods that are easy to cook.

After shopping we decided to take advantage of our newly found independence. We took a scenic drive to the beach and around the very country part of Yeosu. Even though it was raining and gloomy outside it was great to be able to go wherever we pleased, and listen to music! The only thing stressful about driving here are Korean drivers.
The sign says "Yeosu" in hangul.


They are very aggressive drivers who do not stay in their lanes or watch for other traffic. Dave did an excellent job driving. He basically has to be aware of all possible cars which even means pretending that parked cars are moving.

That night we made stir fry as a picnic and drove to Dolsan Park to see the bridge lights. It was very beautiful and a perfect spot for a date. Our first REAL cooked meal tasted wonderful, and the view was spectacular. That night, since it was still rainy and humid, we stayed in and drank our fair share of wine and soju while playing Super Mario brothers 3, haha.

This upcoming weekend we are babysitting Hana and Sara while Jeff and Hye-gyong go out of town for a wedding, so expect to hear about the kids in our next blog post. Hopefully we will also be planning some fun trips outside of Yeosu soon such as Seoul.

We miss you and hope you are all doing great! Please please pleas keep writing, e-mailing, facebooking us whenever possible because we really look forward to hearing about updates back at home. Anyounghaseyo!

LINK TO THE LATEST PHOTO ALBUM