School Times are Fun Stuffs

Alright, here it is, the report from our first week of school! I realize that now I am running about a week behind on blogging - I'm sorry! Life is already going full speed but we are catching up to the routines of life in Korea.  Is it weird that we've almost been gone for a month already? I think we have the basic in and outs of daily life down pat, and now we just need to fine tune our comfort ability with the mundane activities like going to the store, etc.

Our school is a Hagwon, which is a private school that teaches both kindergarten and after school English programs for elementary students.  We have two classes each day, though the afternoon classes rotate depending on the of day of the week, so essentially we have 3-4 classes total.  Most of the day is spent with our kindergarteners though, and they are a hoot! Taggart lucked out with these two cuties, Jay and Yeriel, who are both so cute and smart:

Jay is a total ham, and says the funniest stuff in this monotone way that cracks you up.  Yeriel is sweet and quiet, but also says funny things from time to time.  They love Taggart Teacher!

It is the running joke with us Western teachers that my class is kind of the struggle bus class.  Not in smarts, by any means - they are all really, REALLY smart for their age and most of them can actually almost read completey on their own - they are just supremely unruly.  I actually am losing my voice this week because my entire day with my class is, "sit down, don't bite, pay attention, 1,2,3, eyes on me!, SIT DOWN, your workbook is not origami, don't stab each other with pencils".... You get the idea.  It is totally exhausting but so awesome.  The kids are sweet and though I sometimes hate that I have 7 of them in a class with 3 very hyper and unruly boys, but I already love all of them individually and have been able to watch their improvement from day to day.

Here's Justin almost licking the teacher's stool, and Alice drawing me as a princess.

My afternoon classes have 3 students each, 3 girls in the first class, and 2 girls and 1 boy in the to second.  They are Korean age 8, which is U.S. 7, and they are seriously so flipping smart it's insane.  The vocabulary on a couple of my students is staggering, though, as expected, they have the attention spans of 7-year-olds, so we still have to discuss staying in your chair and paying attention.  One of the the big problems in these after school programs is how tired these kids are after having already attended a full day of school before coming to our school.  They get really burnt out, so it's our job to make sure they still get their work done but also get to blow off some steam.  I make sure we always have multiple break times in the afternoons so that everyone takes their sanity home with them at the end of the day (teacher included!).

Here's some of my afternoon class (Kate and Jihyun) playing with my photo booth, and a combination of both mine and Taggart's kindergarten students and their kitty masks.  The green ones are Ninja Turtle cats, just in case you were wondering.  They all thought this picture of them was hilarious.

Our school is so nice, and from what we've heard, we get taken really good care of for a private Hagwon.  We get fed lunch every day and the Korean teachers have been awesome at making sure we have everything we need.  They made sure we got our immigration taken care of, they double and triple checked to make sure our apartment was ok, they paid us cash for our first check because we can't get bank accounts until our alien cards come through, and they even took us to dinner this week for this AWESOME korean BBQ that you eat wrapped up in lettuce and mint leaves.  Overall, the work is rewarding but tiring, and we walk everywhere, so we are definitely sleeping well at night cause we are beat! I'll post more about our activities soon - tomorrow we have a birthday party in my class, and then we have a three day weekend for Korean Independence Day.  Woot!  

Date Night!

Korean BBQ is amazing.  I could ABSOLUTELY eat it every day.  There is this incredible place we went to when we first got here that I've been wanting to revisit every day, but we haven't made it back yet until yesterday.  It is SO GOOD.  We also went to Baskin Robbins for the first time here.  Baskin Robbins is everywhere in Seoul, but it is so much less janky here compared to the states.  The displays were so cute and the shop was so swanky that I took a couple of pictures.  So here is a brief glimpse at our date night last night!

 This place's "gimmick", so to speak, is that they cook the egg for your BBQ in a ring around the coals with some kind of delicious seasoning, bamboo shoots, and onion on the bottom (sorry Taggart).

 Each of us posing, excited and hungry!  Ok, maybe not as excited for the kimchi, let's be honest... haha.

 Apparently I have to be the model in these photos to prove that I enjoyed our date night haha.  So here's me, first with this awesome cold cucumber noodle salad that is served at a lot of places here, and then with pistachio almond ice cream.  You may notice that I am magically no longer wearing makeup in the second picture...?  I got a piece of hot something in my eye because I'm THAT talented and had to go flush my eye out in the bathroom.  But I'm fine, we got ice cream to drown my sorrows in!

We were impressed by how perfectly round the scoops of ice cream were!!!

 This was the most beautiful, clean, cute, swanky Baskin Robbins I've ever seen.

And the ice cream cakes were adorable!!! I know what I want for my birthday, please!

Vacation Week!

Man, is vacation awesome.  After having basically been busy continually since January, it was a REALLY nice reprieve for us to get some R&R for a week after our craziness of a move.  And boy, did we need it.  For the first two days of vacation, we did nothing except try to right our body clocks and catch up on Zzzs.  After that, we decided it was best to not waste the time we'd been given off and actually do some exploring!!! Here are some of the highlights of our week off:

National Museum of Seoul - The Ichon stop on our subway line was the first of our vacation adventures and connects directly to the free National Museum, which is enormous.  We didn't even see the whole museum because we had to give up halfway through the 2nd floor, it's that big.  We've heard a few people talk about how boring it is, but we really enjoyed it - there are lots of really old relics inside and there's also an impressionist art exhibit next door (which we haven't gotten to yet).  We'll definitely be back for more, but here's a few pictures from the excursion.

 These are huge Buddha and Bodhisattva statues that date between the 900-1100s.  The picture with Taggart is dark, but we thought you'd want to see how huge they were (in reference to him, of course)!

 A scepter of carved jade and gold, one of the many gorgeous pieces of pottery, and a bronze mini pagoda.

 Come on, you don't think we'd forget the Samurai sword?? Or the armor... also a huge stone pagoda.

This was a really cool bronze gilded horse that predates the Ming Dynasty.

You can't really get the whole perspective from this shot, but the entrance is a huge glass atrium, and this was taken from one of the staircases that looks out over it.  It's really laid out beautifully.

Dongdaemun Market - This was seriously the craziest, scariest part of the whole week.  This market seems at first glance on a map like it will be busy but pretty straightforward. Oh. My. Gosh.  It is labyrinth after labyrinth of textile stalls, back alleys, hats, shoes, backpacks, anything you can think of.  Dongdaemun is the textile and clothing market, so if you need to select from a million types of suiting fabrics or (heaven help you) shop for some trim or have a hanbok made (traditional Korean dress), then this market is for you.  We wandered around for a while just in awe of all of the vendors, and then we found one of the three side by side malls and went in (for the air conditioning, of course).  This ONE mall was 9 stories with a food court on top, and this particular mall was only designer stuff.  So one FLOOR was for jewelry, one for cosmetics, one for shoes, etc.  It was huge.  I can't even imagine what the other two must look like, but I'm grateful for our sanity's sake that we only scratched the surface in the first day, otherwise I may have died.

 We were so tired from this excursion that by the time we found food, we were just happy to be alive!!!

We got to meet up this past week with my friend Bryan who is here teaching on the other side of the city from us.  We happened to chance it well enough that our other friend, Pratyush, was in town for the week visiting Bryan, so we had a mini reunion over Korean BBQ in Dongdaemun.  We had been out and about all day, and it was REALLY FLIPPING HOT, so we were sweaty messes, but still had fun exploring the back alley street markets of the Dongdaemun area, which are just jam packed with all kinds of kiosks, shops, restaurants, etc.  It was really nice to catch up with those guys and see how they were, as well as get another perspective from a teacher here.

We also had our first Korean movie theatre experience on the 31st and went with one of the teachers at our school to this awesome theatre in Nowon, which is one neighbourhood up from us, and went to see Guardians of the Galaxy! The movie was amazing, and yes, that's right, we got to see it first ahead of our US friends because of the time difference. The theatre is at the top of a high rise Lotte department store, and serves carmel popcorn along with regular, though we didn't get to try it because the cashier misunderstood us and gave us some kind of ranch-cheese combo, which was gross.  But the movie was awesome, and we thoroughly enjoyed being the only Westerners in the theatre who laughed at all of the English inside jokes that went right over everyone else's heads with the subtitles.

 The movie was so good!  Seriously had some major geek moments, but I think that's also because I've been reading the comic.  Also, Korean bed frames are made of marble?  Also, They're like $9,000. Weird...

Ssangmun (our neighbourhood) - Most of the week was spent exploring our neighbourhood.  There are so many cool shops and weird markets around us, that it's really interesting just walking out our door.  There's a brand called Lotte that is basically everywhere, from department stores to pharmacies to grocery stores... I think it's the Korean equivalent of Kroger here.  Yesterday on our way home from dinner, we passed a small seafood store that had tanks of fish in the window, including, but not limited to, octopus, clams, sea sponges, and what looked like eel.  The biggest thing for me, too, is the smells here.  The smells are so varying, and conflicting with each other, that walking down the street is pure olfactory overload, from sweet breads to fish to garbage to korean BBQ.  And the Korean BBQ is amazing! We've been to a few places since moving here and they have all been fantastic, and reasonably priced considering how much meat you get for the cost.  Meat in Korea is very expensive, especially beef and chicken, and a lb. of ground beef here is over 10,000 won (about $9).  But never fear, there is a Costco near! Well, thirty minutes away by train, but still. It is more crowded in the middle of a weekday afternoon than Walmart on Black Friday.  Seriously, it is terrifying. We made the trek on the Friday of vacation week, and were able to find a lot of good staples. There is also a Home Plus across the street from Costco, which I'm told is like a mix between Walmart and Target, but we haven't been there yet.  But we DID get a slice of Costco pizza, and it was divine!  Here's some pics from around our neighborhood:

 There is a cute little pet shop on the way to the subway station, and last week there were mini-Mays!!!

Here's us, the masters of the subway, or as Scott recently put it, the "Seoul Train"... Get it? *nudge nudge* 

Stay tuned for reports from the first week of teaching and more!

Shopping, Subway, and New Digs

The first weekend of our new lives in Seoul has been pretty awesome, crazy, scary, uprooting, etc.  Basically insert an adjective, and you've got it.  It's rainy season right now, so it's wet and muggy, but we're told that by the end of this next week we'll be back to sunny skies.  It's been a whirlwind, so we've decided to settle for the next few days, hence the ability I now have to post a BILLION things at once!!! Oh well, get over it, it's probably the way things will work, right?  haha.

We started things out by getting our health checks done for immigration, which meant we had to take the train down to the other side of the city and get physicals (you can drop any reference to Olivia Newton John, thanks).  What should we find on our way, but Dunkin Donuts!  Of course we stopped and got munchkins, which are way cuter over here, if I can be so bold... Maybe it's the packaging, everything here is packaged so cutely with little cartoons!!! I digress.

We've successfully exchanged some of our money to tide us over until we get our Korean bank cards, which we are told will happen sometime between our Alien cards arriving and our first paycheck?  So we're working with cash only for now.  Here's also a view of the rainy days we've been having:

 The subways in Korea all use what are called T Money cards, which are loaded up with cash and then you simply tap them over the turnstiles at the station when you enter and exit, and it automatically calculates the fare for you.  When you empty the card, you can refill it almost anywhere, from little kiosks at the station to convenience stores and pharmacies.  The subway system is phenomenal here as well, like clockwork.

 We moved into our apartment on Saturday, which, although in need of a wipe-down, is awesome, and has an amazing view, though I haven't taken any pictures of it yet.  Here's a shot of our closets, though, and I'll put more up when we get all unpacked and everything's sparkly.  We live in a high rise, and have a cool little sun room/balcony thing.  It's awesome, and close to quite a few shops (and a McDonald's that delivers?).

 The previous owners left us some of their groceries, including this incredible ramen, but it's so much better than ramen, it shouldn't even be in the same category.  The grocery stores we've found so far have LOADS of this type of stuff, so we'll be taking the ramen tour over the next few weeks and will report our results.  Blake, you should be insanely jealous, I'll bring you back some ramen for sure, it's insane.

 The other awesome thing about this weekend is that we found our church!  We are in the Youngdeung-po branch, which is somewhat of a trek, but is an awesome branch of over 500 people!  There are military families, teachers, etc. mostly from the states, but from elsewhere as well.  They gave us a welcome gift and immediately called us to tag team Gospel Principles every week, starting in two weeks.  Our building is this crazy-cool three story chapel smack in the middle of the city, with the chapel on the 3rd floor.  Similar to what I've heard about the churches in Manhattan, you can't hear any street noise from inside unless the windows are open.  It's really cool.  Plus they have an awesome window.

So after a pretty eventful 5 days, we are taking it easy for the next day or so, recovering from jet lag, unpacking, and eating our fill of ramen.  We couldn't have asked for a better way to transition into Seoul and the expat lifestyle!  I'll keep you all updated as our adventures continue.  For now, here's a fantastic quote we found on a bulletin board at our church which we thought was funny while being absolutely awesome:

 Happy Monday!

Dive right into the deep end

 I guess there's no better way to do this thing than to go for it 1,000,000%, and that's definitely what we are doing.  Upon our arrival to Seoul, we were ushered in a taxi for an hour to a korean-buffet-style restaurant by some random shuttle service driven by a gentleman who handed us a phone to talk with our recruiter and then said nothing else for the whole ride.  We then got to meet the staff from the entire school, and yes, it was awkward, as we had both been on a plane for over 15 hours and were pretty much the most raggedy versions of ourselves that we could possibly be.  I can gratefully say though that the people at our school are SO nice, and have really been fantastic to us so far.

They informed us at this scruffy dinner of ours (scruffy on our part) that we would be teaching the next day, so we sleepily piled our stuff in a suitcase and were driven to our hotel, which is basically a tiny box in which are two concrete-hard beds, a side table and a wall mount tv, and a bathroom that is basically a walled hose-down area.  It has air conditioning, though, so we love it. haha.  But seriously.

Our first day at LCI was pretty much a blur of instruction and overwhelming amounts of information followed by a lot of observation, which has actually been really helpful.  We will both teach kindergarten in the the morning and the older classes in the afternoon.  Our kids are flipping adorable! They were really wired these past couple of days because they are almost on vacation, but they are very hard working and pretty dang conversational for their age.  We have quite a support group of teachers and Korean teaching supervisors that share game ideas and experience.  All of them are American except for the couple we are replacing, who are from Toronto.  One of them picked us up from our hotel 2 days in a row, one took us to get our metro cards filled, and the couple is showing us around the neighborhood tonight before they leave so we have our bearings once we move in.  The girl, Heather, is also leaving me her Korean straightener so I don't have to buy one! Everyone has been awesome.

The second day, today, was a little more chaotic because there were parties for the last day of classes, a shortage of lesson plan material as kids finished their books, as well as a "newbie" class of young kids with very little English skills and a Korean teacher on vacation.  These resulted in one of the he supervisors asking us to take the young ones on with no plan, and man, to quote my friend Bryan, they were tiny Hitlers. Ok, not all of them, but at least two of them are absolute terrors, and they didn't speak enough English to discipline, and I'm pretty sure they were talking about us in Korean the whole time.  But thankfully, they will not be our classes, they are leaving after today as they were only here for summer school.  The rest of the kids are darlings, and are already excited to meet us.  The feeling is totally mutual.  :)

So, for now, we are just hanging on for dear life as we try to make sense of the world we were thrown into and stay afloat!!! More to come soon!  For now, here's some photos:

Above, the sweet plush taxi we took from the airport, and our tired selves at the airport.

Above: LUGGAGE!!! Below, the view from our hotel.  Not too pretty, the buildings are really crammed against one another here.  I have no idea how people even begin to park in Seoul.  It's a nightmare.

This is the mural that is (yep, that's right) above our bed.  WEIRD much?  We thought it was hilarious.

And here is the hotness, soon to be known by his new alias, The Keeper of the Won...

Two more shots of the room to get an idea of the size. (Hint: small!)

The open bathroom, pretty western style, but with no curtain, so water goes everywhere.

We'll finish things off with a photo of some cool dandelion sculptures we saw on the street: