Lasagna Chips and Borocay!

I guess it has been a while since our last post!

Before we get started on telling you about our warm and delicious trip to the Philippines, we would like to share with you the first taste of "XL, Non-Frying, Lasagna chips".

Okay. So there are two packages inside the actual chip container. Everything is extra packaged here.

Brendan is opening the chips. Our first observations:
They look like thick ruffles.
They smell like stinky, cheese chips.
They taste like crackers. Hmm. I guess that's the Non-Frying part.

I like them!
Brendan says they're pretty good.

They don't taste like lasagna though. Well, maybe a little, you know the cheese part. And lasagna isn't fried.

Alright, alright. Onto the fun stuff.

We arrived early at the airport, and the really nice lady at the Korean Air desk moved our seats up from economy to first class! Woo Hoo!! We were pleasantly surprised when the flight attendant directed us to go up the stairs. Here are some photos of the likely once in a lifetime experience.

Hooray for ice cream and leg room!









After our 5 hour flight to Manilla, we spent the next 9 hours sleepiong on various benches in the airport. Luckily, the weather was warm, because all of the benches are outside. They weren't very comfortable.










Our one hour flight to Kalibo was pleasant. We had exit seats on the plane! Horay for leg room! Kalibo airport is a tiny place in the middle of nowhere. We got to actually walk off the plane like you see in the movies. It was warm and we were happy to change out of our runing shoes and into our sandals! We were ready for the beach, but we had to endure a 2 hour, CRAZY van ride. We thought the drivers were terrifying in Korea! It was like a rollercoaster ride, without safety bars. The driver was also listening to techno music the whole time, making it a lot more stressful.


After the van ride, we took a small ferry over to Borocay Island. It was great! It was only 20 minutes, but I felt safe. Well, except for getting on and off the boat. We had to balance on a small plank of wood from the dock to the boat, but there were lots of porters ready to hold your hand and pull you over to the boat. They thought our lack of balance was funny. I'm glad we could provide a little laughter in their day!





After the ferry ride we took a short tricycle ride to our hostel. A tricycle is a motorcycle with a pretty big side car attached. Our hostel was a pleasant surprise! It was called, Surfer's Home. It's on the windy side of the island so it is favoured by kite surfers.









Most of the week we spent swimming in the ocean, relaxing on the beach, drinking San Miguel Beer, or fruity cocktails. We did some Kayaking one day for a couple of hours. That was fun. I think we did well. We also took a sailboat ride. It was a small bodied sailboat. Okay, picture this:

A narrow boat, about 2 feet across and 20 feet long.
There are 2 wings on each side, connected by a bridge from the centre.
Between the bridge and the centre is a netting. We sat on the netting, while the boat soared through the water! It was scary sometimes, because if the wind caught the wing, it would lift one side of the boat into the air.

Okay. So our description isn't very good. Here is a picture of the kind of boat we are talking about.






Mmm Food. Sandwiches. Thai! Salad! Fruit! Oh, the fruit. Fresh mango, papaya, bananas, pineapple....everyday! You could find almost any kind of restaurant you wanted to. There was this one, "Irish Place," called The Hobbit House. There were pictures from Lord of the Rings, and all the wait staff were little people. It was kind of strange, but Brendan says, "They had Guiness, and live music!" They didn't have any Irish food though.













There were lots of stray animals everywhere. Dogs, cats, roosters. Soooooo many roosters. Cock fighting is big there. It's on TV and they sell key chains that boast it. Roosters were numbered and tethered everywhere. I think there were lots of fleas too. I woke up one morning with a number of, I'm sure, flea bites. There were also lots of lizards and frogs. Big beetles and spiders. And lots of palm trees.

The water in the ocean was so warm sometimes. It felt like a bath! It was pretty amazing. We were so buoyant, and the salt was really therapeutic, though it could really sting the eyes!

By the end of the week we were ready to fly on home. It was a nice place, but strange in that it really is a resort island. You know, pampered, rich visitors everywhere. It was hard to watch the small children working, or picking through garbage when there was so much gluttony at the same time. But, it was a vacation, and an exciting one!

Photos of our Work Dinner with our Delicious New Camera!

Well, hello there!

So, we found ourselves a beautiful new camera at Yongsan this past weekend! (Thanks mom and dad, and Sonya!) It's a Nikon, D40. You should look it up on google. Its a digital SLR! I can use old Nikon lenses on it, too! Holy cow. It feels really nice to take photos with.

When we were buying it, we kept saying no to the sales guy. He really wanted to make the sale, so he kept knocking money off and giving us free stuff. So, we ended up with a great deal!

Mmm. Tonight, the owner of the school took the teachers out for a Christmas dinner, at a traditional Korean restaurant. They ordered a traditional, "southern region" meal. Mmm. Lot's of fish, oysters, jiggae, side dishes galore, and the best kimchi ever. All of our co workers appreciate that we like to try new Korean foods. They say most foreign teachers they work with don't like it at all. It's delicious!

Here are some photos of the meal and the restaurant. I am sure they will tell a better story than what I write about it.


This is one half of the table!








Here is the other half of the table!





Look at all the dishes after we're done eating. It was a feast. I feel a little guilty, actually. There was so much wasted food. Apparently the Government here has been trying to slowly phase out traditional Korean meals because of all the wasted food, but the people here love their food too much!

Haircuts, mold, and moving!!

So, we've done a few things today that we've been putting off. This afternoon, we both got the courage up to get ourselves some haircuts. Whoo, yeah!

It was a little daunting, knowing that they wouldn't really understand anything we said (and they really, really didn't), and that we would be in the same boat. However, we simply couldn't put it off any longer.

Brendan: we made a plan that I would get one first, while Tara tried to find a picture to show them. She was more worried than I about ending up with a terrible haircut, and I didn't mind being the guinea pig. The salon is hilariously enough on the top floor of our most favourite place, E-mart. It's a pretty fancy place, on the floor housing the "culture center" of E-Mart which also includes a book store. I walked in, indicated awkwardly that I'd like a haircut, and then just followed the lead of the equally confused and uncertain employees. They washed my hair, and my ears for some weird reason, then took me to a chair and got the only male hair-dresser, a guy with crazy spiky hair that spoke a very small amount of English. It was probably the longest haircut I've ever had, but he took his time and made sure he did a good job. My only problem is that he was a little aggressive with the comb, and made my scalp hurt a little (when he was trimming the back with an electric trimmer, it kind of felt like he was scrubbing pots and pans or something), but it's a minor issue. It only cost 10 000 won, and this seemed like a pretty high end place. I then waited for Tara while enjoying some coffee and reading a Korean Cosmo Men magazine.

Tara: When I finally found a simple haircut I liked, I put down my complimentary coffee and asked if I could please have a haircut too. Everyone in the salon ran around like crazy after I asked. I have no idea why, I just stood there looking awkward. Three ladies asked me if I needed a shampoo, by rubbing their heads a lot and saying "shampoo." I said sure, and was led into a dark room with 3 sinks. The lady did a really nice shampooing job! The scalp massage was totally worth the 15 000 won I paid for the whole experience! After the shampoo, I was brought over to the salon chair where 2 women started to blow dry my hair. I had to control my laughter, I had never experienced 2 hairdressers at once. (That kind of sounds perverse.) Anyway, they cut my hair really quickly, and then straightened it too! All of this took about a half hour! Crazy. It was the best haircut ever.

So what else is new? Well, as we probably mentioned, there was (and likely still is) a mold problem in the apartment. It started around the condensation soaked windows, then spread to the corner behind where our clothes rack was in the bedroom. They finally came in to see it, and then blamed us for sealing up the windows with plastic and not ventilating the apartment enough (as though it's our fault that there is no insulation and no exhaust fans except a crappy one in the kitchen over the stove). They said they'd start work on thursday, to get rid of the moldy wallpaper, insulate the wall with some wooden boards (???), and put more wallpaper up, but they couldn't do it until Friday.

On top of this, we're STILL having trouble with paying utilities, as the water bill is paid by the landlord and divided up between the entire building based on how many people live in each apartment (so conservation is next to useless), and we're supposed to pay the landlord who doesn't speak English and who keeps trying to speak to us in Korean. It's really annoying, and we told the school how upset we were with everything so they found us a new apartment the same freaking day! It was amazing, and kind of crazy. We haven't seen it, and it's only a studio, but we'll have our own utility bills, and it should be a lot warmer, cheaper, more efficient, and closer to work (possible within walking distance). Wooohooo! No more life-threatening bus rides everyday!

Oh, and I (Brendan) saw a dermatologist for the second time again about some red sores on my fingers and toes. He believes it's chilblains, something basically like frostbite caused by cold and humidity (hmm...), and told me to keep my extremities warm and dry, and to apply some ointment a few times per day. We'll see what happens. Maybe a tropical vacation is the answer? I think so...

Here are some more pictures of our apartment. It was a nice, cozy little place when it was warm outside.

Happy Suwon

Yesterday we went to Suwon! "Happy a harmonious city" as the tourism signs repetitively informed us. We went to see the Hwaseong Fortress, a rather large complex in the heart of the city. Most all of the original fortress wall is still there, and the entire city used to be enclosed within the walls. There's also a palace at the foot of Mt. Paldalsan, which we enjoyed exploring before heading on the tour around the fortress walls via a dragon-shaped trolley, which took us through the city on a path around about half of the remaining wall.

The fortress and palace were built in the 18th century, and today are one of Korea's 5 UNESCO World Heritage sights. We'll have to go back, as there wasn't nearly enough time to take in everything. Good thing it's so damn cheap: seeing the wall is free, as it just runs through the city, and the palace is only 15oo won. The trolley ride was an extra 1500 won, meaning that with the train ride there and back from Suwon, and the bus to the fortress area, the whole day minus dinner was just over 5ooo won! With dinner and a McDonald's Ice Cream cone (oh so traditional), it was around 9000 won each. Crazy!!!

We were joined by our friends, Tom and Jess, and some American friends of theirs named Doug and Annie. All in all, it was a good day, and a nice change from sitting inside watching Six Feet Under (although that's how we spent this afternoon).

Only 13 days until Paradise! Here are some pictures. Enjoy!

I want a sandwich!

A nice, juicy, big sandwich with tomato, bacon, lettuce, and mounds of delicious mozzarella cheese, with a huge greek salad on the side, teaming with feta cheese and black olives, served with a lemon wedge...

Dear god, why do we torture ourselves?

You'd think it would be a simple matter of finding the ingredients and making the damn thing, but alas, it's not so simple after all.

If any of you science-type people want to work on sending us a few perfectly preserved meals, we'd be eternally grateful.

For now, we'll settle on .... something else.

Cooking.

Hey Everybody!

So Friday was the cooking day we were totally looking forward to (not). It was exactly how we imagined; we were totally in charge of babysitting all day while our supervisor fucked off early. Oh, and what made it worse, was they made the teacher they fired the week before, train the new teacher! The morning meeting was a disaster. To make a long story short, I (Tara) told the principal that it was offensive that her hired supervisor never listened to me and it was totally offensive that they want me to "try harder" in the classroom because two kindergartens (the brattiest of brats) dropped out. Personally, I'm relieved that I don't have to deal with the bullshit of those two spoiled kids and their parents. I will not reward bad behaviour, especially when I am not allowed to discipline the kids. I am somehow expected to control the class by making them sing songs they don't care about. All I can say is the glass of cheap beer I had last night made it all better. Oh, and thoughts of the Philippines!

Perhaps I was a little bitter because a man on the street was chasing some high school boys, telling them to go stand by the "yongo" people. (english). He ran to hit one of the boys but hit me instead. He kept yelling at us and made big X's in the air infront of us. This kind of thing is scary.

Today has been a good day so far. Brendan and I went for a nice long walk on a mountain this morning. It's quiet there now. Nobody here likes the "cold." It's been pretty nice out. No snow. No cold winds, like we are used to. The leaves are all brown now, and there are still some attached to the trees on the hills. They actually hire people to take the leaves off of the trees on the streets. There are a lot of strange jobs around here. Whenever I see it, I call it "job creation," because there are so many people here. It's probably how they keep the unemployment rate so low, having so many random jobs. What are these random jobs, you ask? Well, sweeping all the roads in the morning with a very small, plastic broom, holding signs for hours, bowing at the doors of stores, and women all dressed up wearing sashes walking around for hours.


Hmm. Here are some pictures from cooking day. The kids are cute. That's what made it all okay. We made, dok-po-ki. It's really easy to make. You just add rice cake (big pieces of rice gluten), fishcake, cabbage, onions, carrots, chili powder, chili sauce, and starch syrup to boiling anchovy broth. Its okay to eat. Its a little heavy, so it is good as a side dish.

Splishy-Splashy Foreigners

So we don't have a tan yet, and up until the weekend it has been pretty cold. It dropped to -6 celsius on Tuesday, and we had a rather interesting snow/thunder storm that night. We've managed to seal off the door and windows as much as we can, and the school has agreed to help us out by getting a space heater, so we'll be able to dry our clothes soon. Yay!

This week wasn't too exciting, hence the lack of blogging. Tara's still writing teacher's college applications, which will be done by the end of this week. We also sent some packages home for Christmas, which wasn't that expensive at all given that they should arrive 3 days after we sent them.

We went swimming, (finally!) at an Olympic-sized swimming pool near our school, which was fun but an interesting adjustment. As soon as Tara walked into the pool area the entire group of people turned and started whispering "Yongo" which means "English," and "Waeguk," which means "foreigner." They have one catch-all term for foreigners here, with no distinction about where you're from. You're just not Korean, and therefore don't matter. This may sound harsh, but there really is no place for foreigners in many Korean social circles. People are generally fascinated by the fact that we actually live here. It's kind of crazy that they think that Korea can remain an isolated, homogeneous country while integrating further in the global economy. Things may change drastically in the next generation or so, as the rate of men marrying foreign women is around 25% (though most of these are poor Vietnamese or Philippino mail order brides).

So, all the attitudes towards white people in particular were magnified in the swimming pool. We both had gangs of kids following us around, asking where we were from and for our names. It got a little annoying, but they're still cute. In the change room, Tara was marauded by a group of little girls asking where she is from, if she owns a plane, if they should call her "ajumma" which is what they call married women, if she is married, if she can play with them, and if she's fat. These are the concerns of 7 year-old girls... sigh.

So, the weather's been nice the last few days, and I was opening my window at school to see if it was raining and the screen just fell out onto the road. Our school isn't the pinnacle of engineering. I had to explain to our principal what happened, then run and get the screen before anyone came out of or into our parking garage, and then try to put it back. As I was trying to install it again, I saw the school's cook, a super nice woman, looking at me strangely, and all I could think to say was, "it's broken," knowing that she wouldn't understand me. The screen's back in place, for now, but it will probably never be fixed. We still don't even have clocks yet.

We're Getting a Tan!

Hello Everybody!

Guess what? We have booked ourselves a once in a lifetime, Christmas vacation. It will be a hot and sunny Christmas for us because we are going to Boracay, Philippines! It will be just like a honeymoon - except not a honeymoon. Apparently, this is the "cold" season there. Everyday is about 30 degrees celsius. Thats pretty cold. It's too bad we are going in the "cold" season. Wow. I'd totally be jelous of me. Are you jelous? Okay, okay, I'll stop rubbing it in. If it makes you feel any better we will totally be thinking of all of you under the shady palms, on the sandy beaches, while we eat fresh fruit at Christmas.
That's terrible. I'm sarcastic, okay? Brendan says, "If we could bring you all with us, we would."
I agree.



It's been really cold here lately. Yesterday it went down to -6 in the daytime. We wanted to go for a walk, but opted to take the bus to "HomeEver." It is yet another huge department store. Brendan wanted to find a cheap guitar, but they don't carry guitars at that HomeEver. We looked around and found that they had sweaters on sale for 5ooo won (about 5 dollars cdn). I found a few that I wanted to try on, but the sales lady didn't want me to. So, after asking for a change room, and not being allowed, I striped off my coat and started trying on the sweaters in the middle of the store. The lady flipped out. I kept asking why I couldn't try them on, while I kept trying them on. They just kept telling me to pay for all the sweaters. None of them fit, so I didn't buy them.

I asked at work today why I couldn't try the sweaters on. Apparently, women wear so much make-up here that stores don't want them trying on shirts because the make up will ruin the clothes. I wasn't wearing make up. The teacher at school told me just to say, "no makeup!" and rub my face next time. I'll try it.

There was a thunderstorm tonight. The thunder was really rumbling! It was kind of scary. The wind was really howling too. Luckily, we put plastic on our windows this week, so we kept most of the cold wind out. It is freezing.

Oh yeah! We met some new friends at Canada Buddy. They are a bunch of young Korean guys. They were very nice. The one guy, Tiger, was sad that his friend from Philidelphia had recently went back home and was looking for more people to speak english with. He is quite a liberal guy, which is great, because Korea can be really conservative. Hopefully we will meet with him and his friends again. It would be nice to have a language exchange, and some new friends!


Here is a picture of Brendan enjoying some freshly cooked Octopus in Insadong, the traditional district of Seoul. We found some exciting Christmas gifts for our families there this weekend!

Who likes sharing?

So, we have a new goal at school. A previous goal of ours has been to eliminate certain phrases from the kids' vocabulary, most importantly "fine, thank-you," as literally everyone says that in response to "how are you?" We've been quite successful on this front.

Sparked by an incident yesterday with one of our fellow teachers, our newest project is to promote sharing as much as possible, in kids and Korean teachers alike.

Many people are very selfish here. It is rare for someone to move out of the way if you need to get by, for people to watch where they are going and avoid hitting you with a shopping cart, a handbag, or whatever else they are pushing/carrying, and at lunch time it's often a scramble to get even enough food to be satisfied.

We don't wish to generalize. Korea is a very large nation, and we make no pretensions about labeling them all in a certain way.

However, certain people are terribly rude in the way that they strive to take as much as they can, irrespective of what they need or how many people are around them. This is a daily annoyance at the school and so we've decided to try and remedy it.

How exactly? It was easy with the kids. They REALLY don't like to share even pencil crayons, or books. But they're children and it's both easy to understand and easy to make them do it. With co-workers, it's a little more difficult. I (Brendan) have taken to being one of the first into the lunchroom to get what I need, though I simply cannot deprive other people of food for my own selfish reasons, especially our principal who is pregnant. My co-teacher, on the other hand has no concern whatsoever for the amount of people that we share lunch with every day.

The most depraved incident happened yesterday, when Tara brought up the fact that it's really hard for us to use the computers, as there are only two and the Korean teachers arrive before us and spend the whole morning on them if possible. Before, when the four of us worked in the same office, Tara and I had our own computer and things worked fine. Now that both computers are in the library, and both have internet access, we've had to fight to use what was formerly our computer (which has all of our files on it, as well). Tara brought it up at our daily "meeting" (which we have every day to promote "discussion" though only Tara and I actually bring important matters up to discuss, and are invariably met by silence), and our supervisor dodged the issue by saying we should talk to the Korean teachers about it. The supervisor left, and we were prepared to discuss the matter, but the Korean teachers also completely avoided the issue. Tara followed them, and proposed dividing the computers the way things were before, and my co-teacher actually answered by saying "I will not share!" She is 27 years old, and worse than the children we teach.

Tara said maybe we should talk to the principal about it, and they answered by repeating the same suggestion, and the principal basically spoke to them like they were children, came back to us and said that the computer was rightfully ours again. She told us we were now responsible for the computer, which was fine by me as I now have license to clean all of the crap off of it and get it into better shape.

I feel bad about forcing such a thing to happen, but I've become sick of asking for the computer, because I need something for a class the same day, and waiting another half-an-hour while my co-teacher finishes making some useless worksheets that have nothing to do with the curriculum.

So, tomorrow we're going to start by bringing in some dessert for lunch, and sharing it with our fellow co-workers.



Here is a video on sharing, if you need a lesson. If we could arrange for our co-teachers to watch it, and then explain it to them, it would probably help a lot. For now, any suggestions?

I guess it was a happy birthday...

It was just a little strange. The school remembered, which was surprising, and I was greeted with a nice little gift of a card and stationery from my co-teacher, Jinny. They all bought me a nice cake after lunch time, though as I was bending down to blow out the candles I almost lost an eye. They have these firecrackers with streamers in them for birthdays--you just pull the cord and it blasts out, usually in the air but yesterday right in my face. It was a close call, but harmless in the end. The cake was a yummy almond chocolate, good except for the almonds being a little too salty. Not a huge deal.

My kids even remembered, and one, Janice, told me she was sad because she forgot to bring a present. Another gave me some chocolate, and another some oranges, though she had a whole bag and was sharing them with everyone.

The rest of the school day passed normally, though I was in an exceptionally good mood for obvious reasons.

We returned home, enjoyed the last of the cake, and had a birthday Guiness as well, which wasn't even that expensive. It was around 6000 won for two cans (the size of pop cans, not pints), and came with a glass. It's more expensive than Korean beer, or even Budweiser, but great once in a while.

After, we headed to Sang-dong area, and enjoyed some rather good curry chicken BBQ (karae dokgalbi), before heading to Canada Buddy in hopes of meeting a few people we kind of know. We had plans to meet a Canadian guy named CJ, but I guess we were a little late or something, and he wasn't there. We sat at a table, and eventually two guys named Tim and Reece (American and South African) asked to sit down and proceeded to play poker and smoke cigarettes. They were joined by a few other people, and after an hour so of sitting awkwardly, we started talking about work and comparing horror stories of working in Korea. We had a good conversation with a nice girl named Sara(h) from Northern England, and she invited us to a different bar near Bucheon station, closer to home.

There, we saw more foreigners in one place than anywhere outside of Itaewon (the "foreigner district") in Seoul, and ended up talking to a nice English guy named Craig. Tim and Reece wanted to check out another place called the Goose, in Bupyeong, which we had heard of before but had never seen, so joined them in a cab. We didn't realize at this point that Bupyeong is in Incheon, the city west of us. It was a little far away to travel to a bit of a dive (part of the bar's charm, according to Tim), but it was a decent place with cheap beer and a pool table. Tim and Reece are quite good at pool, so they split up onto to different teams and Tara and I took turns playing each of them. I was happy to be playing some pool again, and Tara enjoyed herself too, but the smoke was a little thick in the small room (her mostly gone Bronchitis wasn't too happy).

By the time we took a cab home, it was after 3am. I wasn't too drunk, (was I Tara?), but my head wasn't too agreeable this morning either. We slept until the last moment we could this afternoon, and luckily we got up when we did because the internet guy came shortly thereafter. Which reminds me: I'm writing this at home!!! We are actually connected to the internet, now. Y'all can expect more blog posts, and some pictures as well. We're going to update the blog with past pictures, so feel free to take a look at old posts to have a glimpse into our wonderful Korean lives.

Thanks to all who wrote me nice birthday messages. An honourable mention goes to Uncle Fergie who actually figured out how to write happy birthday in Korean. It was inded a great start to my day.

(p.s. We changed a comment setting, so it will no longer open in a popup window. We hope this will fix the problem for those of you still having trouble. Either way, feel free to let us know if it works or not)

Yongsan Electronics Market...Wow!

So, guess what we did yesterday? After searching around the most technology-filled area I could ever even imagine, we actually managed to find and purchase a computer!! It's an HP Compaq Presario, with an AMD 1.8 gHz processer, 1 gig of RAM, 12o gig hard drive, a DVD RW, and some other stuff for under 900 000 won ($1000 cdn). Best of all, we got an English operating system. With HP computers you can choose a language when loading Windows, and this saved us probably 120 000 won anyways.

We were told to check out the Yongsan electronics market, near Central Seoul, to find a good deal. Right at Yongsan subway station there's a "mall" called I-Park that puts all other malls in Canada (that I've seen anyways) to utter shame. This place was 9 floors, at least 3 buildings, with a huge Restaurant section, an outdoor courtyard with a stage and some fake trees, a roof-top area where you can view the vast magnitude of Seoul's downtown, and a lot more than we were able to explore. Pictures will soon follow.

We quickly found a computer we were interested in buying, but decided to look around elsewhere, so then took a bridge over the train tracks to the Electronics Market proper, which was equally as large as the I-Park mall, though not as nice. We only looked at two of the 8 or so floors, failing to find a better deal than we previously found and realizing that it was all basically the same stuff over and over--LG Digital booth, HP booth, Samsung booth, Toshiba booth etc. We'll probably head back when were ready to buy a superior digital camera (mine, though serviceable, is just not good enough, sadly).

After, we headed to Itaewon to meet Tom and Jess, the Brits, and tried to find a Thai restaurant we were all excited about. We failed, unfortunately, and decided that Itaewon was too expensive for the likes of us. The area has the largest foreigner population in Korea, thanks to an American military base nearby. We headed instead to Insa-dong, another nexus for tourism, and found a Korean restaurant tucked away in an ally way off the main street. Dinner was quite good, and cheap too. Tom and shared some good pork, served with with chige, a stew commonly made with tofu and/or seafood, while Tara and Jess each had their own soups.

Tara being still under the weather (she apparently has Bronchitis, and was loaded up with medication on Friday to treat it), we headed home and slept a long time.

Tonight, our only plans are to try and find a cheap movie to (finally!) enjoy in the comfort of our own little home. We don't yet have internet access, but it shouldn't take longer than a week to get it in one of the most wired countrise on the planet (in 2005, only Finland had a higher rate of broadband internet connections per capita in the OECD).

No other plans yet this week, though we might head south a bit to Suwon to see the massive fortress located there (just in time for Brendan's birthday, which is Friday for those unaware or forgetful).

Cheers!

Rotten Pumpkin Porridge and Cheesy Bites at Pizza Hut

Happy Halloween!

Wow, it was a scary scary day! Well, Brendan was scary! We will post pictures as soon as we can. He was a terrible vampire and scared all the kids! We just had a fun day of twister and trick or treating at school. The kids don't celebrate halloween outside of english school here, so it was fun. It is weird not seeing anyone dressed up though.

We carved jack-o-lanters on Monday. Well, Brendan did all the grunt work, but he loved it! They don't carve pumpkins here either so it was a real treat for the kids to get their hands in the pumpkin. Well, Brendan and I got our hands all dirty, the kids used a spoon.

The gross part about the pumpkins is that the teachers at the school disregarded our advice to put the pumpkins outside where it was nice and cool. So, Tuesday morning the pumpkins had already started to rot and smell. Of course, the didn't put them outside last night either. Here is the Grossest part:

The cook is going to make pumpkin porridge out of them.

We drew with marker on them, left them rotting in the heat for 3 days and now we are expected to eat them! Whatever. We will enjoy watching the others eat the pumpkin porridge.

We have just accepted that nobody will ever tell us anything at school. Now that we have our own classrooms, Brendan and I are extra left out, which has its benefits. Since Brendan's new classroom is the best one with windows, we just chill out together in there with the door closed. All we need is a radio and we are set! We also have the two classrooms that are furthest away from the rest of the school - coincidence? Probably not.

We found out that our water bill is crazy. The whole building's water cost is split up between all the apartments. What you pay depends on how many people live in your unit. Its ridiculous! I guess we have to live with it though. Its really, really obnoxious that we conserve so much water and have to pay for other people who may not be conserving at all. But, oh well. We can't do anything to change it. We have yet to find out how we pay for electricity, gas, or the telephone, or how we can get internet service at our place once we buy a computer (hopefully by this weekend!!!), but we'll keep trying...

The good news is that the school has actually applied for our medical insurance! Holy Cow! Apparently we can go to the doctor in the meantime and just give them our alien registration number until we get our blue medical card. I (Tara) have come down with another flu-like cold that Brendan seems to be getting at the moment, so it is nice to know that we can go to a hospital if we need to.

Okay, Pizza Hut. Pizza Hut is not the same here as it is in Canada. Pizza is very, very different. Usually, its covered in mayonaise, spam, and potatoes. But not at Pizza Hut. We had this chicken Cheesy-Bite pizza, which is essentially cheese filled crust cut up into bites along the edge of the pizza. It came with pasta. (They LOVE carbs here. Holy cow.) The waitress was the best part. She was sooo cute. She kept coming to our table saying things like,
"Excuse me...uh,...oh...uh...where are you from?"......"OH!!! You're from, Canada?! Oh, I love it there...I love it. I think, uh, that, uh, umm, it is very, beautiful there."
"Oh, You've been?"
"Oh, uh, ooo, no..But I had this english teacher...oh, he was, uh, oh, he was so nice, uh, HE was from Canada, oh, I like Canada."
"You should go!"
"Oh, yes, uh...you, are very beautiful, and you are very handsome...uh, oh, well, enjoy your meal!"

So once again we just randomly got on a city bus, knowing that it goes past our apartment, eventually, but not really knowing if we will be going in the right direction. Everything here kind of looks the same. The same kind of resaturants, lots of SK telecom stores. Anyway, so on our bus ride home from Canada Buddy we totally didn't see any restaurants or SK Telecoms after we turned onto a dark road. We couldn't get off the bus because there were no more bus stops. Just a rural, one lane road with a swampy canal on one side and fields and trees on the other.

Hmm. Where were we going? It was kind of scary.

We finally arrived at a kind of bus depot, totally in the middle of nowhere. Luckily, it was only past 8pm, but dark out. The bus driver turned the bus off and looked at us.

"Hello?" He said.

"Uhh....Bucheon Yok? (station)" We look confused.

"Ohhh..." He says. "Over there." (there is a bus waiting to leave.)

So, an hour later we arrived at Bucheon station. At least we know a little bit more about where we can find more barbecue restaurants and SK Telecom stores.

So, even I thought I was exaggerating a bit when I said that riding the bus gets crazier and more dangerous every day, but today was by far the most life threatening day on the road yet. Yesterday, the bus driver merely ran a red light to turn left and almost caused an accident with a car turning right from the opposite direction--nothing compared to today when the driver started driving on the wrong side of the road, before running the red light and turning right across two lanes of traffic. The whole ride we could see him chewing gum, literally looking like he was possessed by some demon, yelling at taxi drivers, honking at pedestrians crossing at the cross-walk, all the while speeding at at least 80km/hr.

We made it to the school, though, in two whole pieces, and in only 10 minutes (when it usually takes at least 20).

As I mentioned in the mass email that everyone reading the blog probably received, we got our Alien Registration Cards yesterday, so we have some identification now and our passports back again. Now, we can get medical insurance (hooray!!), just in case of any bus accidents, or if a motorcycle hits us, and can now leave the country, though that isn't likely to happen, barring some unforseen disastrous turn of events (e.g. an invasion by China or Japan, which is as likely as Canada invading in my opinion). My Uncle said that we got our Alien Registration done just in time to be aliens for Halloween, a tempting idea. I really want to scare the kids, though, so we'll have to see.

I read in the paper that some analysts believe a peace treay would be possible with North Korea within the next 5 years, after only 59 years since the end of open conflict. Maybe then the Demilitarized Zone would cease to be the one of the most heavily armed borders in the world, though I will miss the wonderful paradox. We plan on heading to the DMZ at some point, to catch probably the only glimpse we can of North Korea. Apparently you need two guides and an interpreter at all times in while visiting, and therefore it gets really expensive. The two leaders signed an agreement a few weeks back to open an industrial freight train between the two countries, and if passenger trains were soon to follow, it would be theoretically possible to take the train from Korea all the way to Britain! Why someone would remains the question.

Anywho, I'm writing about News because we haven't really done anything latley except ward off sickness, survive traffic, and the Alien Registration Cards. We had to do a fair amount of school paperwork this week, which occupied a lot of time, and the rest we spent making a Halloween board game for the kids on Monday. The Evil Witch stole all the candy, so the kids have to chase her around the board shaped like a Witch's Hat to get it back, avoiding Ghosts, Werewolves, Haunted Houses, and Vampires in the process. I hope they enjoy it. Sometimes, they really just don't care about going to school, after they've already been in school all day.

Tomorrow, we believe we're going to a Halloween party, but we don't know where or when exactly. We'll find out, and report any spooky details.

Ah. Its Friday. Sweet, sweet Friday.

I (Tara) have the best new class in the world. Okay, so there is one kid in my class. He is 8, and very good at English. The best part about him is he laughs at my jokes. Yes! Thats the best thing ever! He has won my heart.

One of my kindergarten students made me a note that said, "Tara, I love you!" She gave me four red heart stickers. It made me feel very good.

I have a problem with another kindergarten class of mine though. They just don't listen and most of it is facilitated by one student in particular. The principal watched all of my classes earlier this week and told me I was a great teacher and she liked my style (Yay!) but I was too kind. I need to be more strict. She thinks the kids think I'm easy. I suppose this is the truth. I hate being a meanie, but I know she is right. So, today I tried it with my difficult class. They were startled when they hear me yell at them. I kind of scared myself too. I don't know how long this tactic will last though. Once, I put them in different corners of the room - they really didn't like that. I just feel that I need to be careful with discipline. We are the "foreigners." What happens when a parent complains? What if a child makes false accusations about me because they don't like me? It's a sticky situation. I just want the kids to learn what they need to learn and I want them to have fun doing it. I want to have fun doing it. Actually, I need to have fun doing it. Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

I suppse we don't really have too many plans this weekend. Only that we are having our phone installed tomorrow morning! This is very exciting. We have been waiting a while! We found a phone at emart that plays various little songs as the ring tone. Brendan and I had a dance party to them the other night. It lasted about 6 minutes. We thought about creating a Canadian stereotype and dressing up like really bad canadian dancers for halloween, but nobody would get it but us (though that isn't really a problem for us).

Brendan's turn. I've got a new class as well, with two kids that don't really know much English at all. It was a little daunting at first, but I'm getting excited now. I gave them English names today, something I really hesitate about doing, but it's a necessary evil. Unfortunately, I can't usually hear or understand the kids' Korean names, mainly because they're too shy to speak to me louder than a whisper. They don't really understand what louder means, so they usually just repeat it when I say it to them. It's cute, but frustrating. My other classes are going well too, though I seem to have the opposite problem as Tara. I'm the strict, difficult teacher, though I do have completely different students than Tara so they can't compare the foreigners, or anything. Today was one of my best teaching days yet, so hopefully it will just get better. I would also appreciate any suggestions.

The dance party was indeed fun. Everytime we get a call (wink, wink), we can have a fun dance party. It will be an added bonus to talking with the people we love.

Fireworks, People, and Garbage (oh my!)

So...

What do a series of colourful explosions, a crowd of quite literally 1 million people, and a sea of garbage all have in common? They shared our company on the Han River in Seoul this weekend, for the International Fireworks Festival. The show started at 7:30pm, but there were people reserving spots as early as noon that day. We should've done the same, but we felt like getting some food instead.

We met our friends, Tom and Jess, around 2:30 and had some lunch in Yeouido. It was a nice lunch of lettuce, rice and frozen tuna. Knowing we would be attempting to meet someone else later that night, we refrained from joining the ever growing mass of people at the park, and aimlessly wandered around the area until around 6pm. It was a mistake. By the time we got settled, the crowd was all you could see for hundreds of feet around you, excepting the occasional tree. Poor Jess had to go to the bathroom, so she left, then Tom left to go find their co-worker Annie, and Tara and I remained to keep our spot safe from the rampaging mass of Korean festival goers.

Tom returned soon after the fireworks began, minus Annie whom he couldn't possibly find at the meeting place, but Jess didn't come back. We then spent the next two hours trying to enjoy the show while people stepped on our hands, feet, backs, and the poor little girl behind us, trying to force a pathway through a crowd of people sitting down. I was forced to tell everyone to f--- off, which actually seemed to make them stop moving for a brief minute or so. Tom continued to look for Jess for most of the show, when he was able to move around during the intermission, and Tara and I held the spot in hopes Jess would return.

We didn't find her until much later, after the park had mostly cleared of people (though the garbage left behind might as well have covered the same amount of space). She did the right thing by returning to the subway station where we met that day, in hopes we would come looking for her. Despite some minor freaking out, the situation ended well, and we're better friends with Tom and Jess now for it. All's well that ends well, I guess, though I worry that being around so many people will make us get sick again. Tara thinks it's already happening, but I will hold strong and attempt to ward it off.

Friday, our first day after getting paid, we enjoyed some highly delicious BBQ at a restaurant near Canada Buddy, and then retired to the bar for a few beers to celebrate being millionaires. Sunday, we slept.

Since, the best news is that we got in touch with the phone company, and we're getting service on Saturday!! Now, we can call home from the comfort of our indoor apartment, rather than the dirty and busy street where we've been conducting our phone calls for the past month. Hooray for telephones!

Last night we had a spectacular dinner out our principals house. She made spaghetti and Korean BBQ. Its was a cozy enviromnet with our co-workers. It was quite nice to see everyone outside of school. It gave us a chance to really meet them, which has been somthing that's been much needed. We met our principals husband, who was a very nice man. The first thing he asked Brendan was, "Do you drink?" Oh man. The pressure. They had homemade strawberry soju. I sipped mine slowly (Tara). Brendan was encouraged to do it the Korean way - shot after shot! I told our principal that she was the boss and needed to tell them when to stop! Our principal said Brendan could stay the night if he got too drunk! Haha. It was a joke. Then her husband got out some crazy chinese alchohal. Everyone thought it smelled bad - it wasn't too bad.

Brendan was fine this morning.

School today was quite pleasant. We all talked at lunch and one of the teachers told us that she was very happy that we ate korean food. She said none of the other foreign teachers did, they just went to Mc Donalds. Mmm. We had rice and kim(seaweed), dried squid, some delicious soup, radish kim chi, and bean sprouts. Its a pretty typical lunch. There is a cook at the kindergaten school so we get delicious, homemade food everyday. The cook is super nice. Actually, there are two cooks. We always say "magissossoyo" to them - "It's delicious!" Then they say thank you! Usually, we eat downstairs, but if, for some reason we are late to lunch, we get to go upstairs and eat with them. They always offers us "american coffee" (not instant with dried cream and sugar already in the package). Its really a pleasure.

Brendan is still studly. The principal introduced him to two of the kindergarten teachers that are afraid to say hello. He said "Nice to meet you!" and they just giggled. He said, they wouldn't even look at him! Our principal said "they think you are very handsome!"

Brendan also said this one girl in one of his classes, said that he was very handsome, like the bird picture they were looking at. I think its cute. He thinks its wierd. Maybe its a little wierd, but they really like words like handsome and pretty here. A lot of the students think my jewellery and scarves are pretty. One girl told me my hair was pretty, which was really nice.

Oh! There is a flashcard with a picture of a blue-eyed baby on it. Some of the students think it looks like Brendan because it has big blue eyes. So now, they say "It's Brendan!", instead of baby. Funny.

Teacher Training (at last!), and Spaghetti Sauce

So, we finally had some training. We weren't sure what to expect, but it was actually very informative. We have a much better idea of what kinds of lessons to plan, and of the resources available to teachers online at the school's website. We still can't access those resources, but we're getting there.

Training was in Seoul yesterday, at the building we found last week when we were sent on the wrong day. Luckily the train wasn't as busy as last week, so we didn't have to fight our way off and through the sea of people to transfer to subway line 2. Training lasted about 5 hours, with a sparse lunch to keep us mildly energized, and everything wrapped up around 2pm.

The highlight of the day was meeting the other foreign teachers working for ILS. We met an English couple from the London area named Tom and Jess, as well as their Korean co-worker Annie. They are all nice people, and hopefully we'll see them again this weekend.

On the weekend there's an international fireworks festival (yay!), which is supposed to last an hour, so it should be quite spectacular. If we can find Tom, Jess, and Annie, as well as some Canadians who also live in Bucheon, we'll probably go out somewhere afterwards. We'll definitely let you know what happens.

The most exciting news of the week is that we get paid tomorrow, as long as everything happens as it should, so we won't be the broke, boring foreigners we've been so far (well, we're not really that boring anyways). We're also taking another day trip into either Seoul or Incheon (not sure which yet), to apply for an Alien Registration Card. We will then officially be aliens, but unfortunately not the far-cooler silicon-based space aliens I've heard are very nice to hang out with once and a while. After, we'll head back to the school, do a modicum of teaching, and then head out to our director, Eunice's, for a nice evening of dinner and strawberry Soju. It should be fun, but I'm a little worried about Eunice's husband trying to get me drunk. Thankfully, I've been practicing.

Oh, and spaghettie sauce. We had a delicious dinner last night, and I though I would share it with you. It was spaghetti with a yummy sauce we prepared the night before, with diced tomatoes, eggplant, zucchini, garlic, mushrooms and olive oil. We didn't eat too much yesterday, unfortunately, so we were still hungry at night. We decided to head out for some chicken wings, but settled on a noodle soup and a beer.

I hope thanksgiving was good for everyone. We climbed a mountain on sunday, and found a nice little suspension bridge to another hill with the usual exercise equipment placed in clearings in the forest (chin-up bars, sit-up benches, elliptical trainers, and various stretching poles). The mountains seem to be very well maintained, and despite the evidence of civilization, they are still beautifully scenic.

One last thing. We're still getting word that people can't comment, so if you could email us to say exactly what is happening or not happening that might help decipher where the problem lies. The comment window is a popup, so it might be a popup blocker preventing it from opening, but it might be something else entirely.

Cheers!

Yesterday we found about 8 middle school girls ( all dressed up in uniform) with their heads in a popsicle freezer digging frantically and screaming. Brendan and I were going to buy an ice cream cone (500 Won!) to ease our frustration, and found this amusing sight. We just stood there, and one girl popped her head up, looked at us, covered her mouth, and all the other girls did the same shortly after. They all turned red and they started apologizing and laughing. We started laughing too. They told us they lost money in the freezer and couldn't buy ice cream without it! We told them we would wait, but they insisted we go first. I asked what they would suggest, they said Mocha, or Vanilla with a chocolate cone. I went for mocha. Brendan went for this tripple chocolate crunch thing. Later we saw them walking in the street and they told us they found their money. Yay!

Today we saw a bunch of crazy people advertising Soju. They were all dressed up in animal costumes wtih breasts. Brendan shook their hands. I got free Soju sugar-y additive stuff and hand wipes. Don't ask me why I got handwipes.

We met one of our neighbors today. She was very nice. Much nicer than the man who yells at us from his window and makes a huge X with his hands and says, "an-yo! (no!)" over and over again.

We also named the dog that is always by our front gate. We called him, Mr. Kim Kae. Kae is korean for dog.

We had a yummy dinner at this really cheap resaturant we go to quite frequently. The owners give us free soup every once in a while, which is really nice. The servers aren't quite as afraid of us anymore which is nice. We shared a big bowl of bibimbop (비 빔 밥) and some "angel" noodle soup. They gave us a complimentary bowl of this delicious soup. We dont' know what it is. Its spicy and garlicy and maybe tomatoe-y. It has some kind of swiss chard like veggie in it. Yum. We also get unlimited kim chi and pickled radish. This cost us 6ooo won. About 6 dollars canadian.

It has been sunny for two days. No rain! Yay.

Oh yes. many of you will be suprised about this. We ate korean barbeque yesterday. It was very yummy. You take the bbq'd meat off the grill infront of you, wrap it in lettuce, or some kind of tree leaf, add chili, marinated onion and carrot, grilled mushroom and garlic and then pop the whole thing in your mouth. You know, people who aren't vegetarian seem to think korea is a vegetarian's dream. Its really not, unless you want to eat plain tofu (its usually in some kind of beef or seafood broth) with sidedishes like kim chi (formented cabbage) and bean sprouts in sesame oil on top of rice everyday. Or you could eat plain noodles everyday. Or you could make spagetti with really, really expensive sauce. A jar of tomotoe sauce is like, 4 dollars, and we have yet to find anything but corn and peas in a can. There is no frozen veggies to be found either. Any suggestions on where to find these things would be nice.

Okay. An young he kay se oh! Bye!

No typhoid allowed!

Sooo....

We're not quite so sick anymore, which means we probably don't have typhoid (hooray!). Typhoid is usually found in the south-west of the country anyways, but there are an aggravating amount of mosquitos in our apartment, feasting on us when we sleep. The only thing we can do is try our best to seal off the windows at night, difficult especially when the front door has gaps you can almost put a finger through. At least we have a sliding glass door for the bedroom half of the apartment.

What else is new? We indeed found Canada Buddy without much trouble, but were a little dismayed at first by the menu prices. After considering, we figured they weren't too outrageous, and settled down for a couple of burgers (Tara had a super-delicous Tofu burger), some lemon-pepper chicken wings, a moosehead (and oh, was it delicious), soju (of course), and a much-needed English conversation with the owner, Lance. Lance is a Canadian who's been in Korea for 6 years, and was quite bored with teaching English to kids, so he opened a little Candadian pub where, unlike most Korean places, you can have a drink without being expected to order food. The bar, apparently, is the only real foreigner bar in Bucheon and becomes quite the hotspot on Wednesdays (thanks to 2-for-1 happy hour), and Fridays in particular. We were told that last Friday night the place was completely packed, and people were there partying until 7am! There's no last call in Korea, and places stay open until the last person leaves. Sometimes, that can be noon the next day, apparently. Crazy!

We also had a wonderfully interesting conversation with a friendly Canadian named Justin (from Montreal/Toronto), and his Korean business partner, Michael, a super nice guy that wasn't too much of a mesogonist or too full of himself at all, oh no. All I will say is that Justin apologized profusely everytime Michael got up to get a drink or go to the bathroom. We met another really nice couple as well named Chris (from Michigan) and Sook Yi, who did their best to rescue us from Michael. All in all, it was worth it.

Since, we've mostly been sleeping to recover from our mutual illness, though yesterday was the longest, most frustrating day so far. We were told we had a teacher training session at the school's head office in Seoul, about an hour and a half on the train from our house. They gave us some rather vague directions about which building it was, saying only that it was across the street from a high school. They failed to mention that the high school was huge (and thus, there were many buildings across the street), and that the office had no sign on it. So we had to keep trying buildings and asking directions until we found a very nice security guard who called the phone number we were given and arranged to have someone from the office come and find us. Then, and only then, did we find out that the training session is actually next week, so we basically wasted an entire morning and around 10,000 won. Oh well. At least we know where the place is now.

There was something else I had to say, but I can't remember, so I'll sign off now. It's National Foundation Day today (Wednesday), so we're off work again to celebrate the founding of Korea in 2333 BCE. We wanted to find some interesting stuff to do in honour of the ancient birthday of Korea, but we have no idea what's going on. We'll take a look, and let everyone know if we find anything. Cheers!

Horray for the weekend! Especially since both Brendan and I are getting over colds. We could probably win a "most mucus" contest. Gross! I slept a lot today and felt guilty about not experiencing Korea every minute of the day. But, I feel better now as a result. Actually, this PC bang is really smoky, so I'll feel better when I'm done writing this.

Luckily, one of the students who interviewed us the other day gave Brendan a whole box of vitamin C suppliments. He said it was from the pharmacy. It was really nice of him. Is that wierd? He must have been psychic and known we were gross and mucus-y.

So we found this bar called Canada Buddy. Its a short bus ride from our part of Bucheon. It has veggie burgers. I hope they aren't piled with kim chi. Brendan loves it. I am getting overwhelmed by it. Its everywhere. In dumplings, in soup, by it self as a side dish...ahhh! I still eat it though. Everyday for lunch. Anyway, we plan on going there for dinner tonight. We will let you know how canandian it is!

Oh yes. Eunice, the director at our school has invited everyone over to her house in October for a dinner! Yummy. She said she told her husband that Brendan really likes alchohal, so he is prepared for him with strawberry liquor. Cool! I hope Brendan is prepared...He looked kind of scared when she told him that yesterday.

Brendan and I tired playing rock paper scissors with both hands at the same time last night. Its really difficult! You should try it sometime.

Tired Legs and Surveys!

Hello!

*We are not sure how many people are reading this blog, but just to let you know we have had complaints about some of you not being able to leave comments. We would love, love love, to fix this problem, but everything is written in Korean on the computer. So, until we find our own computer with an english operating system, you should email us or send us a facebook message.*

Okay, and now for the interesting stuff.

We successfully hiked up, around and down a huge moutain near our house. We were out for a good 3 hours. I think I am lying when I say we hiked around it. We hiked for a while around the top and it just kept going so we turned back. The views were amazing. We have never seen real mountains before, let alone hiked up them! It was really "a breath of fresh air" to get a breath of fresh air. We aren't too sore either. This is quite surprising.

We went back to Seoul yesterday. What did we do? We went to the Seoul Museum of Art and took in a Monet exhibition. It was actually pretty nice not having to read what the curator wanted to blab at us (it was in Korean). Instead we pushed out way through the crowds of people, and they pushed us, and we all tried really hard to appreciate the works. Its crazy, having famous lillypad paintings exposed on the walls of a jam packed gallery. They had dehumidifiers going. I guess that might protect the work, a little bit, anyway.

Actually, the best part about the museum was the contemporary gallery. It was quite a lot less packed with people. The show featured artists from around the world who incorporated their travels into their work. It was really interesting. My favourite piece was called "A-Z in Korea." This video work used patterns in historic Korean palaces to find each letter of the alphabet. It was kind of humerous at first, but as I sat with the 16 minute piece I realized that finding english letters in korea, in a palace where king sejong's (he invented the hangul alphabet) statue is, made me feel strange about teaching english. I know that people want to learn, and they asked us to come and teach here, but it is something that I struggle with. English being a prime language. I don't know.

Oh! Funny story. I (Tara) posed for a photo with a cardboard cutout of Monet. His lips were pursed to the side, so I decided to kiss him! Two girls giggled and then one girl wanted to pose with Monet. She hugged him, but didn't kiss him. So I yelled out, "Kiss him! Bo Bo (kiss in korean)" She looked at me and kissed him!

Oh yes. Surveys!

We were approached by two college students, doing a project on foreingers in Korea. They asked us if we would do an interview for them. I said yes, Brendan was hungry, but agreed. They were so sweet! They bough us each a smoothie, which was very nice, and proceeded to tape record an interview with each of us. They took pictures with us and said the would send them to our email. They were really excited to have us as email friends and invited us to ask them for any advice, or help about korea! They were so great.

A Seoul-ful good time!

Hey all.

So we finally went to Seoul yesterday, with another teacher at the school who is also our bosses' daughter. It's only about 40 minutes on the "subway" which doesn't actually go underground until we get to Seoul. I didn't think it was that close. We started out at City Hall, apparently an "Art Nouveau" building (thanks, Tara), probably built in the early 20th century. We then met some friends of Ellisa, and went to a palace right across the street. It was a big complex, with 10 or 11 buildings, some of which initially built before the 16th century, but rebuilt in the early 20th. It was beautiful. Simply amazing. Once we can get pictures off of my camera, we'll show everyone. It's Chuseok right now, which is Korean Thanksgiving, a three-day holiday from work that involves memorial services for ancestors and a celebration of the harvest. Thus, there were traditional ceremonies all over Seoul, such as a changing of the guard at the Palace, and other parades in more traditional areas such as Insa-dong, a small preserved community in Seoul that forbids the use of English on signs, even at Starbucks. Insa-dong was full of tourists, though, and we heard more English there than almost everywhere else put together, a paradox that we both thoguht interesting. Before Insa-dong we walked through a stream in the heart of the financial district, recently restored after it was paved over. They did an amazing job at creating currents and making it seem natural, given that it's downtown in the second biggest metropolis in the world.

We then had some delicious Korean food, and the servers gave us a lot of extra food because Tara haggled with them and told them it was too expensive in Korean! The guy was really nice, and was trying his best to speak English to us. He kept calling me teacher, and was really impressed when Tara said good-bye and thank you in Korean to him.

After, we walked through the busiest, most insanely crammed-full-of-people area I've ever seen. It's called Myung-dong, a shopping district in Seoul, and we have no desire to ever go back. It took us to a mountain in the heart of the city, called Nam-san, where we took a cable car to the top and looked over the vast expanse of lights, buildings, and traffic. What a massive place! It was gorgeous, though, as there are many mountains surrounding the valley where Seoul lies. There's a tower at the top, called Seoul tower, that we didn't go up, but someday I'm sure we will.

Millenium Friend Internet Paradise!

English signs in Korea are pretty interesting. One, for a place called Prints says "The Poor Design Seriously Threats your Soul." The above one is the name of our new favourite PC 방 (internet cafe). They offer complimentary green tea or iced coffee, which is MUCH better than the hot coffee I've had so far. There is a Starbucks near Bucheon subway station, but it costs 3000 won for a coffee. That's like 4$! No, thank you! We brought our own coffee, but it's slowly running out....

Korean food is very, very good, but ordering it is not the easiest thing to do. We've managed to find what we want, and ask for it in Korean, but we hardly know what anything is and the servers tend to ask us a whole bunch of things that we can't possibly understand. They also stare at us. A lot. Everyone seems to, though. Tara thinks we should take pictures of everyone that stares at us, so we might start posting those when we figure out how. We might need our own computer first (hopefully when we get paid, whenever that will be).

Tomorrow, we're going to the bank! Hooray for banks. We need the help of another teacher at the school, but at least we'll be able to deposit money and send it home. Next step, a phone line!

Note from Tara: The Korean girls really do think Brendan is hot. Okay, he is, but they really do. This one group of school girls (all kilted up) saw him in this clothing store. They all ogled him with huge smiles all over them! They turned as he walked by and one girl mustered up the courage to say "hiiiiiiiiii!!!" He didn't really notice. I did though! ha.

Still missing everyone. Maybe tonight we'll figure out how to call home...

Tomorrow is a new day

Today was pretty long.

At school they told us to bring our toothbrushes "starting tomorrow."
They also told Brendan he scared the kindergarten class upstairs. Oooooo scary foreigner!
We didn't teach any classes today. We will tomorrow. Thank goodness.

We went out for dinner all by ourselves tonight. We were staring at a menu outside of a restaurant and a lady came out and brought us in the restaurant. We chose some food from picutres on the menu. We had no idea what we had ordered. It turned out okay though. Brendan had some udon noodle soup and....ummm...well there was kimchi and pickled radish on the table? I had a tofu broth like dish that you apparently add rice to. Hmm. I wish I knew! It was pretty good though. People eat a lot of food here with their meals. We only spent 8,000 won for both of us. Thats about 10 canadian dollars.

Our next goal is to buy some garbage bags, which is a lot harder than you might think. They're regulated by the government, and we have no idea where they're located in E-Mart, our new favourite store! We tried to ask where bags were in Korean to a woman who works there, but she sent us upstairs to the purses....oh well, we tried.

Tomorrow is a new day indeed.

E-Mart and Leg Room.

Oh god...And we had trouble going to Wal-mart in Canada. For the unaware, E-Mart is an insanely huge superstore, where it took us a few hours to buy a small amount of food last night.

We arrived in Korea on Monday at around 5:30, then spent the next couple of hours in line for immigration and customs.

What do E Mart and Leg room have in common? They're crowded. They're frustrating. Economy class is frustrating. Especially when they only want to feed you chicken and beef. Well, Brendan liked it. Kind of. Did you like it? He said Kind of.

So we found an internet cafe. We had to search for a while. There is so much around where we live. Its slightly overwhelming, considering we don't understand most of what it is, or what people are shouting at us in E mart.

People like to stare at us. (But we'd stare at us too!) haha. Just kidding.

Okay. Basics.

Apartment is nice. New stuff. Long bed.
Bathroom is korean style. Wet. Waterproof washing machine located beside "shower" faucet. (note: bathroom is the shower)
kitchen is low, no counter space. (Brendan is obsessed with counter space.)

School is good. Free korean style lunch. No expectations, really. Our co workers are nice, and we are the only foreign teachers. Kids are wayyyyy too cute.

We start seriously teaching tomorrow. It should be fun. I think Brendan is nervous. But he will be fine.

We really miss everybody. But its been pretty good so far.

We'll try to update as soon as we can!

VISA paradise!

Well, it actually happened, if you can believe it. We picked up our VISAS this morning, without any problems at the consulate other than the usual snarky counter-person. Hooray! Now, we just need official confirmation of the flight, and a definite itinerary that won't change and we're set.

On a side note, why did the cucumber need a lawyer?
(scroll further to see the answer: we have to keep you reading somehow)

As it stands now, the flight was changed to 7:15am Sunday the 9th, from Toronto to San Francisco to Seoul. The trip should take around 17hrs or so. We'll see if it changes once more. If not, we'll be in Korea by Monday afternoon. Check back next week for exciting news about our arrival!

Any guesses?
The answer is, because it was in a pickle! Ha ha ha. We can hear the laughter.

count to 10 everybody!

Its officially the 10 day countdown.

Finally we have been given a solid departure date. I hope the number 9 is lucky because we are leaving september 9th! I was getting worried that we would have to start pretending that we were in Korea and posting fake photos. That would be bad.

The little jolts of anxiety and excitement are starting to surface. My nightmares about having our plane plunge into the ocean and us quickly downing a million sleeping pills so we would sleep through the plane being crushed from the pressure as it falls to the bottom of the sea have been subsiding, and have been replaced by thoughts of faces of eager young children ready to have a slew of fun with their new teachers! Yay!

Are we there yet?

Jeez murphy!

How long can a VISA take? I guess at least three weeks at the high point of the season, at the busiest immigration office in Seoul. Apparently, it should be finished "any day now," as it's been for a week.

So, for all of you we haven't told this to more than once now, we have absolutely no idea when we're leaving. We can only say that if we get our insurance number by tomorrow (wednesday Aug. 22nd), the very earliest we're likely to be on a plane is friday, the 24th.

There is a plus in having more time to see everyone, but I hope y'all understand that we're VERY anxious to get going, and to start earning some money.