Day 44: Christmas in Korea

Merry Christmas! We've had a pretty good last few days and had some fun being silly foreigners wearing Santa hats both at school and around town. We both wore them all day at school on Wednesday and Thursday while trying to make some really boring lessons interesting for our students. One of the classes (mostly 2nd graders) was learning about how to manage money. On Christmas Eve. We felt bad for them, but we don't have much freedom so we just did our best to be funny and weird for them.

Last week we found a great online shopping site that has an English-language website that has free shipping domestically in Korea. We ordered a couch, a table, and a rug from it, and they were delivered this week, which was an awesome Christmas present to ourselves! We also got a really nice gift from one of our bosses--Dongbaek tea from Jeju. Dongbaek is the pink flower that blooms in the winter. After school we went home to our new furniture, made some pasta (it's a luxury here), drank some of our new tea, played Christmas music, and opened the presents that my parents sent us. It was actually a really nice Christmas Eve.

Our fancy new tea

Our living room actually looks like a place people live with our new furniture. Our little tree and presents are in the corner.

Delicious pasta for Christmas Eve dinner

 Today, we got to talk to both of our families, and we went for a run while wearing our Santa hats. We were just going to go for a normal run, but a couple miles in we just decided to climb a mountain instead. Geoje is so awesome that we can just randomly decide to do that. We climbed the same mountain that we climbed our first weekend here, but it was a lot cooler this time because it was a really clear day and we know our surroundings a lot better, so we could see more of the island and places that we saw meant a lot more to us this time.

In the afternoon we decided to explore for a place to eat. We walked through an outdoor market for a while, then we went to the big 8-floor department store and wandered around for a while. We got a Christmas-y drink at Starbucks and people watched for a bit before exploring town a bit more. We went to the part of town that's closest to the Samsung shipbuilding yard, which has a bunch of foreign restaurants. We hadn't been there before so it was a new place for us. We looked at a few of the restaurants but none of them seemed like they would be worth the price. We ended up going back to the restaurant on the 6th floor of the department store that we went to the first weekend here. We didn't want to go to a place we'd been before, but it was really hard to turn down getting full on delicious food for only 15,000 won, which is like 12 or 13 dollars.

Even though we didn't eat at this restaurant, there was a garden on the roof on the 11th floor that was open so we got a nice view of the Samsung shipbuilding yards.

Tonight we were watching the action movie channel (Harry Potter Deathly Hallows parts I and II this time), and there was a commercial for an app that lets you order takeout. Sarah decided that we needed to try it since we were both hungry again after eating at 4. So we ordered pizza delivery and it worked! This might be a bad thing for us...

Anyways, Merry Christmas to everyone! Tomorrow we're off to Cambodia, so we should have some interesting stuff to share here!

Day 38: Life

Hello readers! (aka Mom ;) haha just kidding, maybe one or two other people read our blog too...)

It's been two weeks since the last time we blogged, but it feels like 2 days. Our time here has absolutely flown by. I'm sure it will slow down, once the novelty wears off, but we have very much settled in here. Work is going really well. I really like the kids. I'm finally getting to know them well enough to joke around and have fun with them. On Friday, we had our first test of the term. If they finish the test early, they can draw. Max, one of my trouble makers, drew this lovely impression: 

He likes me though, I can tell. ;) 

I've been studying Korean a lot more, which is good. I'm understanding a little bit more of the routine, daily conversations. If anyone read my Japan blogs, you'll know that I LOVED going to the post office. I think it'll be the same here. We had to go and return a package of things that we ordered for our apartment. I was so excited to understand the post office lady when she asked me where we were sending the box. She also complimented me on my writing (Hangul), which I'm sure was B.S., but I understood! When living in a foreign country, you have to focus on the little victories. :)

 I can also pick up bits and pieces of the kids' conversations. The other day, I could tell that some of the girls were mad at the boys. Like, fuming. It was break and there were only girls in the classroom. I shut the door and said, "Just girls today! We don't need no men!" (Yes, I used less than "standard" English.) They all totally understood me and cheered! It was great. With all the lessons about "Mom is in the kitchen," I have to sneak my feminist agenda in there whenever I can. 

We finally hung out with another person this weekend! Yay! Her name is Brittany and she is one of the other foreign teachers at our school. Now that we've met her, I think it will be much easier to "network" through the ex-pat community and make some new friends. 

Another highlight of this weekend was figuring out how to online shop. I know it sounds ridiculous, but we've had such a hard time trying to find affordable furniture. A couch isn't something you think too much about unless you don't have one. We found a great Korean discount site that has an English version. We ended up buying a small sofa/futon, a rug, and a small table for like the equivalent of $90 or so. Our apartment will soon feel much more like a home. Here are some pictures of our apartment and some of the surrounding areas:  

Bedroom

Living room with mattress pad as makeshift couch...

Kitchen

Our little Christmas tree with presents from Steven's parents :)

From the outside.

Our closest outdoor "gym" - right next to a freshly plowed field.

One of the roads we often run.

One of the mountain roads.

The gravel road along the mountain ridge that we often run.

The view from the same road.

The neighborhood from our roof.

We have a short week with Christmas this week! And we did find a church to go to for a Christmas service, which will be great. We are also starting to get really excited about our little trip to Cambodia! One week from now we will be enjoying Angkor Wat and 90 degree temperatures! :D

Day 24: Busan and Christmas Plans

Two weeks in to our new job in our new city, and I would say that we're beginning to feel pretty comfortable here. We've figured out the buses, grocery shopping, eating out (more than we probably should), and we've discovered some awesome running routes. Week two of work went incredibly fast. We've gotten into a routine, which makes the days fly by. We also found an American movie channel on TV. It seems to play mostly action movies. As we were writing this, one of the Taken movies ended and Star Wars episode 1 started.

This weekend, we decided to take a trip to Busan, about an hour bus ride north across some huge bridges and through a couple long underwater tunnels. It was a really cool drive. When we got to Busan, we hopped on the subway and went to this giant department store. We thought the one in our city was huge...this one was about 10 stories with 2 basement floors and an 11-13 floor that was really an outdoor rooftop park! The store itself wasn't that exciting, just expensive clothes; lots of Western brands. Christmas music was playing so it didn't feel like we were really in a different country. The sky park was really cool though.

Here are some pictures:

These are the bathrooms...yes, that's a dachshund peeing.

Gardens, real dirt 11 stories up.

The view of the harbor from the roof. 

After the department store, we made our way to Yongdusan Park, which we had seen from the sky garden. It was built on a mountain/hill in the middle of downtown Busan, and on top of it stood the Busan Tower.

The tower behind an important general.

The view of Busan from the tower - with the mountain it's built on, it's higher above the city than the Space Needle.

View of the tiny ant people in the park below. 

After the park, we visited a place where, unlike the department store, we knew we were in a foreign country! We walked a few blocks through a crowded market area where everything from liquor and chocolate to squirming eels and pig face was being sold. That was just on our way to Jagalchi, the biggest fish market in Korea. The building itself is 6 stories tall. The bottom floor is filled with tanks and tubs filled with live fish, clams, oysters, eels, octopus, squid, rays, sea slugs, anemone, and pretty much any other edible sea creature you could think of! The floor was soaking wet, and every so often a fish or squid would wriggle itself out of a crowed tank and splosh onto the floor. I'm sure the locals thought we were ridiculous, the way we gawked at everything. The other floors in the market were mostly restaurants. One, a seafood buffet; another, you buy a fish from the first floor, bring it up, and they cook it up for you right there! There were also a few other, simpler, seafood restaurants. It was pretty cool. We will definitely go back sometime and try the restaurants, but yesterday we just looked at everything and took it all in.

Looking down the aisle

After our day, we were pretty tired. We at at a Vietnamese place, actually, and headed home. On our way home, we started talking about what we should do with our Christmas break. We get 10 days off following Christmas, and we didn't want to just sit around in our apartment for the holidays feeling homesick. So..........WE BOUGHT PLANE TICKETS TO CAMBODIA! Air Busan flies direct from Busan to Siem Reap, so we'll be going there for four days!! Both of us have always wanted to see Angkor Wat, and Cambodia is extremely rich culturally, not to mention affordable! So, very excited about that. It's only three weeks away! 3 weeks from now, we'll be here: