Weekends are Busy!!!

It seems we really only do things interesting enough to post on the weekends. During the week, we are pretty boring. Justin goes to work, I stay home and do laundry and dishes. Justin comes home. Some nights (but not many), we go out to eat, mostly we cook dinner. Sometimes Tim comes over, the boys game. We watch movies. Pretty low key.

The weekends, however, are interesting enough to write about. This weekend was no different. We had a great time with Karin and her friend Will. We met them and a couple more of Karin's friends (Rusty and Gail) for a yummy lunch in Itaewon on Saturday. It was a pub and they serve English/German food. Justin had a steak. We walked around Itaewon quite a bit. Then we went back to Rusty's apartment to pick up Karin's dog and car. Rusty has a very nice apartment filled with beautiful furniture. My favorite was the mother of pearl inlaid coffee table. It was stunning. There was a huge peacock made of mother of pearl on the top. Rusty and his wife didn't bring any furniture from the US when they moved, so all of it was from Korea.

Afterwards, Karin, Will, Justin and I took a cab to Insadong. It is another very tourist-y place. They actually have clothes that will fit westerners there. I am planning a day-trip to Insadong very soon. Great shopping, and there are several temples to visit. Between those two, you can spend a whole day there. I want to wait until the trees bloom more to go back though. It will be much more beautiful.

By the time we had walked through Insadong, we were exhausted. We cabbed it back to Karin's car in Itaewon, then drove through some crazy traffic to Karin's apt. in Incheon. She also has an awesome apartment. Three bedrooms, a couple balconies, a loft, and the roof. She even has a bathtub!! Yes, I got to take a nice long bubble bath. With rubber ducks!! We watched a couple movies, made some gingerbread, then crashed. I am so jealous of her bed. The one we slept on in her guest room was infinitely softer than ours. She has 2 kitties too!! Kitty is a typical cat, not really wanting to be touched. But the other one, Xander, is a lover boy. So sweet, and so big!! He is a VERY large kitty. I love him already.

The next morning we hung around watching movies and playing wii. Ate some delicious banana bread. Then we drove back into Itaewon for Rocky Mt. Tavern's breakfast. They serve it until 3, but we just barely made it. It was great; eggs, bacon, toast and hash browns. Very laid back. Only 6,000 won, and very large portions too. It is a tradition we might have to continue. After some napping on the booths there, we went to the International Market so I could pick up some things. I have all the ingredients to make Chana Masala now. Not so easy to find. Also to make banana bread in the toaster oven Karin gave us.

After that, we drove through even more crazy traffic to Songtan to see Tim. He is working weekends right now. So we met him and some friends at a German Restaurant. It was real german food. I had the bratwurst. We even had apple strudel for dessert. It really amazes me that we can get such a variety of food, and eat out often, and it is cheap!!

We went to Tim's friend's apt to finish off the night with some Rock Band. A great end to an awesome weekend. I took all day yesterday to recover. Naps are fantastic. Tomorrow we will actually be deviating from our regular weekday schedule. I will be subbing at a daycare in May, so I am going to meet the kids. And Justin has the day off!! I hope we will be able to make it by the Embassy to get some paperwork done.

Day off!

Tomorrow is the school's "birthday" so I get the day off. Woot!

Quick note from work today.

I thought these were too funny not to share. Linda (My co-teacher) brought in this picture book "My First Dictionary" and we were quizzing the students from it. We did dentist which turned into telling the kids a whole bunch of technical names for different kinds of doctors. Including Gynecologist. I got to teach 12 year old Korean kids gynecologist. We also do this simple game with them sometimes to help them with left and right since they still mix those up. Raise your right arm, touch your left hip, et cetera. Linda added a new command to it today. Touch your right knee. But she had started with touch your left hip. So I'm standing in front of the kids doing the Captain Morgan's pose. My job is so weird sometimes.

Another good weekend

Lots of coffee shop time and good food. I think I'm not taking as many pictures anymore because things are becoming familiar. We spent most of the weekend in Songtan. Spent quite a bit of time in The Coffee Tree there. Yum. Really awesome drinks and smoothies. Some gaming for the boys, some internet surfing for me.

Yesterday was an adventure/ordeal. Justin and I really just wanted to stay home, but ended up making the trek to Songtan again. The promise of Karin coming from Incheon and real breakfast burritos lured us there. We finally got the burritos around 2 pm. But they were worth it. Real bacon, cheese, hash browns, SALSA. Mmmmm....

The rest of the weekend was relaxing. Movies, reading, sudoku. Another week is here. Looks like we've got some big plans for this next weekend though. More to come.

안녕

Weekend Update, a little late

I've been recovering from the weekend, so I'm finally ready to post again. It was very busy.

Friday night, Tim came to visit. We got pizza!! It was actually pretty good, even though it had corn on it. Why? Why corn on everything???

Saturday, Tim came over and we took the subway for the first time. We went to Itaewon, in Seoul. It is the "little America" of Korea. We had some very odd sushi. There was ham, mustard, and ketchup on some of it! We met up with some people that Tim knew, Karin and Lexi. They took me to get some pampering. Pedicure! It was awesome. I got green toes, cuz they celebrated St. Patrick's Day on Saturday. After that, we headed over to the !English! bookstore. Used and new books. A little expensive, but can you get them anywhere else? No... There is also an international market that we stopped by. Lots of Middle Eastern food. I was so excited to see all the spices they had there. Garam Masala and Turmeric! I'm going to be making some Indian food, for sure.

Sunday Justin and Tim had the morning to themselves for some gaming, and I met up with them later for lunch. Again, amazing food. We had Thai. AMAZING. Love that place. Then we hopped on the subway to Suwon to see Watchmen in the theater. We also got to meet a couple more of Tim's friends, Stacey and Michael. I really hope I'm spelling everyone's names right!!

There was lots of walking and busyness this weekend, so I had to take a couple days to recover. So far, a good week. Maybe we will try out hiking or the hot springs soon. It is definitely warmer than it has been.

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Uptown Girl

I gotta post this real quick between class. I got to teach my kids "Uptown Girl" by Billy Joel today! Freakin sweet. I was not expecting that at all. Also when the class ended I think one of the girls blew me a kiss and four of them did this little dance thing that I assume is from some Korean video and said "That's so hot." I gotta find out what that's about.

Me, Myself, and I

Sorry I haven't posted lately, everyone. Work has been a mental drain and when I get home I just want to relax instead of post or anything. You want the scoop on me? Here it comes.

I'm adjusting a little more every day. Having Caroline here with me and Tim nearby is awesome. Tim keeps introducing us to new people he knows. Between getting time with my Girl (and thereby the blueberry), my Tim, and the new friends he introduces us to I'm keeping sane. Also, Tim and I are playing some scion which is awesome-cross. His character is a Scion of Odin built around becoming the Norse God of Wolves. Dad is hoping he will be able to cast down the fenris wolf come ragnarok and change the fate of the Aesir. Oughta be an interesting game.

Not being able to communicate is stressful. This especially comes up with my co-teacher. Sometimes she is trying to explain things to me that I can tell are important for my job but she doesn't know enough English to do so well. It really stresses me out. Other than that things are good at work. The kids are cool, though crazy. One day I had to do an autograph session for them. Seriously...almost a whole class came up to me and asked me to sign their workbooks. That was really weird. Another class all wanted me to shake their hands. A bunch of students gave me candy one day. Its always an adventure with them. The material I'm being given to teach them is very pre-school bubblegum crap though. I'm going to need to really get together a some decent material here soon. Lunch is another adventure. We get Kimchi everyday, which I like though it can sometimes be to spicy or too fermented. We also get a soup dish which has usually been pretty good. Also a dessert which has been bananas, a yogurt drink, strawberries, dumpling things, and cherry tomatoes. Everything else is a crap shoot. Our meat one day was fried fish which I couldn't eat cause it was full of bones. It's like they fish for bone fish here or something. Then today it was a tasty chicken thing. Notice how I often can't give you a good description of the food. Like I said lunch is an adventure.

I'm sure things will continue to get easier bit by bit, day by day. I'll be adding some pictures to this post later and editing it for grammar. I'm not feeling up to the task just yet.

Food!!

It has been...different...trying Korean food. I think I really don't like it that much. A lot of red chili, red pepper, and fermentation. We have gone to a couple restaurants so far. The first one was right across the street from the apt. building. It was strange. The traditional Korean thing is to have pork or beef ribs that they grill for you at the table. There is a grill set into the middle of the table. Then they give you about 3 million side dishes. These include kimchi, of course. Usually several different kinds of kimchi. There is a salad made with cabbage and soy sauce, another salad with lettuce and I think asian mayonnaise. There was corn and crab, seaweed soup, and a few others. When the meat is cooked, you can wrap it in a piece of lettuce with some garlic and red chili paste. That meal my tummy was off, so I stuck to the meat and lettuce only. It was pretty good.

Night before last we went to a welcoming dinner for all the new teachers at the school. That restaurant was MUCH better in my opinion. The meat (pork ribs) tasted better, there were better sides too. There was some sausage slices, salads, crab legs, kimchi, broccoli, pickled radish, rice noodles with different sauces, and my favorite, a scoop of something like yams with golden raisens with a kiwi sauce. Yum. There was lots of food, lots of soju, and lots of teachers taking shots. Afterwards, they dragged us across the street for some Korean Karaoke. Hilarious! Even at the karaoke place, there was some strange snack of strips of dried squid w/ peanuts and mayo dipping sauce. And of course, more beer.

Last night, Justin and I went out again to a Japanese place. More my kind of food, for sure. We got a platter with over 20 pieces of nigiri and 2 rolls for 20,000 won. It also included some kimchi and miso soup. Very yummy. We will definitely be going back there soon. It is also flanked by Dunkin Donuts and Baskin Robbins. There are so many sweet shops around here. It surprises me. Pastries, cakes, ice cream, candy, SO much junk food. According to Justin, if we are checking out the Korean culture, that includes the bakeries!! I guess that's ok with me...

That's been most of our food experience so far. Otherwise, we eat simply at home. Eggs and rice. Hot dogs for me. Had a craving. :) That's about it. Justin eats Korean lunches at school, he'll tell you more about that in his post about school, I'm sure.

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Battery low

Ok, I've been here awhile. And my battery is in the red now. I will save the other posts for tomorrow. It has been great being able to update this finally!! Hope these were some interesting reads!

안녕

Fresh food every day! (warning: dog meat)

The market is so wonderful. It is in the "alley" behind the apartment building. There is really about 6 alleys that make up the major part of it, and smaller offsprings from that. There is just so much to see and buy here. Plenty of fresh fruit, veggies, fish, seafood, and meat. Anything you could possibly want. There is also lots of shoe and clothing stores. Not that any of it would fit us.

On the weekends the market is very busy and crowded. But I went yesterday and it was just a few people. Very laid back and easy to walk through. The pictures I was able to take really say more than I could. The fish is one of the most amazing things. There are humongous fish in little buckets just flapping around. There are large tanks containing live octopus, squid, more fish, and eels. Only once so far I saw some dog meat. It is pishon here. We are learning the symbol for it so we don't ever make the mistake of ordering it.

We already have our regular places to buy in the market. There is a nice little supermarket for frozen goods, detergents, etc. There is a shop that I have gone to several times already. It has almost anything you could want for the kitchen or bathroom. Even bowls and cups and toilet seats!! It is so stuffed with things that you can barely walk down the aisles. Everything is much cheaper there.

As I was walking through the market yesterday, I came across a little llasa apso dog. It was wearing a t-shirt, jeans, and it's tail was many different colors. Obviously a very spoiled little dog. Not the first or the last spoiled dog that I came across yesterday. Several tiny dogs in girl's arms or in bike baskets. Cute little mutts.

Along the same lines as shopping, on Sunday we went to Sung-ton. It is the town that was built up around the Air Base. Mainly for foreigners. We got the most softest blanket in the whole world, as well as the cheap dvds there. Tim got us on base. We had some American food for dinner and hung out with him in the dorms. This probably bad, but I now know that Cheesecake Factory cheesecake is available to me for 4 american dollars. Mmmm.....

Speaking of food, that will have to be it's own post too.

Studio living

I was surprised when we got here on Friday to find that we are in a studio apartment. They had made it sound like a one bedroom. It is an awesome place though, and the building is well-situated. We are on the 8th floor out of 15. The school says we should be getting a bigger place once I am further along in the pregnancy. We are hoping for 2 bedrooms. We do have a midwife coming to stay with us!

It is a very different apartment than I've ever seen. To open the front door, there are no keys. You type in the pin number and it beeps at you then unlocks. If you aren't careful, it will slam behind you as you walk in. Beeps again, then locks. It is korean, so you remove your shoes at the door. There is a nice little bathroom with a shower, sink, and a toilet that has a LOT of buttons. Not sure what they do yet. I'm sure when Justin figures it out he will have a post dedicated to it. :)

We have a nice little kitchen with a toaster, fridge and microwave. There is the tiniest dishwasher, no oven, and a very nice gas stove. We went all over the place this weekend to get the necessities for the kitchen; rice cooker, knife, cutting board, kettle, etc. We were able to find everything very cheap in the market behind us. But that will be in the next post.

Our bed is SO hard. You cannot find soft mattresses in Korea. We've already gotten used to it though. It helped that our friend Tim brought us two mattress pads. There is a tv, we just bought a nice little dvd player for those cheap movies we bought!

There is an enclosed balcony that has a washing machine. It took me several tries (I won't say how many) to figure out how to use it. No dryer, gotta use a drying rack or clothesline. The wooden floors are heated. That is the heat for the whole place. Even when our apartment's heat is off though, it gets warmer from the other apartments around us. It is really nice.

I've already gotten my first couple plants. I have an idea that I will be getting at least a few more. During the summer, the balcony is going to be great for growing all sorts of things. My first plant I got at the Lotte Mart down the block from us on the first day we were here. It is a very tiny succulent. Yesterday I got a medium/small sized Rosemary plant in the market. Very good price for 3,000 won. Rosemary is my favorite herb, so it is no surprise I already have one. Even though I brought seeds to grow my own. I actually brought quite a few seeds, but most of them got lost on the flight inspection, it seems. Only the rosemary, chamomile, and snow peas made it.

I think that is most everything about our apartment. I really like how centrally located it is. Haru coffee and 3 pc bangs across the street, the huge market behind the place, Lotte Mart down the block, and the school just down the alley. I will post about the market next.

Hello! I am finally posting again! I have not felt "comfortable" posting yet. We don't have internet in our new apartment yet, so I've been going to one of the local pc bangs. It is a bunch of pcs that you pay about 1,000won per hour for. Mainly set up for gamers. I found a coffee shop right across the street from the apartment that has free wireless. That is where I am now. It's called Haru Coffee. Good coffee, nice place, and I can use my own computer for free. The coffee names are in english too!!

So, as for me, I've been good. I had a little bit of a rough time at first. Jet lag + 1st trimester = icky. I've been getting better each day. The food and smells are pretty hard to get used to, but I'll get there.

It is a cool sunny day today. Past couple days have been warm. Nice clear weather. No yellow haze yet. *crosses fingers*

I've got so much to talk about, I'm going to break it up into seperate posts. The next post will be about our apartment.

Movies...

For 25,000 Won (which is about 16 dollars) we bought Harry Potter 4 and 5, the first season of the Office, and the first season of Weeds. Pretty good deal aye?

First days in Korea!

Hey everyone. So no pictures for you yet but I thought I'd give you some idea of how things are going here. Lots of funny little details are different here. They have a lot of back alleys for instance. At least that's what I thought at first. Upon further inspection I realized that the "back alleys" are actually the roads. They have big just for car roads but most of the roads aren't like that. At least not where we live. Most of the roads are very small and don't really have sidewalk. People walk on them, cars drive on them, its a kind of free for all really. And there are nooks and hidey places all over. For those of you who roleplay it's the very world of darkness. Lots of little shops which are packed as full of stuff as possible. We also have a market nearby which is freakin cool. Most business is done out front of the shop. The market streets are covered which makes sense. Tons of fish both alive and dead for sale. Its hard to describe the market. I knew it would be when I saw a tank of octopus and squid on the street. Sick people wear masks like a doctor in surgery would. Since there are so many people and no conception of a "personal bubble" its about the only way to keep from spreading germs. the sidewalk often has "braile" paths for the blind. Right near our house he have a PC bar and a massage parlor. The massage parlor, according to Tim, is the sort of place where the "endings are very happy" and the massages kind of suck. I'm sure he's not talking from personal experience on this though. Apparently the massage parlors are marked by barber poles. If there is one, it's actually a massage parlor. If it has two poles...well you know. PC bar is kind of cool.They bring out out a little ash tray with some liquid in it for washing oils of your fingers and a little cup of really delicious coffee. Also it's open 24/7 so until we get the internet at our house, which will be soon I hope, this is our connection to you guys. Went and ate with Tim and some linguist friends of his at a nearby restaurant (and there are a bunch of nearby restaurants). They have a grill built into the table where they cook the food, you get about 6 different sides, they cut the meat with scissors. Its a pretty cool experience. I'm really looking forward to really getting our feet around here. So far its been a very cool experience. More later.

Hi from South Korea!

We are here now safe and sound. I'm gonna keep this post short for now since im at a PC bar. Once we get some pictures of our place and some details figured out we'll make a bigger post. I just wanted to let everyone know Caroline, I, and the blueberry are here.

News

Here is the skinny my friends. We are currently in Reno, NV and heading out to California. Due to baggage issues we determined that it would be cheaper, easier, and more fun to rent a car and drive out to Cali stopping in Salt Lake City and Woodland to visit Caroline's friend Clint and my Grandma respectively. We have hit a small snag in the weather though and had to stop in Reno as well. However we are getting ready to head out to Woodland now.

This all leads up to catching a plane Thursday around noon and arriving in South Korea on Friday. We can't wait!