.....I think thats enough for today.

I am sorry to everyone about the lack of punctuality with these blog posts. There is a lot going on and very little amount of quality computer time. I mean, if you were wandering around Korea, teaching youngsters English languages, and eating fabulous food, would you post everyday too? Just kidding. It really because we are responsible and don’t internet on our work time (too much) and we are sharing one tiny internet connection.

Friday I move into my home – that’s when things get interesting!

Ok….so what happened this weekend. I guess I’ll just start by saying it was fabulous! I really had such a good time. Ok…with that, here goes.

Waiting at the bus stop

Saturday – we wanted to go to Dageu….so we did! This involved a very early 7:00 wake up, get ready, and get to the train station. Luckily we already knew where this was (the train station was an integral landmark for our search of the rock gym the night before.) We bought our tickets no problem, and were on the train ready to go!

Lanterns made of teapots!

Now, there are many different things that we could have done on that hour and 45 minute train ride. Being girls, you might think we gossiped the whole way to Daegu. Or maybe, since we got up so early, we took a nap. Perhaps you assume we were just glued to the window, looking out on the South Korean landscape. To tell you the truth, we did none of these things. Instead we did something helpful and productive – we learned some Korean numbers! 1-20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, and 90! We were pretty proud of ourselves!

When we got to the train station, we jumped off the train, getting our bearings so that we can head in the right direction. All of a sudden I am attacked from behind by arms and a red umbrella! Shaken to the core, I turn around and it’s Sandy! She, Geoff, and everyone else we were meeting had been on our same train, just a different car! What a good surprise!

Strolling down the streets of Daegu

Sam want to copy this new South Korean trend. I totally support her

After making introductions and recovering from shock, we all headed out of the train station. Sandy and Geoff brought along a really informative friend who had been in Korea for 3 years and knew all about Daegu! He showed us all around the station, the subway, the movie theatre, the bookstore, the streets, etc! He was amazing. We had pizza for lunch, caught up on eachothers lives, and looked around the streets. At one point, we decided to separate. Some people wanted to keep looking at shops, and some wanted to look at parks (I being in the latter group). Geoff and I tried very hard, but got a bit confused on where we were going. Eventually we gave up and decided to brave the subway and head to the giant tower in the sky.

More street strolling - the whole lot of us look like a giant tour group...which we were

There are Nate the Great in Korea!

The kid in the white shirt wanted to be in our picture, so we let him!

We arrived, but not with enough time to get to the spinning restaurant at the top. Instead we went for a walk around the park, where we saw a game of stick throwing and betting. When Geoff went to take a picture close up, the men yelled and waved their arms no – that was the end of that.

Me, the amusement park, and the tower in the sky

Subway Art Exhibits

After running to make it to the appropriate meeting spot in time, we all got on the same train and headed home. It was nice that we could all ride together, even if the stops were different. It’s a good thing to know for next time.

He likes Florida too!

When we arrived back in Pohang, we were ready for dinner. Since the train station was so close to the stream-shopping (see picture that Sam took before), we decided to find a place to eat there. What street was was an entire street full of shops and people. I guess it’s the perfect place to go on a Saturday night. We were lucky enough to find an amazing restaurant to eat at with a view right over the street. The whole time we were eating, we were staring out the window pointing out strange people walking by. It was so nice. And the food was amazing. And we got free coffee. All this wonderful stuff and the bill was only 8 dollars each. My new favorite place!

Downtown

Sunday – We decided to sleep in for a change, work on our lesson plans, then head to the beach.

Bukbu Beach

The long walk around the coast

Going to the beach was more fun than lesson planning, that’s for sure. Anyway, we went to Bukbu Beach. Now, we were expecting a wild crazy beach scene, with volleyball and swimmers everywhere. Unfortunately, we were a bit disappointed. It was a cloudy day, the beach was kinda empty, and the volleyball courts were down. We though maybe we were at the wrong beach, so we decided to walk around the coast until we found the right beach. This was a mistake – but a very nice mistake. We ended up walking for about an hour and a half, until our friend Nick rode up on his bicycle. He informed us that the beach was actually Bukbu beach, and for some reason that he didn’t understand, it wasn’t very busy today (perhaps maybe because it was Sunday?) Anyway, Sam and I were starving so we popped into the closest restaurant to have a meal – then left right away. The prices were horrendous! So expensive! I guess we should have expected this, seeing as the restaurant was right on the coast and served fresh seafood. We checked a couple more places, learning from our mistake and asking for the menu this time. Every place was expensive or closed (it being Sunday you know). After a while we gave up and got gas station food. Sam bought a kimbap triangle and bbq-flavored cheetos. I bought prepackaged sushi and digestive biscuits (I love the fact that digestive biscuits are so popular here! Regular, chocolate covered, and even vanilla oreo style!). Really, it was the best lunch ever, being as hungry as we were.

How did that man get on that rock?

Looking back at the city

After our amazing lunch, we left Nick and headed toward the cultural arts center. There was an art exhibit we wanted to check out. Then, right next door in the sporting complex, we found the highlight of the day – a massive huge ginormous climbing wall! It was right there, no fence, no rules, nothing! I guess you just walk up to it with your gear and climb to your hearts content! I can’t wait until I get the change to try it out. This is all Sam’s find – I give her the credit. She goggle mapped every sport complex in town, then zoomed down with the satellite view on each one until she found a climbing wall. That is dedication!

First view of the climbing wall

After this amazing discovery, we were ready to go home. Unfortunately our day wasn’t ready for us to give it up. We got on a bus that didn’t take us home, instead it took us to the famous fish market. This is a market with lots of dead fish. And alive fish. And dried fish. There are also vegetables. And then more fish. What more can I say?

The Fish Market

The Fish Market again

We finally got home, and passed out – completely satisfied with our second weekend in Pohang

Sam already knows everything in this book

And we BOTH know everything in THESE books!

What Courtney has been up to...

So…since this is quite a few entries in one…or what some might like to refer to as a book…..lets get started!

First, I want to say sorry for one thing - the amount of pictures. I realize that I am the picture-taking queen – but I have been slacking. Maybe someone should remove my crown or something. Anyway, - hopefully when I go through the photos I’ll have a lot more than I thought and be able to trick you into thinking I have soooooo many!

Our last meal together before we all headed to our new homes

The meal was waffles - and yes....that really is our waffle

Of course, some of us just chose the ice cream drink instead

An example of a typical orientation elevator ride

Ok….so lets go back to the day I arrived in Pohang! I was met at the bus by Mr. Yoon. Though he isn’t my head teacher, we do talk all the time. He is so friendly and helpful and answers all the questions I have about Korea. Because he had ridden the bus to pick me up, he begged a ride from another co-teacher and we got a ride home. When we arrived at Pohang, we were met by Miss. Kim – my substitute co-teacher I guess you would call her. She and I went to dinner, and then we went back to her place. I was told I would be staying with her 2 nights, then on Saturday morning I would stay with a student and their family until my studio apartment was vacant on the 10^th of September. Soooo scary, but what else could I say but yes?

The next morning – my first day of school. I met the vice principal, the principal, and then did some intro-to-korean speech in front of ALL the teachers. I had been practicing my “Hello, my name is Courtney, I am from America, Florida, it’s nice to meet you” all morning – I had it perfect! Then of course I flub it up in front of everyone. I think it’s because they shoved a microphone in my face – I wasn’t expecting a microphone!

The view from outside my school

School hallway - right outside the English classroom

One of my co-teachers teaching in the fancy English Classroom

Anyway, I was only there to introduce myself to the students. Easy enough. First class – went in – did my introduction – and was asked some crazy questions. This repeated three times. Because I got asked a lot of questions throughout my intro-question-and-answer first week, I’ll just go ahead and list the lot of them here.

- How old are you

- Do you have a boyfriend

- How tall are you

- How much do you weigh

- What is your favorite actor

- Do you know who Kim Yu Na is?

- What is your favorite band?

- Do you like Korea?

- Why did you move to Korea?

- Do you know Korean?

- Where do you live?

- What is your favorite number?

- How many brothers and sisters do you have?

- What is your fathers job?

- Is that your natural hair color?

- Is that your natural eye color?

- What is your favorite fish?

- What is your favorite Flower?

- What is your blood type?

The list goes on and on! Anyway the first class I was so nervous, but by number 3 it was a piece of cake. I was still stumbling over the favorite music/actor/movie questions though – for 2 reasons. 1)I don’t know enough popular things to give the right answer and 2) The answers I was giving were lame answers of things these kids had never heard of!

Anyway, during a break Ms. Kim and I went for a walk – to see my studio. It might not be common knowledge, but the truth is I have never lived by myself nor ever wanted to live by myself. I think I would get too lonely and sad. But, when I saw this apartment all that fear and doubt went away. I knew that this place was to be mine and mine alone and it was beautiful! I could very easily live forever here! My own bedroom with HUGE hanging racks (no closet, just racks on the wall). The living room is tiny and all mine – a little kitchen area, a hallway with a fancy washing machine. Even a tiny perfect little bathroom! I figured it would be worth a little wait – for a place as great as this. Did I mention it’s right across the street from my school? How in the world did I get such luck…I just don’t know!

A picture of my studio - isn't it great?*

Anyway, enough fawning over my new digs. After school I went with Ms. Kim and looked around a bit before dinner. Ok….I’ll pause here to talk about Korean dinners, or meals in general. I hadn’t really experienced this before, but now it’s coming out in full force. I love the way meals are structured here. Basically, there are a MILLION little plates in front of you. You pick and choose which plate to eat from. Everyone shares little plates. They keep bringing little plates until there are little plates stacked on little plates! I’m so glad I worked at Sumo for 3 years (never thought I would say that) because otherwise I might not have the skill to pick up tiny bits of food from all over the table off tiny plates with chopsticks! It really is a fun way too eat. I love it.

Ok……so Ms. Kim and I ate, went back to her place, talked a while, then went to bed.

View of pohang from the top of the homeplus

The next morning: Saturday

This is the big day, the day I went to go live with the family. We met up, and I went to their house. Their house is soooo beautiful! It’s on the edge of the mountain with farms and other houses surrounding it. The air smells like rice crops, the wind blows, and it looks green! The house was full of windows and open space. Really, just a wonderful place to live. The family allowed me to stay in the daughters room and treated me so well! The first day I was there they brought me to Yongdong village – a historic village that people still live in today after they retire. It was like a historical retirement village!

Teeter-board at the village!

The next morning, I was invited to attend church with them. I really didn’t know what to expect. What it was was an ordinary church service, just in Korean! They even had songs like ‘I will sing of your love forever’, just in Koran. Everyone was so nice – it was really a lot of fun! I am so happy I was able to experience this!

Church Service

Living room

The bedroom I stayed in - beautiful!

The next couple days I started doing my introductions for my classes. What this means is that I created a slideshow of pictures “I am from America *picture of America* I live in Florida *picture of Florida* This is my family *picture of family*, etc.” I got a lot of interesting responses from this. Of course, people associated Florida with Miami (I made sure to mention that too). Whenever they saw the family picture I would hear “Lovely family, Beautiful”. When they saw dad sometimes they would say “Santa Clause!” (in the picture I used, dad had a beard). They would laugh at Kia’s name (Kia is one of the cars made in Korea.) When I showed Bailey’s picture, they would gasp (it was a circus picture – pretty cool trick). Kia’s picture was her and her horses, which they also loved. I always showed a picture of the house, which they really liked. But really, who wouldn’t enjoy a picture of our home?

For the first week, I spent my time getting used to school the new way of doing things. All the students are so nice, always saying hello in the hallways. All the teachers are so friendly and helpful, especially the English teachers. I’ve been learning all kinds of things, like Korean History, famous names, how to read the Korean letters, and pop culture movies and TV shows. (Usually at night, I would sit in the living room and watch TV, while the student I was staying with would point out a famous person or band when they came on the screen.

On Wednesday, I packed up my stuff and left the family to live with Sam. I really enjoyed staying with them, but I felt bad living with them for so long. I really appreciate everything they did for me – I don’t think it could have gone better! Though living with Sam was a little bit farther, it was nice to be able to relax and see the city. Really, it was nice to be on my own again. I guess I never realized how much I needed time to just be by myself.

Anyway, I think Sam has taken over from here on the Journal Entry-ing. These are a bit out of order, but hopefully they will make sense!

*Just kidding - that isn't my apartment. I wish.

Some of my first Korean purchases - a backpack, a towel, and a mug.

Also, since Sam had such an awesome mug collection – I had to get one in order not to feel left out.

Oh Pierce!

It’s finally Friday! Ah I am so tired today; I never realized how tiring teaching really is. I now have a new respect for all of my Elementary, Middle, High school and University teachers! Classes went well today, some were better than others. I really like Friday classes because we have class in one of the only “no shoes” classrooms!

After my day of teaching, I met up with a homeroom teacher at my school who was nice enough to take me to get my cell phone! We’ve been told that you really should have a Korean speaker with you when you go get a cell phone, because there is a big chance the place won’t speak English, and there is a lot of paperwork. So she was really nice and picked me up from my house and took me to a cell phone place. We spent quite a bit of time there, talking about the fees for the plan and the phone itself, but finally I decided on everything and we started with the paperwork. I even got to pick out a little cell phone charm for free, it was awesome! But then at the last minute, the guy noticed that my bank card number didn’t match my Alien Residency Card, which is what you need to get a cell phone in Korea. This was a huge bummer, and he wasn’t allowed to let me have the phone. I was bummed but my new friend told me that it was ok, she would take me on Monday to help me set up a bank account with my ARC and then after school we will go back to the phone place to get my phone. It was so nice of her to help me with this process, and also to offer to help me again on Monday.

So after the cell phone mishap, I told her I was meeting my friend at Home Plus at 8:30, so she dropped me off there and headed home. I went up to the food court where I was meeting Courtney and had a hard time finding her until a Korean man spotted me and said “Hello!” Now, I’m actually used to this by now; Korean people saying hi to me or asking me things in English just so they could speak English. So when he said hello to me, I said it back to him. And then he said, “are you looking for your friend?”, and I was really surprised because that was exactly what I was doing! He told me she’s sitting down at the food court, and directed me where she was sitting. I thanked the man and went down to sit with her and two other guys she was talking with. I told them how funny I thought it was that a strange Korean man assumed that an American girl was friends with the other random American girl in the Home Plus food court. It turns out, that man was Courtney’s co-teacher of sorts, and I had actually met him the other day when he dropped her off in my town. I felt really terrible because I didn’t recognize him, but I’ve met so many new people in the past two weeks, it’s hard to keep things straight sometimes!

Courtney was super pleases to see her lover Pierce Brosnan was in South Korea with us!

After I met up with her, we took the 130 bus to try to find the rock climbing gym in our town. We actually found it pretty quickly after we got off the bus, but for a while on the bus I was worried we made a mistake trying to find a place in the dark. It was really great finding it, but we didn't have time to actually climb that night because the buses stop running at 10:30 and it was already 10 pm. We started heading back to the bus stop but we decided to stop in the convenience store to get some water and food. I got a Kimbap Triangle which is really yummy. It is just a triangle of rice wrapped with seaweed, and it has a small amount of meat in the middle of the rice. Well I got one, and it was one of the spiciest things I’ve eaten since I’ve been here! It was actually kind of painful while I tried eating it at the bus stop. Once the bus came, we got on and drove home. When we got to my house, I plopped down on my bed and almost fell asleep in my clothes I was so tired!

This is Kimbap Triangle. Mine was super spicy, but the other flavors are really great!

Side thought:

• The churches here are really interesting. There are these LED crosses lit up high in the sky to indicate that there is a church there. They look like they should be in the movie “Romeo + Juliet” with Leo DiCaprio and Claire Danes.

Far in the distance is a lit up cross.

Clip from the movie for reference.

• So the light bulb in my shower blew out and it was too early in the morning to tell my landlord about it, and we couldn’t figure out how to take the fixture off to change it ourselves. So we left for the day, and accepted the fact that we would be showering in the dark for at least one night. So when we got home that night, I started taking a shower with the door open a tiny bit for light to get in. But after a minute or so, I closed it and closed my eyes and pictured I was some (even farther) far away place, taking a shower under the night sky. At some point I imagined I was right near some tropical beach, showering next to the loud waves and a clear sky, and the next minute I imagined I was somewhere in Africa, like Eliza Thornberry (you know, from the Nickelodeon show “The Wild Thornberrys”), taking a shower amongst the elephants and giraffes.

We Eiffel Towered It

Hey everyone! So we know, we know that our blog has been a bit scarce lately but don't be mad! We are doing so much during the days (teaching, exploring etc.) that it is hard to stay awake long enough at the end of the day to write an entry. So these next few will be delayed, but we are working on them. Hopefully soon, when Courtney gets moved in and comfortable, and when things start settling down, the blog will become more regular. Don't worry loyal readers! We love and miss you all!

Wednesday was my first time teaching the 1^st graders. My weekly schedule it a bit confusing and I’m still trying to figure it out, but I think I have 2^nd graders on Tuesday and Friday, and I have 1^st graders on Wednesday and Thursday. The classes went well, but my feet were killing me by the time lunch came around. The lunches at my school have been really good, I’m really glad I like them so much. That day we had these huge HUGE grapes for dessert. I didn’t get any for myself because I didn’t have room on my plate, and I’m not a huge fan of grapes anyway. My principal was eating across from me at the same table and saw that I didn’t have any grapes, so he grabbed the whole dish of them and brought them over to our table. I tried one and I was blown away! These were not like grapes from back home. They were extremely juicy, and they didn’t even taste like grapes. They tasted more like peaches to me somehow. Anyway, I ended up eating about 7 or 8 because I loved them so much. After class I was told that I would be teaching a class called the Brilliant Kids class, which was an after school class for 5^th and 6^thgraders who were really good at English. It sounded like it would really be a great class to teach so I did some preparation for it. After I left the school I headed to the Lotte Mart to meet with Courtney who was getting dropped off there by someone from her school.

These are similar to the ones at school, but those were much bigger.

We had been talking for a few days trying to plan our meet up, and when the day finally came, we did an “Eiffel Tower” at the Lotte Mart. When Courtney and I were in Europe last summer we were both doing different things, but wanted to meet up in Paris for a two day stay. The only problem was, we didn’t have cell phones and we weren’t getting to Paris at the same time. So what we said was to meet at the Eiffel Tower every hour on the hour until we found each other on the day that we both got in. So when I got to the Eiffel Tower I saw how obviously huge it was, and realized that deciding to meet “in front” of it was impossible because there wasn’t really a “front” of the Eiffel Tower. So without knowing what would happen, I sat down and looked for her. Surprisingly enough, we found each other in about 15 minutes! It was so quick because I sat down and she walked around, so she ran into me in no time. So now whenever we have to meet somewhere and we don’t have a way of being in contact, we pull and “Eiffel Tower” where I sit down somewhere at the store or busy place, and she walks around and looks for me. It worked beautifully this time at the Lotte Mart because I had to read a story for my Brilliant Kids class, so I sat down and read while she walked around and found me as soon as she got there. After we found each other we tried to do a dry run of Courtney’s bus commute to school for the next morning but we ran out of time. We had made plans to meet up with all the other EPIK Pohang people at 7 at an English speaking bar downtown. The meet up was really great. We first met with a girl named Erinn who lives like 5 seconds away from me; she’s already been in Korea for a year. We took the bus to a bar called Tilt, where they were having Mexican night so I was really excited. When we got there, it was not too packed, but everyone that was in there was from EPIK or at least spoke English. It was really cool seeing everyone, and there was never a moment when someone didn’t have something to say or ask! Oh and we had burritos! They were actually really good burritos too, I was pleasantly surprised.

Thursday was Courtney’s first morning getting to school from my house so she left super early just in case so she wasn’t late for school. I go to the English teachers’ lounge every morning before class starts. We have this small “snacks and coffee” corner where we have lots of instant coffee packets and cute Korean snacks. Yesterday I tried an instant packet of some sort of tea. It was similar to chai tea where it was milky, but when I started drinking it, I got a sunflower seed in my mouth. It was the strangest thing, but it was kind of a nice little surprise. I wasn’t a huge fan of the tea in the end but the sunflower seed factor really made it worth mentioning. I taught 1^st graders that day. They are so cute it’s terrible! Classes went well; we learned how to spell. Lunch was interesting and exciting like usual. We had kimchi rice, some yummy egg soup, radish kimchi, and then no one will guess what we had for dessert. We had tomatoes for dessert!! It was strange because they were actually a bit sweet too. After lunch, I had a few hours to prepare the Brilliant Kids class I was going to teach with another teacher. It was the total opposite of the other students I teach because these Brilliant Kids are the smartest on the 5^th and 6^th graders. The class went well, I really enjoyed it. After that class ended I headed home to grab some money for Courtney. We had planned to meet at the Home Plus at 7pm for dinner but she forgot her money at my house so I went home first to grab it for her before heading over to the home plus. When we met up it was me, Courtney and our friend Melinda. We ate at a restaurant that I’d been to once before, and it was really great. The three of us split 2 meals which were both really amazing. The food they brought out looked exactly like the fake food display in front of the restaurant. That’s one of my favorite things about Korea, the fake food displays! They are so much better than just pictures of the food. I will always pick to eat at a place that has one of these versus a place that just has pictures, mainly because the food looks REAL and it just looks so amazing!

This is only half of our awesome yummy meal!

We think that fake food making is an art form here because the examples could fool a chef!

The pretty fish at Home Plus.

Seriously, these are not fake!

The turtles were trying to be like me and Courtney in the circus.

The dried squid here is very popular.

I'm determined to try this stuff sooner or later!

Oh and I just wanted to show everyone how fantastic the toilet paper in Korea is.