Week 1

We had an exceptionally chill weekend. The week started out ridiculously crazy and confusing and awkward, but on Thursday we were able to move our stuff into our permanent apartment in Chilgok. We began teaching our classes on Thursday. With the exception of a few instances, I think our classes went pretty well. Mitch teaches upper level students who are around the ages of 13 to 16. Those students are much more quiet, and some of them have attitudes...much like teens in the States. I teach mostly younger students around the ages of 8 to 11. These students are pretty rowdy and cute. The first two days of teaching were definitely challenging for both of us (as it probably is for most beginning teachers). "Teacher! you are so little!", "Teacher! you have big eyes!", "Teacher! You have big nose!" were some of the comments that the jokesters directed towards me. "Teacher! You have big ears...like monkey!" is what Mitch heard. We got quite a chuckle out of these comments...they are pretty much right on!

After our first day of work, one of the guys we work with (Nick from Wisconsin) was eager to introduce us to a few of his friends and a cool place to eat. His friends, Maggie and Noah (also both from Wisconsin) live just a hop, skip, and a jump away from us. The place we went to eat at is called "orange" by the foreigners. I'm not sure what it's real name is. I'm guessing it's called "orange" by the foreigners because it has an orange sign. Nick, Noah, and Maggie were great to have with us at a restaurant because for the first time in several days, we had translators. They read the menu to us and explained what a few of the plates were. We decided on bibimbap and bulgogi. They were delicious. The food here is very spicy--a different kind of spicy than even Texans are used to. It's very good though...well...the few dishes that we've tried have been good.

The next day, Nick, Noah, and Maggie took us to Home Plus. It's about a 10 minute walk from our apartment, and I would say it's the equivalent to Walmart back home. Once again, it was nice to have translators there because every item was written in Korean, few had English subtitles. We picked up some milk and cereal, bread, tea, oranges, peanut butter, jam, and a few other odds and ends and trekked home.

Aaah, the weekend. What a nice time. We finally unpacked our suitcases and got settled in our apartment. Maggie called us and invited us on a trip to downtown Daegu that night, but we opted not to go since we still had some things to straighten up and we were pretty exhausted. We had a lovely night, cooked spaghetti, had tea, and watched several episodes of Seinfeld. Sunday, we talked to our friends and families for quite a while (with the computer hanging out of the window) and took some pictures of the apartment to put online (we posted the link below).