Our students

On a typical day, we might receive an email such as this from a student:

Hi,Teacher
i'm lemon class,and my name is Ginny.
i jave a bigtest in the school.
So I can do my homework, so I go to cafe.
But there isn't have any homework.
so I want to get a homework in this E-mail.. but I think I can do my homework. so please, understanding me when I don't do my homework.

So if anyone is interested in knowing what its like to teach here - try getting these types of emails and attempt to decipher what exactly it means. We weren't sure how to respond here...so does she have the homework? Will she do the homework if we email back? Who knows...haha

We just thought you might enjoy something authentic.

No news is always good news...

We are sitting here laughing at our lack of blogging over the course of the last two months. We felt that everyone needed an update, but we really haven't done much lately. We are just working regularly and living our day to day lives here in Korea. To be honest, its not much different than home with the exception of the obvious things like: not being able to read signs, talk to people or eat normal food, but thats a minor problem! Our Korean language has increased to at least 10 words now - we might not say them right, but at least we sort of know how to say some things. For example, we will never say the word Hyundai the same. Americans totally butcher the name of that company. We have been making a lot more friends and just really enjoying our lives here.

Oh wait...Connie did break her foot. So we guess that is worthy of the blog. She was just walking to Save Zone to go swimming and took one wrong step (in flip flops) on the always uneven ground and bam - broken. This is the least handicap friendly place ever. Everything is stairs and hills without ramps or elevators. It was an unfortunate event considering it did put a bit of a damper on her 30th birthday - one week later. But don't worry - that didn't spoil the festivities completely! She is still undergoing physical therapy, which is weird in Korea, but it seems to be helping. No, she didn't choose the green cast - that was the only option - plus she had purple crutches - lovely!

Otherwise, over the course of the month of November, we had people visiting. Tim came to visit for about 10 days followed a week later by Samantha's parents for 1.5 weeks. It was great to see everyone and kept us busy throughout the month. We actually behaved like tourists in Korea since we had to show people around (yes - Connie doing all of this on crutches). Wow - look...another palace/temple. Yep - they look the same as they did in China.

We celebrated Thanksgiving with friends because Costco actually sells turkeys for the holiday. On the actual day of Thanksgiving we worked and went out for chicken with Samantha's parents - real celebratory, huh? At least we tried to eat a bird.

So what do you have to look forward too? Well we are heading to Shanghai on Dec 27-29 and then Tai-Pei & Hong Kong for the Lunar New Year (Jan 23-27). I'm sure we will have plenty of stories to share and pictures to display. Talk to you all soon!

Eyebrow waxing...in Korea???

Before deciding to come live in Korea, we had some concerns - will we like it there? What will we eat? How will we learn the language? etc. However, none of those questions even come close to the most important question - will we be able to get our eyebrows waxed? This may not seem like a hugely important question to many of you, but when we both have been getting our eyebrows waxed religiously every 4-6 weeks since we were 18 - its a pretty important part of our lives! We had heard that Korea was fairly westernized, so we figured it shouldn't be that hard, right? haha Little do we know...it was damn near impossible.


The first step in trying to obtain our goal was to ask around. We didn't meet any girls here that had it done; however, they all had a friend that did. It's quite mysterious how they could never contact that friend to find out where. So when the "friend plan" failed, we had to try a different route. So we started by stopping by salons and asking, which apparently the word for waxing is "waxe" - tough to pronouce. We actually found one salon that basically said they didn't, but there was a place across the street that did. So we went across the street - they didn't, but they did direct us back to our first location saying that they did wax. Whatever, so that plan failed.


Our next stop was Beijing. We were staying at this beautiful 5 star hotel - WITH A SPA! The spa even said on their website that "waxing services available" - great! We are getting our eyebrows waxed in Beijing. There, they told us we could get them done, but we had to pay for the "Eyebrow Reconstruction Package" - interesting. So $35 and a clean face later...our eyebrows still were not waxed. Did they look better? Yes because they ladies plucked and razored them. But they still were not waxed. When we told the lady we wanted them "waxed" her response was "wax? no no - that's too dangerous." Really lady? Because I'm pretty sure that people do it ALL the time in the US. Whatever.


So onto Daegu. In Daegu there is a US military base called Camp Walker. Everyone says that you can go to any military base and get anything you want done right outside because all the surrounding businesses cater to the military. So we found Camp Walker. First task. Then we found 1 salon - guess what...no waxing. Shocking.


Finally, we decided screw this...we knew in Itaewon (Seoul) everyone was foreign and we were bound to be able to get it done. We had done a little internet research and there were no straight answers, except from this one lady's very nice blog that said something about The Green Turtle, which is right above Quizno's. She mentioned that it was extremely expensive though, so its better to go to the military base...hmm...because we had so much luck with that last time. She had also mentioned that many places will wax OFF your ENTIRE eyebrow. So not only did we have to worry about finding a place, but now we needed to add in the fact that they might take all of them off. Geez.


Anyway, so Saturday, we decided this is getting to be a life or death situation. We have been living in Korea for 3 months with catepillars growing at a steady rate on our face. We are pretty sure that we were not going to be able to see soon, if this problem did not get fixed. So we booked our $20 KTX ticket's and headed up to Seoul. We found The Green Turtle and guess what...our eyebrows got waxed and they couldn't look better! Yippee!! And...why do people think $10 is expensive? At home, we paid $20. We know - you have to add in the price of the ticket to get there, but it was worth every dime. We actually decided to throw in a pedicure as well so now both our feet and eyebrows look great. We feel like humans again and it was nice to get a bit of pampering.


So for any poor souls that are reading this and looking for eyebrow waxing in Korea...just suck it up and go to The Green Turtle. It was worth it.

Weekend trip to Beijing

Over the Chuseok Holiday, which is like Korean Thanksgiving (Sept 13-15th) we decided to take a trip. We had the Monday off for a 3-day weekend AND it happened to fall on Samantha's 30th birthday. Since we had never been to China before and had heard some not-so-good things about it, we decided to go on a tour. There is a travel agency here, based in Busan, that organizes trips just for foreigners. You have to get a visa just to enter China, so the agency arranged all of that for us. Our package included airfare, a GREAT hotel, food, plus all the sites. (On a side note, thanks to the dollar being strong, we saved a bundled on the airfare part by using our American credit cards! We are trying to make the dollar work to our advantage!)

So Bryn covered our classes on that Friday and we headed up to Seoul for the night (Samantha's actual birthday). We decided to try a different area of Seoul so we went to Hong-dae, which is by Hongik University. There were tons of restaurants, bars, and shopping. Its a great town with a lot to see and do. We walked around attempting to find a Mexican place called Casa Maya, which we hear is there, but had no luck and ended up having Italian. (We are dying for Mexican food! Its the one thing we truly miss that is just NOT available here!)

We flew separately from the rest of the tour group because we wanted to fly out of Seoul and they all flew out of Busan, so we didn't meet up with the group until we arrived in China. And yes..it was very easy to find them...a bunch of foreigners in an Asian country. Anyway, in Beijing you will be pleased to know that we were complete tourists!

Our first stop was the Temple of Heaven. (Yes they didn't even let us drop our stuff off at the hotel first!) Basically, its just a temple. Apparently many Chinese people from neighboring communities hang out there to socialize. They dance, play mah-johg, and talk. In a sense - its like a recreation center in the States.

After the Temple of Heaven, we were off to dinner at the Peking Duck, which is a very famous restaurant in Beijing. The server cut the duck right in front of us, which was very tasty (fatty, but tasty). Then it was on to an acrobat show - basically people that were extremely bendy doing things that we wouldn't recommend such as bicycling on your neck on a wire about 5 feet off the floor. Afterwards, they FINALLY let us go back to our hotel; which was awesome. Not only did we NOT have to share a bed, but we also had carpet, a real shower, and SPACE! It was so nice.

The next day, we had to be up bright and early for an exciting day of sightseeing. We started at the Jade factory, where they make real Jade. Samantha bought this bracelet that she basically needs to break her hand off if she wants to get it off and on. Then we went to the Great Wall. It was beautiful, but very steep! It was like you could see forever from the wall (probably the point in building it - huh?) We climbed it for about an hour before our calves were aching, we were completely out of breath, and sweating profusely, but it was pretty up there! There is something like 1600 steps in the portion of the wall that we climbed. The steps were all different sizes; which made it tough to climb. The reasoning behind the different sized steps is so that when other armies would try to invade - they couldn't plan their attack since the stairs weren't all the same size. Yep Mom and Dad - we did learn something on the trip!

After the Great Wall (and without a shower) we went to Summer Palace, which was beautiful and then a Pearl Factory. It wasn't the famous Pearl Market in China; it was small and kind of expensive, so we didn't buy anything. Then we were off to a Mongolian BBQ place for dinner (yep - we still hadn't showered). Finally, after a very long day we were able to go back to the hotel and relax. Mind you...this is about 9pm at night when we started at 8am!

Our final day in China we went to Tianamen Square. Our tour guide proceeded to tell us that there was a small misunderstanding at Tianamen Square.....I guess he has never read an American history book or an American newspaper, we would have called it a massacre, not a misunderstanding! And then onto the Forbidden City. Afterward, we just couldn't handle the group any longer, so we broke off and met up with Samantha's high school friend Kurt, who was in China to watch his brother compete in the Paralympics. Anneli (our new friend), Kurt and the two of us went to the REAL Pearl Market, which was awesome! We wheeled and dealed and haggled our brains off for about 3 hours! We got some awesome deals!!

After the Pearl Market we really wanted to see the Olympic venue, which was not part of the tour, so we bought tickets outside the Olympic park and went to see the bronze medal wheelchair game. It was very cool to walk around and be a part of it all.

The next day, we left China and made it back just in time for work (yes we were pushing it!). Some thoughts we had on China...

1. It is extremely clean. We had always heard it was dirty, it wasn't at all. Part of this could be due to the Olympics, but we found it really clean.

2. Food = Awesome! It was oily, but so good!

3. It was unbelievably cheap! It made Korea look expensive! A cab ride was about $0.70! It was very confusing to convert everything from the RMB to the Won to the Dollar, but by the end...we got the hang of it! We both bought REAL pearl earring for $3.50!! hahaha Gotta love China!

4. The air quality is poor and very smoggy as everyone said it would be.

5. Chinese is a language that we couldn't possibly comprehend, its a good thing almost all their signs and menus were in English! More people spoke English in China than in Korea. It was actually easier to get around.

Finally, we just aren't tour people. We will probably never take another tour because you are so stuck on a time schedule; however, we met some awesome friends! We are actually headed to met back up with them this weekend in Daegu. So the absolute best part of our trip was the friends that we made. We are working on our trip for the holidays - we are going to Thailand and Malaysia to spend some time in the sun. Fall has officially hit here and the weather has cooled off a bit. We are in full swing of work and our daily life here in Korea. We are still trying new things when we can and trying to plan for all of the trips we want to take. We still love it here and are REALLY glad we are not watching the political bashing ads on TV or dealing with the depression. We are just happy to be sheltered from everything else and enjoy our stress free life. Our biggest problem is where to travel next! Let us know if you have any questions/comments! We love to hear from you.

Differences from Korea

Do you remember in July we wrote on the blog about how there are no stops signs in Korea? Well guess what - on Jeju Island - there are stop signs! We can't believe we forgot to tell you in the last post! We were so surprised to see one that we had to take a picture. So you might be thinking that this is no big deal; however, we didn't even see one car actually stop at a stop sign. We would see them periodically throughout the island and no one would stop. So apparently they are either there for decoration or as a reminder that they should stop because NOT ONE CAR stopped. They just blew right past them. But by jove - they do have stop signs on Jeju! We thought you would like to know.

Also, we would like to start a petition for America to join the rest of the world on the metric system and to change from Fahrenheit to Celsius so we can be the same as everyone else. The other day in class I was trying to tell my students about 1000ft. dust storms that blew through Oklahoma during the dust bowl in the 1930's...well we have no idea how to convert that to yards! (Neither of us paid that close attention to math in 3rd grade!) And we can't tell anyone that 120 degrees in Phoenix is hot because that means nothing to them! Even to our Canadian friends! So we are constantly trying to convert to Celsius, which clearly we don't know so the conversation tends to go like "is 35 hot?" and they say "yes" and we say "then I guess its like that." Seriously...

And on a side note...if America doesn't want to change to Celsius, then at least make it easier to convert. Like why can't we just add 32 to everything? They are really making our lives challenging! However, on a side note...we can understand why the Brits didn't want to change weighing items to pounds because that could get really confusing for them since no one would know if they were talking about money or weight. However, we would really like to petition for America to change - why do we always have to be the country that does everything different???

Vacationing on Jeju Island

For our first week off, we decided to travel down to Jeju Island to check it out. It was originally where we were offered contracts to teach, but we thought we would be too far from everything, so we turned them down. After visiting there, we are basically regretting that decision. Jeju is absolutely beautiful. It is called the Hawaii of Korea. Its where many honeymooners go from the mainland.

Although most people fly to Jeju, we wanted to take the ferry so we could really check out the country. We took the KTX down to Mokpo, 2 hours, and found a cheap motel. Ok...NEVER go to Mokpo. There isn't a bar around! We spent 1 hour looking for something to eat, eventually found a pizza place, and then spent another good hour looking for a bar - found this dingy place that we are pretty sure women are not supposed to go to, but whatever...they had beer - so we went.

The ferry leaves 2x a day to go to Jeju. So we took the 9am ferry. Although we were stupid and booked second class seats...we weren't sure how it was going to be and we wanted to make sure we wouldn't be stuck sitting without seats in economy. Stupid move, but learning experience. Basically second class seats are just oversized seats in a room staring at a wall- weird. Who wants to sit on a 4 1/2 hour ferry ride in a chair? Downstairs though there was a convenience store (same prices as the mainland - they don't try to rob you as American convenience stores would) and a restaurant. You could also go up top and sit at picnic tables, which is where we ended up spending the entire journey. We had a blast! It was a beautiful day, not a cloud in the sky. We ended up hanging out with all the English speakers (a total of 3 other people; Simon, Troy, and Dan) the entire time. We all sat outside and played cards and drank plenty of beer. What a great time! Yep - so when we arrived in Jeju we were all wasted...smart move. :)

We booked a hotel online before leaving because we weren't sure if it would be hard to find one, but we only booked one night because we weren't sure where we wanted to go. The cab driver knew exactly where we were staying, so that was nice. Our hotel was awesome - we had a shower curtain AND carpet!! Geez...the things we take for granted. The bed was excellent - comfy with soft pillows...things NOT usually found in Korea. So we were in heaven. Since we were already wasted we decided to head over to the beach to relax and continue drinking. Simon, from the ferry, joined us - he was backpacking around Jeju, lives in Seoul and is from England. That night we went out and partied in Jeju City - needless to say, we were quite hungover the next morning, which is part of the reason why we spend $5 on a cab ride to a McDonald's about 20 minutes away. :)

When we got up the next day we decided to head over to Jungmun beach, which we heard is amazing and beautiful. We took the bus (not fun when hungover) across the island (40 min bus ride) to the beach. We found this awesome place to stay for only $50 a night!!! Once again...another comfy bed and this place even had a kitchen! Very nice for Korea. We hung out on the beach that day and drank some more; also met Rebecca, from Utah - teaches in Seoul. We met up with Simon again as he had taken the bus down there earlier that morning. In Jungmun is where we saw our first Dolharubangs. They symbolize protection and/or fertility Gods, which is basically an oxymoron. They are funny statues you can see all over the island, which we loved to take pictures of. Jungmun was another location without bars...so the four of us (Simon, Rebecca, and us) went to the grocery store and bought beer, sat outside on our patio and drank. (Are you starting to wonder if we are alcoholics?) It rained and was windy while we were at the beach, so nothing very exciting to report. It was pretty and we would definitely go back though.

Since we woke up the next day to another rainy day, we decided to head to the other side of the island in hopes of better weather. We took an hour bus ride to Seongsan Ilchulbong, otherwise known as Sunrise Peak, which is a dormat volcano. So we climbed up about 1000 stairs to the top - it was amazing and beautiful, but 1000 stairs - straight up! Our quads were screaming and considering we hadn't worked out in 6 weeks...we really needed the exercise. And that was basically our first tourist attraction - go us! It only took us 5 weeks in this country to do something touristy. :) We know...you Mom's and Dad's - that's all you would have been doing, but we prefer to immerse ourselves in the lifestyle (drinking) over here. hahaha (P.S. Simon came to meet up with us here too).

The next day we decided to head back early because we need to book our trip to Beijing. So we took the night time ferry back (at 4:50pm). For the day though we went to this absolutely amazing beach called Hamdeok. It had crystal clear water and was basically empty. Simon came to meet up with us again after he went and did some of the caves on the island.

Then we eventually left Simon (he was going hiking the next day) and headed back on the ferry. We missed the KTX train by 10minutes, so we had to take the slow train...so instead of a 2 hour train ride, it took us 3 hours - arriving back around 2:30am. Long day!!

So now we are back to work and so glad its not intensives. We work about 18 hours a week from around 5pm - 10pm - what a great schedule! We actually joined the gym and are beginning to get into a regular routine. Also, Greg, our new co-worker from Philadelphia showed up and we are showing him the ropes (or attempting too since we still don't know anything).

Next weekend...off to Beijing! We'll keep you posted.

Our day at the beach

So today is Saturday. School starts again on Monday, so we decided to head to the beach today for a little R&R before we start working again. The day started at 8:15am because we needed to have breakfast and then leave for the beach prior to 9am. The bus ride to the beach is anywhere from 1 to 2 hours, so we were planning ahead. After researching yesterday for about 2 hours on how to get to the beach, we arrived at the Seobu bus terminal at about 9:15 and tried to buy tickets to the Daecheon Beach. The lady then said that we needed to go to the Daejeon Bus Terminal. So we caught a cab there, where we were told to catch the #841 bus to the beach. We found the #841 bus and had a small run-in. Who would have thought that you needed exact change to use the bus. Let alone - you don't know how much you are supposed to be paying. Well, we got a discount because the bus driver was getting irritated with us. It only cost a total of 1700 won ($1.70) instead of the 2000 won ($2.00) that it was supposed to cost because the bus driver was frustrated with our lack of Korean; looks like we got a discount! The bus continued to make frequent stops in the city and then made a final stop at the Seobu Bus Terminal where everyone but us got off the bus. Now - if you reference back to the top of this post, you will see that we initially started this trip at the Seobu station. Nice huh!

Well, the #841 bus driver must have had some compassion for us because he walked us into the Seobu station and helped us buy tickets to the beach. Realize now that it is 11:15am. Yes, it has now taken us almost 3 hours to get back to where we started. Well, we talked about it and decided to bag the beach for today due to the time and having to be back home to be able to go out tonight.

What have we learned from this little adventure, you may ask?!?!?!

We have learned:

1. Always have proper change for the bus. If the bus driver continues to yell at you in Korean, keep adding change to the bin until the yelling stops.

2. When everyone gets off the bus and you are the only 2 Caucasians left on the bus - GET OFF THE BUS. I know, it seems like a simple concept, but its us and what do you expect....

3. When asking for a ticket on the bus to the beach - don't use the beach name....use the name of the town that the beach is in. Ultimately this was our initial down fall. We could have saved 3 hours this morning.

4. Don't wear your swimming suit - change when you get to the beach. This is an important one. Underwear is ten times better to wear when you are confused/lost/getting yelled at.

5. When you see the same people 2 times in one morning....throw up your arms and call no joy. Yes, this happened to us at Seobu station. To the point where the guy was badgering us to get back in a cab to go to the Daejeon station again. Of course - this was all in Korean....ya, like we understand!!!!

6. When in need of interpreters while traveling - call 02-1330. Yeah, amazing...there was a sign right next to the ticket booth in the bus terminal. We didn't see it until the second time we were there this morning.

So end result: $20 and 3 hours later - we are going to the beach next weekend. We will make sure to have proper change for the bus and will use the Bor yeong city name to get the bus instead of the beach name. Who said you can't teach an old dog new tricks.....

Also, the Jeju post is coming. We have to gather our thoughts about that trip as it was so amazing and we don't want to make you all have to read 5 pages.....just trying to think of you guys :)