You're Welcome

We're alive

We are in fact living an hour apart by subway. The apartments are very small, but fine. Hopefully something will get figured out.

We both are visiting our schools tomorrow morning to meet the staff. After that back to quaratine for another week! They're afraid to let us near the kids because they think all white people and foreigners have swine flu.

I visited Bendan yesterday and then forgot what stop I lived at on the way back. We got lost in the subway system and this underground mall for 3 hours. Brendan wanted to kill me.

Not too happy

So we both found out where we will be teaching last night. I am at an all girls school called Sewha Senior Highshool and Brendan is at something like Hongwin Elementary.

They are in 2 different districts.
They are an hour apart by subway.
We do not have couples housing.

I'm not happy.

I'm trying to get one of us changed to at least districts that are near eachother, but it doesnt look promising. I'm just not sure that it's worth it to stay here and be miserable living an hour apart. I didn't come here to be alone. The guy in charge is completely uncooperative and is pretty much a jerk.

I'm not quitting yet.
But this is just really dissapointing and unprofessional.
I was literally lied to before coming here.

Pictures!

Brendan eats tofu


What I had for dinner, from top left clockwise: Some kind of spicy sprout or stalk, beef and mushrooms, sauteed tofu, corm stew, white rice and kimchi.


The view from Brendan's room.


Interior of Brendan's room.


Interior of my room, notice the similarities?


View from my room. (Suwon)

I hate H1N1!

So we were supposed to be finishing up with the really boring part of our week (Lectures, medical checks, etc.) and doing some fun stuff tomorrow. We WERE going to visit a school and observe an English class. We WERE going to take a tour of the city of Seoul. Instead those things are being replaced with "reflection time" and Temperature checks. This is "due to the increasing number of H1N1 influenza patients in Korea."

B.S.

We've been here for days. We've been checking our own temperatures every day... well some of us have. Don't you think that if we had the flu some one would have noticed by now?

I'M SICK OF BEING STUCK AT THIS UNIVERSITY WITH NOTHING TO DO.

So now not only are we completely unprepared to step into the classroom on Monday, we will never have even seen one before and forget knowing how to get around the city we are moving into.

Harrumph.

We found out what grades we are teaching...

drumroll please....

I will be teaching grades 10-12 and Brendan will be teaching 3-6. Weird huh?

It's been an ok week. I've eaten nothing but Korean food which mostly consists of rice, kimchi (a spicy fermented cabbage), some sort of unidentifiable meat, and soup. The soup usually looks like hot water with an onion or radish floating in it, although we did have something that tasted like cream of corn soup yesterday for lunch. There is a lot of spice in Korean cooking, but it's not too spicy. I would say that the worst thing about it is what everyone's breath smells like after eating it. (ew)

We've been spending most of our time between classes meeting people and hanging around this courtyard that's in between our 2 dorms. We still dont know where we will be living or where our schools will be. Let's hope they remember to place us together!

We are still sequestered on this University campus. It's weird because I don't really feel like i'm in Korea at all. I'm surrounded by English speakers all of the time and the landscape isn't that different from home. The only real difference is that I can't read any of the signs!

We're in Korea!

We are currently staying at Suwon University, just south of Seoul. We got in last night around 7 and took a bus here. We're being quarantined on the campus in case any one of us has swine flu, so we can't leave until Saturday. I think thats around the same time that we're going to find out what grade we're teaching and in what school as well as where we will be living. Cross your fingers for us that we will be placed in the same apartment! Anyway, just wanted to let everyone know that we arrived in one piece! Brendan says hi!

The time is drawing near...

We will be flying to Korea in one week and one day!

Our itinerary looks like this:
August 22 Dulles-San Francisco: 6:45 am-9:45am (local time) It's actually a 5 hour flight.
August 22-23 San Francisco-Seoul: 2:45 pm-6:45 pm (local time next day)I think this one is 12.5 hours...

I'm pretty excited, a little nervous.
We haven't found out yet where we will beliving or teaching, or what grade...

Just wrapping up the final details!