photos

Samsung Plaza

Sports Day at Olympic Stadium in Seoul

a sampling of Korean cuisine

Lianne in a traditional Hanbok

Shopping and other things

Hey everybody,
I'm sorry I haven't written much in the last couple of weeks. I have been pretty busy and finally have some down time to write. I have had fun the last two weekends shopping for Christmas gifts. Two weekends ago, I went to Iteawon and had fun buying a great winter jacket lined with fur and a nice brownish green color. It is down filled and very warm. I'm just trying to figure out how I'm going to get it back to the states. I also had fun getting some gifts for my family. The place where I went to get my gifts was called the Rainbow souvenir shop and the lady who worked there was very nice. Emily was coughing the whole time and she asked us if we wanted some ginseng tea. After, a while she asked if we liked it and when we said yes she went and got two boxes of it and gave one to each of us. She said it was an early Christmas Present. I definitely will be going back there to get more stuff. I also had fun going to my first Korean Wedding this Saturday and all I can say is it went very fast. They have there wedding is a wedding hall and the preacher, flowers and caterer are all provided for the wedding. They give you 30 minutes then move the next couple in. I had fun trying many different Korean dishes ant the dinner afterwards and found most of it quite good. I didn't know acutely what all I was eating but I didn't get sick later so that's a good thing. I then went shopping at Samsung this Sunday and found neat stuff for everyone at a reasonable price. I then spent the rest of Sunday wrapping presents until 12:00 at night. I have had fun working out in the gym next door and have great partners from work to help me stay motivated. It's getting harder to do it though because its getting very cold and I hate walking home afterwards. I am getting very excited about my trip to Thailand and wish the days would speed up so it will be time already. I think it will be very fun celebrating New Year's on the plane coming back. I will send pictures as soon as I can of my trip. I gave Annie my memory card from my camera and she says she is downloading them onto a disk for me its just taking awhile. Hopefully it will be done by the time I leave. I wish I could just down load it onto the school computers but alas I can't. I miss all of you and only have 9 more months here.

I learned how to read Korean!

This Saturday was very exciting. Ms. Lee our IK Supervisor and Korean speaker held a mini training session for reading Korean. She taught us the Korean Alphabet and gave us some worksheets to work on. I learned how to spell my name and actually read some Korean words. This is a great ability to have since most of the Korean products are spelled in English but written in Korean. Shopping should be much easier now. I thought I could show you it on the blog spot but the yahoo keeps changing it back to English. I then spent the rest of the weekend sleeping because I have a crappy cold. I went to the pharmacist and they gave me some cough medicine and some kind of brown stuff you drink for the rest. It tastes like crap but boy it works. I asked for some Nyquil but I would have to go to item to get some, so I made due with what is here. I just got a letter from Mrs. Kerbaugh that she wants to send me a flat Stanley. I said yes and can't wait to start working on it.

Here some pictures of my kids during Chusok. I was happy to wear the traditional dress of Korea, the Hanbok. It was hotter then heck though because it was polyester and a hot day. We walked across the street to the park to take these pictures and had lots of fun doing it.

Trip to Thailand and Church

Hey everyone,

I have had fun the last couple of days because Emily and I have been planning a trip to Thailand for Christmas and met a nice Christian Korean girl who invited us to church. Emily and i have booked reservations to fly to Bangok for three days then we will go to a smaller village down is South Thailand called Pucket where we we stay for another three days then fly home. The air fare for all that is 700 dollars can you believe it. The hotels there range from 50 down to 30 depending on how exctavagent you want. We are thinking of going to a hostil maybe they would be 10 -20 we are still looking at hotels. We asked the teachers here if the travel agent we picked was good and everyone says they are reputable and the man we are talking to is great.

Saturday we are supposed to meet Minshyun at the subway at Ohmn station at 11:50 and she will show us how to get to the church then we will have lunch at the church and meet some people there. It is a Assembly of God so i'm happy and she said they have lots of foreigners there. Other than that I have just been busy planning for the Halloween party and end of the session tests. Then I have to plan for next month.

I love and miss you lots

Hanging Out in Seoul

Well, I am sitting in a internet/gaming cafe at midnight and it is the bomb. I just got done eating at a restaurant where you picked out your meat and veggies and fried them up on a grill at the table like all the others I've been to. This one was diffrent in that you could eat as much as you wanted. You had free refills on pop and any kind of liquour you wanted. Ice cream, cookies, fruit , bread etc. I ate lots of beef, some bacon and fresh shrimp I had to clean and peel. I hung out with Jodie, Emily and the rest of the teachers from Jodies English Village. Then Emily and I decided to walk around and check out the stores. We saw a booth that had people try and break so many plastic tiles to win stuffed animals. It was fun wacthing people try and break them. I also had fun taking the subway for the very first time today and liked it. It''s cheap and was clean the only drawback is that it takes awhile. We spent two hours just to get to our location of coarse we are pretty far into Seoul.

Pictures

Sorry folks had a mix up on software for my camera. I grabbed my mp3 player software not my cameras software. I am working on downloading it and then burning it so it may take a while to do so. Please be patient with miss forgetful. I will post pictures when I can.

Last day before teaching

Today is official the last day of observations and I get to start planning and setting up my classes. I have observed my class for two days and already love them. The teacher who I am replacing had a terrific structure and schedule already set up and the kids are very well behaved. I have the same teaching style as him and the transistion should go very smoothly. I talked to my academic Supervisor, Bronte, and she is very nice and knows what she's doing.
I have October already planned out by Scott the teacher I am replacing so it should be easy to get into the schedule. I will teach for a week and then have four days off because of Korea's form of Thanksgiving. They dress up in their traditional dress and pay respect to all of their ancestors by bringing them gifts and having feasts in their honor. Some families will go to the graves of that ancestor to have the feast. Next Friday we will have the kids dress up and have a big celebration and I am looking forward to planning some activities for it. I will post some pictures this weekend so please bare with me I can only post pictures on Saturday because I'm really only supposed to email during the week when I am not in school.

Finally Arrived

Well, I am in Bundang and am at GDA using the teachers lounge which is quite nice. I have tons of resources here. I got off to a rocky start. Our plane in Denver had something wrong with the Radar and they had to take off the nose put in a new one then run the engines to make sure everything was fine. The problem was that the engines are to noisy to be around all the other planes so the plane had to go to the deicer pad thing to test. My plane was delayed by half and hour. Then when we arrive in San Francisco I had to make a mad dash to the next plane. I had to take a shuttle and just got to the gate as they called for final call for boarding. Praise the Lord I did not have to get my checked luggage. They had already transferred it to the other plane. The plane was a 757 and pretty big. I had a window seat and the seat next to me was empty. I only had to fly 14hours and 50 minutes. I got to my apartment around 8:00 and man it is small but in two weeks I'll be moved into another bigger apartment. I had five teachers help me last night get some essentials for the night and Christina took me around today to show me where some things are here. I won't go hungry or be bored with the tons of markets and grocery stores pretty much on every corner. Well, jet lag is setting in and I'm pretty bushed.

farewell party

The time has finally come

Well, tomorrow is the day! Yikes time flies so fast it kind of snuck up on me. I have been with spending time with Karin and Shauna and my nieces and have had a blast. Tonight we will have my going away dinner at the Trail dust with Mom, dad, Shauna, Ben, Isabelle, Jemma, Karin, Laurin, Laina, Ethan, Malea, Tom and maybe Kyle and Riley. I am really excited and afraid at the same time and just want to get there so I have some clue as to what it will be like. I know I will be fine but I still have little doubts running through my head.

Yipee I have my working visa and plane ticket

Yeah,
I finally have my working visa and plane ticket. I was worried I wouldn't get it in time. I have had fun trying to get all the necassary paper work in and sent. I had to wait to get my a week to get my Visa Issuance number and mail it along with an application, passport photo, and passport to the nearest Korean Consulate in United State. Well, I thought we had to go in person and so I looked up Korean Consulates and they said they had one in Denver when I called to set up an appointment I was told it was closed and i had to use the one in Chicago. Needless to say I kind of paniced but luckly my contact in Korea sent me an email saying I could mail it and that would be fine. He even gave me a cheat sheet on how to fill out an application. Well, I got the application from the link provided and it was way to small to get anything written let alone typed. I called the Chicago angency and they sent me the application( just to prove my Visa Isuance number was valid) which took three hours. Then we all got in the car and went to Hays to get my passport photo and get it overnighted. Finally after five days got my Visa stamped in my passport and just today received my e-ticket. Man its been a rollercoaster for a couple weeks waiting on pins and needles for all this to go through. I also had an allteration in time schecule I will be leaving on a Thur. the 14th not Fri. the 15th.

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Dynamic Korea

Dynamic Korea offers a wealth of information, videos, photos, and goodies about Korea and its culture. Be sure to have a look!

Korean language

Let's Speak Korean is an online video mini-course in Korean. It looks kind of cheesy but helpful.

Hello All,

I'm just messing around to figure out how to do this blog thing. I hope this will be a fun sight so you can join in on my exciting adventure. You will have to forgive some stuff as I will be learning how to do this along the way.