Slivovice & Hagelslag: March 2010

So here we are finally in South Korea. After visiting family and friends during a month of being back in the States, we boarded a plane and are now into our third week here. So far we're both really enjoying it - we live in a town called Miryang which is in the Southern part of the country about forty minutes by high speed train to the country's second largest city, Busan. By Korean standards it's a very small town (of about 100,000 people) set at the convergence of two valley's and surrounded by mountains for as far as can be seen and as of last night, all is covered in a coating of fluffy white, "cold spring" snow.

Me in front of our apartment building

Neighbors

Miryang from fort

We're living in a small apartment which is quite an improvement over some of the other places we have lived. For one, we have a private bathroom and shower with a washing machine, as well as a kitchen living/living room area and a separate bedroom. The living area has a big, brand new comfy couch and lots of storage for all of the rice, seaweed and dried anchovies. The place came fully furnished with the items provided by the school, but also with the appliances and household items left behind from previous residents. We feel pretty lucky with this as it seems quite random - with some apartments in our building having lots of stuff and others nothing at all aside from the items provided by the office of education. My favorite thing is a small blender given to us by an awesome couple from Minnesota who taught here for two and a half years or so and whom we met on our first day. Their warm welcome and hospitality really made us feel at home early on. We use the blender to make various bean dips which are delicious. The building itself is an interesting thing as it is used primarily to house foreign teachers. This is kind of nice in a way as it is an easy way to meet people early on in our stay here. We've also met some other teachers in town - so compared to, say, the amount of foreigners we new in Liberec, you might say there is quite a network here.

Kate, downstairs neighbor Bianca, and comfy couch

Pantry and Entry

Bedroom

Bedroom #2

Bathroom/Laundry Room

Kate, kitchen, and homemade pizza

It's looking like we'll be learning some Korean as very few people know even the most basic English - this isn't a problem though because everyone is friendly and welcoming so between our extremely basic Korean and lots of motioning, we're able to get by just fine.

I teach at three middle schools and Kate teaches at four elementary schools. All of our schools are a fair drive out into the mountains/countryside so we'll soon each be given a car to use for our time here. This is definitely what we'd consider a perk of the job. Aside from that, the schools and kids are great and we're both having an enjoyable time teaching again.

Ready for work

All in all we're very happy with the town - especially after visiting bustling Busan a couple of weekends ago - while it's great to be able to easily visit big cities (we're right between two), I'm happy to be able to live in the mountains where the air is clearer and life seems a little less hectic.