Christmas for the Kiddies

We had Christmas parties for the children at our hogwon (school). The whole thing was pretty lame. We read a book entitled "Snow" which had nothing to do with Christmas at all. Then we sang and "danced" (walking in place) to a Christmas song I had never heard before that ironically sounded exactly like the song we used for Halloween. The party ended with Santa (played by Keith) making a dramatic apperance from the teacher's office. The children reacted in one of 2 ways: either they were completely petrified having never seen or heard of Santa before (apparently Santa doesn't visit Korea) or they immediately recognized Keith and made every attempt to remove his beard. I however, throughly enjoyed making fun of the way too skinny Santa-Keith. In retaliation Santa-Keith spent a full 2 minutes trying to figure out how to flick me off with mittens on...enough time for me to grab the camera :)

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas Everyone!!

Merry Christmas to everyone and Happy New Year!!! We love you and miss you all!!! Thank you to everyone who sent us some gifts! We appreciate everything very very much! May all your holidays be warm and Merry!
Love,
Keith and Marie

Our address agian just in case

Address as follows, and you can put either Attn: Marie Jolliff or Attn: Keith Bryant

JY Books English Center
Attn: (Marie or I)
#Jae I 1 Bldg. 4th floor #1626-3
Suh Cho-1-Dong Suh Cho Gu
Seoul, South Korea 137-071

Korean Photo Booths

In Korea they love those little photo booths where a couple people can get in and take funny little pictures... Well we decided to take advantage of this and take some pictures to send out on our holiday post cards. We went into two different photo booths three times just becuase the first time was so much fun. You can choose your own poses and move the camera up and down and rotate it landscape or portrait style. Not only are you able to all of that artistic stuff, you can also choose backgrounds and graphics to show up on screen during the photo shoot. You take 8 photos at a time and then go outside the booth to little media kiosks where you choose your favorite 4. Then it gets even cooler... The kiosks are set up with a pen and you can choose from seven million options and decorate your photos to your liking. They have anything from backgrounds you can add, to simple shapes, little icons of cake and poop and beer and snowflakes and houses (you get the picture right? lots of stuff...) They also have the option to free hand draw with thousands of different types of lines (single color, duel color, transparent, neon, etc.) They also gave you the option to put the date on the photo in cool fonts and what not. Anyway, the point is that we stood in front of this camera 3 different times, and then spent about 10 minutes after each fooling around with this photos. So we hope you enjoy them, and please feel free to laugh just as we did :)

Thailand

Life has been crazy and we have not had any time to write a bit about Thailand. We had an amazing time in Thailand. However, we managed to arrive just as a national crisis occured. Protestors took control of both Bangkok airports. Thankfully, although hundreds of thousands of people were stranded, we were not really effected by the craziness. We were scheduled to go to Bangkok and to fly home from Bangkok. However, we opted to stay in Phuket (a beautiful island)...and by opted I mean we didn't have any choice. We were "forced" to stay on vacation for an additional 2 days and got the opportunity to do a little traveling in southern Thailand and visit a national park, a couple of fishing villages and a Budhist temple. There was no protesting in Phuket and everyone was very helpful in changing our travel arrangments. The trip was amazing!

umm could we get an update.... kay thanks

My girls are leaving... :(

So i had 2 little girls this semester in a class by them selves. Their moms were not in the class. Ironically enough, they were cousins, best friends, and really freaking smart! They got on my nerves quite frequintly (i had them twice a week for an hour but they were really cute girls and a lot of fun to play with. They were really good about knowing the story before they even came to class. The kids knowing the story before class has it's ups and downs though. They are able to read along with you which is nice because they are speaking english, but time to time they get really board and stop paying attention all together. These two girls were no different. They tended to get bored and run around the room, beat up on each other, or rip shit off the board, which is why i say that they were a pain in the ass. But on the other side, they were really sweet some days, paid attention, listened to me, and brought lots of gifts :). Well today was their last day at the center. I did not know that they were leaving untill they came to class with "thank you, i love you, i miss you" cards. (which is really the entire point of this blog). They were soo damn cute and it made me a little sad to see them go. One mother explained to me that they were going to english elementary next semester, so a public school in stead of a private. I was a little bummed out. But anyway... the point of the blog was to tell you all that i got cards made from scratch by 2 little adorable pain in the asses and i am goin to miss them.



From Chae-Eun (pronounced just like it looks):



(Front of Card)




(inside the card... my home apparently)





(inside of the card)







From Seon Bin (pronounced Sun-Bin):



(inside on card)


(outside of card)

Happy Pepero Day

Happy Pepero Day! (Korean corporate made Valentines day) One of the biggest companies in Korea is called Lotte. They own and seel everything. They have hotels, apartments, theme parks, convience stores, malls. They sell, candy, all kinds of dairy products, candy ect. They deliver meals to homes. They even have their own holiday in honor of their candy "Pepero." Basically you give everyone you like a breadstick covered in chocolate. They are not very good. I think it is kind of weriod too say "I like you" with something that looks like a turd.

WOW

You guys are busy. You two will do great!!! I hope you two have a good thanksgiving and christmas, sure do miss you guys. We will send pics and food...lol.

Love ya mom

Classes next semester

So we have officially received our class schedule for next semester and things have definatly changed. First of all, we each have about 4 or 5 new classes. This is not a big problem or anything, we will definatly have less down time, which in retrospect, might not be a bad thing. Being a little busier every day of the week instead of just one will make the days fly by. Our center is starting to learn toward just teaching "prime" students, or the ones that are smarter. We have less of the regular classes (the ones where we just sing and dance and read story books) and a couple more of the prime classes (in these classes we focus more on actually teaching them things like spelling, reading, sight words, rhyming, opposites..... the list goes on but you get the point) These classes will be interesting because our first semester was the first time they had done any and Marie got to make them up on a whim. So we get to follow her lead with those classes and I even inherited two new classes that i get to make up the ciriculum for because they are firsts this semester. If all of this seems confusing to you... well to be honest, it is confusing to us too lol. I just recomend reading the blog a few times to try to follow lol.

Our address would help... duh keith!

Ok so dummy me forgot to add an address to the christmas list blog... oops... Packages take about 10-12 days to get here, just and FYI.

Address as follows, and you can put either Attn: Marie Jolliff or Attn: Keith Bryant

JY Books English Center
Attn: (Marie or I)
#Jae I 1 Bldg. 4th floor
#1626-3 Suh Cho-1-Dong Suh Cho Gu
Seoul, South Korea 137-071

:)

Today I had a fist fight break out in my class of three year olds. There are only 3 kids in the class. Its funny because even though they are only 3 years old you can still tell that 2 of the little ones hate the other one. He is loud and disruptive, and his mother has no control. It's really annoying, but it is kinda funny to see how perceptive kids are at such a young age. Anyway, I was checking take home books (yes we give homework to 3 year olds). In this particular class there are so few students and they are so young, that instead of getting in a line in front of me they usually just crowd around my chair. Anyway, while I was checking June's book (he's the annoying one) Yun Jae jumped in front of him to answer one of my questions. June just decided that the best solution was to slug Yun Jae in the face and before I knew it I was playing the bouncer between to pushing, biting and hitting 3 year old boys. It was intense. If it hadn't ended with 3 crying 3 year olds it would have been really funny. As it was June started another fight in the lobby before his mother managed to get him out of the school. He is a really smart kid. He can say duck in three languages, but he can't seem to understand what "no hitting" means. I guess intelligence is all relative.

Christmas List

Here are a few things that Marie and I would like to have sent to us if you are thinking about spreading the christmas spirit :) We are basically just interested in food, becuase any material stuff will eventually have to be sent home later anyway (pain in the butt).
*Canned soup: tomato, cream of chicken/mushroom/broccoli
*Canned beans: black/green/lima
Basically any vegetable except corn or poatoes
Poptarts
Granola bars (Sunbelt makes really stellar Coconut bars :)
Airborne
Stove Top stuffing
mac and cheese
cookie mix
New Orleans/ southern rice mixes
brownie mix
muffin mix
warm socks
lotion
taco seasoning
cheese: parmesan/ velveta/ or anything else that would make it here
ranch dressing
tortillas
Goobers peanut butter and grape jelly

Anyway, if you are thinking about sending us something for Christmas, these are the things that we can't get and would really enjoy for the holidays :)

To friends from home...

So this Dj guy that you see pictures of.... you would get the biggest kick out of this guy! He is funny shit. He is a 36 year old Canadian with the mouth of a sailor that could very easily take over the job of Steve (or whatever the new guys name is) on Blues Clues. His class is extremely animated and makes me giggle like a little school girl. We hang out outside of school and he is a wise crackin, foul mouthed, rage ahoulic. Not so much a rage ahoulic, but he has a little pent up frustration that comes out now and then. lol You all would get a kick out of him.
And his wife Margie, she is amazing and soooo much fun. She is Filipino right, with a descent grasp of the English language. But when she is talking and does not know the word she wants to use.... she just stops and says nothing. It is quite hilarious! She will literally say something like this: "I was walking through the bar and was.... hehe I don;t the word..." And then say nothing else.... I guess to have to witness it to get the whole effect. Anyway... These are our new friends here in South Korea.... DJ is a cool guy and you all would like him... but don't worry, nobody can replace my need for your wise asses in my life completly.

DJ and MARGIE

We've been lucky enough to make friends with some really great people since we have been over here, two of which are this amazing couple DJ and Margie. They have taken us out, shown us where to get products from home and generally been a complete blast.

Gifts from students....

We always get gifts from our students but today I got a strange assortment of gifts from my students.
Boiled potatoes
Boiled sweet potatoes
1 Can of coke
Gum
Donuts
Makes for aninteresting meal no?

Hey keith, miss you! Sorry it's taken me forever to post a note, i've been crazy busy.like the pics! Hope you're enjoying everything over there! Don't plan on getting married in South Korea now! I don't think I could make it to that one. haha. Next time i post something, I will try and not make it so long in between. Have fun and keep me posted! Gwen

Miss you guys

LOL...you look so cute!!!! I can't wait to get over there. I love the pics. It was good to finally talk to you two. I sure do miss you two, but I am so glad you are enjoying yourselves.

Love ya
Mom

Oooo I forgot!

We got to dress up as ancient soliders and hit each other with big sticks! It was sweet....that's one of the pictures. Another is an example of what all the ceilings looked like. And the big building is the main gate into the palace and the courtyard for the commoners.

Gyeongbokgung Palace

SO we finally got around to doing some tourist stuff this weekend. We went to the Gyeongbokgung Palace and learned a ton of cool stuff about life at the palace. The palace is absolutely huge even after most of it was destroyed by the Japanese and during the Korean War. They didn't use any nails to build the structure. Bascially everything in the palace represents the heaven and the earth or the ying and the yang. The pheonix was everywhere representing peace. The king was represented by a dragon. A dragon with 5 claws represented the king and 4 the crowned prince.

Back in the day in Korea they made fires under the buildings to heat the floor since Koreans sit and sleep on the floor. The King's bedchambers were small and did not have any furniture so that assisins couldn't hide in his room. 8 ladies in waiting stayed in the rooms surrounding the king and had to stay up all night in case he needed anything. A portable toilet was brought to the king anytime he needed it and he had a personal doctor who examined and recorded everything that went in or came out of the king's body....smelling and tasting it if necessary.

The queen was never allowed to leave her quarters on the palace, which were seperate from the king. The king always had 8 concubines from the 8 most powerful families. Of the 28 kings only 7 were sons of the queen.

Picture Update!

We have created an account on Photobucket.com to keep all our photos on. This can be veiwed by anyone and there is no need to create a membership account or anything like that. We will repost the link every now and then so that you can constantly find it on this blog site.Hopefully I will stop being sick so we can actually do some cool stuff and get some fun pictures!!!The site:www.photobucket.com/kmsk

Photos of our trip to a sweet ass palace have been added!

Why We Are Big Loosers

This Saturday we traveled over 45 minutes to Hangdae, the University area with lots of bars, clubs, restaurants and anything else you may want. We wanted to check out a Punk Rock venue that was going to be happening. Instead we ended up sitting outside a Family Mart ( basically a 7-11 ) drinking cheap beer all night. Most convient store put chairs and tables outside so people can sit and enjoy their noodles or beer or whatever. All the bars around charged twice as much for the same beer, plus they are majorly smoking and loud. The Punk Rock venue was a bust.....although pretty funny to see like 12 Koreans with crazy died mohawks and 3 hippy weriod ass Americans all bouncing up and down to a Korean punk band in a bar about the size of our bathroom. Don't get me wrong, we had a total blast. I just don't think we needed to travel for an hour to find a Family Mart.
(total ps.....its considered really cool to die your dog's hair here. People like to die the ears and tail, usually green, purple or pink. It kinda reminds me of the Korean punks haha)

Chevorlet

Oh and another really random thing they have in this country... Did you know that Chevorlet makes bicycles? They are definatly all over the place.... Odd right?

Asshole korean on the subway

Ok, so Marie i knew that there would eventually be hostility towards us becuase we are white. I have been told by the foreign guys here that they have had guys come up to them on the subway and they start talking shit, especially when their drunk (the korean, not the white dude). Well marie and i were on the subway tonight (friday) coming home around 11:30 and a korean guys was sitting down when we got onto the train. Well we stood by the door of the train and he imediatly stood up when he noticed us and walked over to stand right next to me. Well then he started to make a clicking/slurping noise (the noise you make when you suck in air through your teeth). We didnt think much of it, but he just kept doing it so of course my curiousity shot up and i glanced past him to see what he was doing. Well i noticed that he was staring at me completely and making this noise. Then he kept throwing his hand out when toward me when he made the noise like he was trying to make me jump. So i tried to look past him for a while and then i turned my head and only looked at marie. Then he started doing it even more and i could see out of the corner of my eye that he was staring at me intensly. Well then the train stopped at the next stop and he flipped me off as he walked of the train.... I was like WTF? So i yelled thankyou sarcastically but he didn;t look back. I have no idea what the hell his problem was. The noise appearantly means that he did not like me and that he was trying to provoke me. Well i was really weirded out by this and it made me uncomfortable. Anyway... I have officially had my first run in with a pissed of korean. I hope you enjoyed my re-encounter as much as i did. lol

Teaching

The Center loves to take pictures of us teaching our classes...especially if we are doing a craft. Check out these pictures. Pictures of Keith and I making choclate bananas and crayons coming soon!

Also check out these links that show our school and our profiles:

http://www.jybooks.com/center/kangnam/introduce_lecturer.asp

http://www.jybooks.com/center/kangnam/introduce_environment.asp

Class update

So we have been here for about 6 weeks now and i am still srtuggeling with some of the kids names. I don't mean pronouncing them, that is actually a lot easier than you'd expect, but matching a name to a face is rediculous! Not only do a lot of the children have the same facial features (yes i am politly saying they look look the same :)) but the names are really freaking simliar too. My classes that meet twice a week, yeah no problem getting their names down. I know them even if i see them on the street. The classes that only come once a week however, a completely different story. Some of the kids stick out because they are unique in some ways, like their looks or how smart or how LOUD they are, and damn they can be loud. Even the extremely quiet ones stick out a little. But their are numorous kids that blend in. This really sux when they give you something before or after class, and you don;t remember their name to thank them personally. I have found that this is an appropriate place to use the korean bow :). Ok well that was my little update. Marie tells me i need to blog more... so there's the first step :)
Peace

Sorry guys, we've been without the internet for a little bit. Justin and Jess are attempting to move out so the internet went with it. If you ever just try dialing my cell through skype, see if that works if you feel / need to talk with me. Sorry if you were trying any lately though. Haha

SPORTS DAY!!!!

Last weekend JY Books hosted a mandatory Sports Day for all its employees. People traveled as long as three hours for this event. From 9am to 6pm we were required to play volleyball, dodgeball, soccer, kickball and all those fun gym class games I spent most of highschool trying to avoid. We did learn a few interesting things however. For example, on of the fundamental belief systems that Korea was founded upon was Confusionism, a highly male dominated philosophy. Therefore the strategy for every game was ....give the ball to a boy or get out of the way so a boy can do it. This of course was lots of fun for the girls who consequently spent most of the day watching the men play. The Korean women seemed extremely used to this philosophy and interestingly not very athletic at all. Another much cooler thing we learned was how to play Korean dodgeball. In Korean dodgeball each team divides into two parts. One group must dodge the ball and the other group surrounds the opposing side. The result is that those players dodging balls have to watch for balls from all four sides. However, if a man gets hit with a ball he is not out. If a woman gets hit with a ball she is out. It was weriod but kinda fun.

We did get to know the other English teachers and made some good friends!

ps The last picture is the founder of the company Mr. Park. He was extremely intense about sports day!

OMG

Marie you got more guts then me, Im not sure if I would do that....lol. Oh and no I don't think I would like to try that when I come over next year....lol. Hope all is well with you two.

love you guys

Everybody baths....Why not do it together??

So this weekend I went to a Korean bath (jjimjilbang) with a bunch of the other girl teachers from JY Books. Apparently foreign males are not big fans of jjimjilbangs becuase the differences in the foreign male body can cause starring and even attempted touching. Okay, so abth houses are popular all over the world. They are can seperate facilities for male and female. It costs approximately 6,000 won (6 dollars) which includes enterance into the baths, a towel, a locker and a scrubber. Basically, you get naked and bath with bunch of other people...obviously I have no pictures of this for those of you who complain about lack of pictures.... You are required to shower first, then it is on to the pools. The bathhouse we went to had a dozen different pools all varying in temperatures from "burn you" hot to "holy shit" cold. Some of the pools had different ,inerals added to the water. One hot pool had a giant tea bag floating in it. About half of the pools were equipped with jets, each of which massaged a different part of you body...amazing. THe marble floors were heated and were designed with head rests so you can lay down and relax. This spa also had two saunas, one at 55 degrees Celcius and the other at 95 degree celcius. Saunas are nice after the "holy shit" pool. Most jjimjibags also include a massage and spa area where you can be rubbed down in the nude, as well as internet rooms, tv rooms, and sleeping rooms. The sleeping rooms are only 2 dollars for the night and you sleep on heated floors with a block of wood for the a pillow. The being naked with lots of naked people wasn't so weriod as you might think. Most of the Koreans are too busy scrubbing the hell out of their bodies to notice you. We did have a few "look at the white people" glances but that is normal.

Emily has arrived!!!

Connie went to doctor this morning at 930 am and they did amio on her, doc said if it came back ok he was going to take the baby today. Her and Todd came home and not very long after the hospital called and said to get back up there. It was around 230 today they went back up and the doctor did c-section at 501 she was born. She has blonde hair I think and weighed 6 lbs. 3 oz. and was 19" long.

Don't Forget!

We have created an account on Photobucket.com to keep all our photos on. This can be veiwed by anyone and there is no need to create a membership account or anything like that. We will repost the link every now and then so that you can constantly find it on this blog site.
Hopefully I will stop being sick so we can actually do some cool stuff and get some fun pictures!!!
The site:www.photobucket.com/kmsk

Miss you guys

I am so glad that you finally went to the doctor Marie. I hope you are feeling better. I cant wait to get over there and see you guys.

Medical Coverage ROCKS!

So I (Marie) have decided that the best way to begin my new life in Korea was to be sick besically all the time. The only really good benefit of this sucky situation was that I had the opportunity to try out our medical insurance. My boss gave me the location of the closest doctor's office. She looked at me cross eyed when I asked how long I would have to wait for an appointment. Turns out you don't need an appointment, or really much else. There was no paper work. I think all Korean have the same medical coverage. I showed the nurse my alien card, sat in the waiting room and 20 minutes later I was talking to a doctor. He spoke ok English. I think he mostly understood medical term, which was good because I never liked making chit chat with doctors. I went in for an ear infection. He didn't even look in my ear, but for some reason he did think that my blood type was extremely important. After about 10 minutes....most of which he spent trying to teach me how to say "teacher" in Korean he sent me out with a perscription for antibiotics. The appointment only cost me $3.50. The medicine was another $7.00. From start to finish the entire event took maybe took 45 minutes....not even half of my lunch break. Of course we have yet to see if my ear infection clears up but wow what a different experience from the doctor at home :)

Hiking....Take 2

So we have ventured out hiking twice. Both times to Namhansanseong which is an ancient fortress with a long defensive wall, temples, a fortress and secret gates. The first time we hiked all day, on a path that definately wasn't popular and after four hours finally found the front of the park. Other than a few feet of the wall we missed all the other sites in the park. The second time we set out we were determined to actually visit the fortress, walk through the gates and climb the wall.....we still didn't find any of the stuff the tour book said we should see. We did however, find a pretty sweet Buddhist temple with meditating monks. And we discovered that Koreans like to hike uphill.....straight uphill. The city is surrounded by 4 peaks. Any and all flat ground has been developed so all hiking around Seoul is either straight up or straight down. Our legs are getting hardcore buff :)

Keith Reads Aloud

This is Keith doing a "read aloud" in the JY's bookstore in the top of our building. The read alouds are free and designed to get people to buy books and sign up for classes. The bookstore is amazingly nice, and it sells all kinds of "children's" books in English. Titles include such classics as "Everybody poops" to "Pride and Prejudice." Each week each one of us is expected to do a read aloud, where we read 3 or 4 books to a room full of kids who may or may not give a shit. Last week I managed to sneak up and take some lovely pictures of Keith as he read "Scaredy Cats" :)

That whole real life thing...

So i am still getting used to this wake up early thing. Even when i was in school my classes never started before 10 usually. Which was sweet becuase my house was maybe 20 yards from the building that most of my classes were in. Well here we are getting up around 7:45 to be at work at 9. Which, trust me, I know that 8 o'clock is not that early, but cut a man some slack lol. I am getting better at it though. Poor Marie has to listen to me grunt and moan every morning, but i have promised to work on it and i would like to think i am getting better at it.

Being at school and teaching these kids takes WAY more energy than one would think. Faking that much energy with a grumpy morning face... Priceless let me tell you. But i'll be damned if by the end of the week you ready for a cocktail and a mid-day nap. And yes i mean at work :)

Eating With Mr. JK Himself

Today the head of JY Books took us out to lunch so that he could finally introduce himself....which was weriod because we had seen him several times before. He even commented on my read aloud once, but each time he refused to talk to us because we had not yet been introduced. We found out a lot about the company. For example, it is actually 3 companies in one: a publishing company, a dot com company, and a teaching company. We ate at what I think is a formal restaurant. We had our own private room and we sat on the floor of course. The waitresses brought in what seemed to be appetizer after appetizer. Four different soups, countless kinds of kimchi, spicy pork, almond jello, rice, octopus with noodles, spicy tuna (I think), grapes and a bunch of other dishes I can't even begin to describe. The table was covered in a thousand different bowls. Communal eating is big here. Everyone eats out of the same bowl. We each had seperate plates to put food on but since the only serving utencils we had were the ones we were using to eat with its really not any more sanitary. I wish we could have taken a picture, but I think it would have been rude at a formal business meeting to whip out the camera like a silly tourist. Anyway, JY is an interesting man....kinda boring. For fun he is going to make us all come to a "sport day" where we all have to get together and run! Sounds like fun. He is going to offer a Korean class in October so that we can learn how to speak a little, and he thaught that maybe he would take us to see some sights in Korea. :)

Let's Talk about E Mart

Take Walmart......squish it into the middle of a major metropolitain area, add about 5000 Koreans, a bunch of live crabs and about 300 one Emart workers ( all wearing different uniforms that were quite amusing) and you've got Emart. It's intense!!!! There are literally Emart workers every 10 feet. Which would be very helpful.....but they only speak Korean, which doesn't seem to stop them from following you around and attempting to help you. The Emart we went to was close to an hour away, but it had 4 floors of anything and everything you would want to buy. Any fish or produce you might want you could taste first....cooked or not cooked. There was a different worker to cut up every fish, squid or fruit you might want. Yummy!
We sat outside for a while waiting on another teacher who works with us to finish shopping. We literally felt like Mickey and Minnie Mouse. Little kids were running up to us and dragging their familes along....just to hear us say "hello." We are slowly getting used to being stared at all the time.

Our Apartment

We are finally moved into our apartment!!! It's pretty far away from the center of the city (probably 45 minutes via the subway) but that means we have lots of trees and parks all around. It is a mainly residential area, all high rise apartment buildings. There are lots of little shops and tons of restaurants. We finally found a pizza place where a pizza is only 5 dollars instead of 15. ...VERY EXCITED about that. Each complex of apartment high rises has a park with running tracks, playground equipment ( great for Keith) and workout stations. There is a riverwalk close by that is also very nice.

Our apartment is small but it has a great view. It's common for entire families to live to apartments this size becuase of the cost of living. So far we seem to fit in it very nicely and there is no lack of storage space. The basement of our building has a food court(little family Korean restaurants) which we haven't ventured to try yet. It also has three bars, a mini mart, a nail salon, several shops and a subway station. We live only 6 stops from work, about a half hour commute.

Classes

Classes have been going really great this week for both Marie and I. Marie has the task of teaching brand spanking new classes and making them up as she goes. It is tough but she is doing a damn good job at it. We both get to sing, dance, and make fools of ourselfs, which i think is actually kind of fun. They actually refer to us as Edutainers which completely makes sense. The kids are really cute and love to have the attention of the teacher. Of course you get the annoying children that like to be disruptive, or run around the room the whole time, or my personal favorite is the little girl that climbs up and stands on the window sill no matter how many times her mother picks her up and sits her down lol. Anyway, thats first class impression. I am sure it will change after a while though.

Remote, TV, and stellar mood lighting

Ok so this remote controls everything in our hotel room. The lights (6 to be exact, including the bathroom), the air conditioner, and the tv. This sounds really sweet ass, except that it is ALL IN KOREAN which is a little hard to read when you don't know the language.

This giant television is WAAAYYYY SWEEEEET!!!!

And of course the mood lighting that is found in the ceilings of thehallways and the rooms.

That Subway

I took a look at the pics on your photobucket page... The subway in South Korea looks a lot like the subway in New York, except for a lot cleaner. I didn't see any homless people lying on the subway train stinking up the place... but then again, you can't really smell stuff from pictures. I digress. Hope you guys are having a good time over there. You look like your having a blast.

Our Pictures

We have created an account on Photobucket.com to keep all our photos on. This can be veiwed by anyone and there is no need to create a membership account or anything like that. We will repost the link every now and then so that you can constantly find it on this blog site.

The site:
www.photobucket.com/kmsk

Shopping.... Holy Shit

Saturday we decided that we wanted to check out the inner city of Seoul, so we hit up a market/mall called Dongdaemun. Upon exiting the subway (only about a 30 min trip) we were bombarded with street vendors which were on both sides of the side walk. The market was not oly on the street but underground as well....streching under at least a couple of blocks. We found our way through the market into a high rise mall. The building as massive....with stores on 11 floors. The stores were categorized by floor according to what the sold....shoes, toys ect. The stores didn't have any walls or doors but were set up in a market style, but the stores still had really nice expensive stuff. The food vendors sold some interesting stuff, like dried fish that looked like jerky and soemthing that looked like a corn dog except with french fries around it instead of corn bread. We wondered around for most of the day. Later we found out that we were in one of 4 high rise malls at Dongdaemun.

just an fyi we are working on a photobucket site so that we can put all our pictures there and everyne can look at them.

Skyping...

Keith and Marie:

Mom's (Rose's) Skype is working just fine, we were able to talk back and forth normally tonight during the window when she was suppose to be talking with you. So the problem must be on your end. Neither of us show you as being connected to skype and it tells us that you have not shared your information with us. Mom said that you told her that Keith has been able to talk to people from there, so can you please try using his account to call her, and then figure out what is wrong with Marie's account when you have a chance. If I can help, let me know.

Thanks,

Jami

Hey remember that empty green bottle we had at the house? I think that might have been the same stuff you are talking about. It had no taste and i drank the whole thing in one night and was completely trashed. Hope you two are having fun.

Soju!!

We spent thursday and friday at our school with the directors and the teachers that we are replacing. The two guys, Todd and Paul, are really cool guys. They took us out thursday night for some korean food and some drinks. We ate at a place where you sit on the floor indian style and the table had a grill in the center so you can grill your own meat. Koreans love there side dishes alot, and so all we ordered was the meats we wanted and received about 7 or 8 sides as well. Todd and Paul ordered a few beers and a bottle of Soju. Soju is a korean alcohol somewhat similar to vodka. It is a clear drink that has no taste and is alot more potent then vodka as well. We had 2 bottles at the resturant and anothr one at the bar that is in the bottom of our apartment building (the one we are moving into in about a week or so anyway) and managed to get alot more drunk then we planned on. Friday morning was a long and extremely loud morning. We don't plan on doing that agian, especially on a week night.