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.