Insadong and Yongsan

This past Sunday, we woke up to a beautiful sunny day, so we decided to head into Seoul again. We were thrilled to be out in the sunshine after a week of bad, wintery weather. We decided to take the bus, instead of the Subway for speed and to see the scenery. 

Last weekend we had gone to Seoul with people who knew where we were going, but we figured that it couldnt be too difficult to find our way again. When the bus came, we got on it, sure that it was the right number. Long story short, it was not actually the correct bus and we went all the way into a different part of Seoul and halfway back to Bundang before we realized what was happening. An hour later, after our long detour, we made it to Insadong.

Insadong is a popular place for tourists. It's an entire street of little shops and street vendors. In the past, it had many antiques and different kinds of art. Now, it is mainly geared towards tourists, with manufactured mask replicas and many many clothing vendors.  Since we are most definitely tourists, we did not mind. We ate from street vendors and took random pictures, as always.

After Insadong, we headed to Yongsan, which has a 6 floor Electronics Mall, aka Clayton's heaven. We actually weren't that impressed. It didn't have as many cool gadgets and gismos as we were expecting. We did get a wireless router and walk through a sea of camera and cell phone salesmen.  At the end of the day, we bought some gimbap ( korean sushi, sans the fish), and fried chicken, and headed home on the subway.

Standing guard.

A Korean Starbucks!

I love taking pictures of buildings!

A hat shop!

Clayton as the Tin Man

Insadong!

Yongsan subway station... It was huge! We actually had to ask for directions to the right platform.

Yongsan by night.

kids and cake!

Last week there was a birthday party at our school for all the kindergarten children who have March birthdays.  The kids all brought gifts, we sang Happy Birthday, and they got cake and fresh fruit after lunch.  Our boss also bought Clayton a birthday cake on Thursday for his birthday!

The boy in green and the girl are in my homeroom. The one sitting down is Clayton's.

Everyone gathered in our "gym" room for the festivities.

The little guy on the desk is barely 5, but in Korean age, he is 6. He is ridiculously cute!

This is my homeroom (plus one), and Anne, the Korean homeroom teacher.

Clayton, his homeroom (plus two of mine), and Sophia.

Clayton's homeroom. We eat with our classes during lunch.

My kiddos!

Corned Beef and Kimchi?

This weekend we decided to head to Seoul to explore a bit. We ended up going with some friends to Cheonggyecheon Place in downtown Seoul for the St. Patrick's Day parade. Who would have thought that our first St. Patrick's Day parade would be in South Korea? :-)

The parade was fairly small, but there were a zillion foreigners, a stage with live Irish music, and free Guinness and Guinness t-shirts! We went out for some delicious spicy chicken (again, we failed at remembering what it was called),  and then explored around a bit. Our friend Jeff's fiancee showed us around to a few places. We ended up seeing two different temples. They looked so colorful and artistic against the tall gray skyscrapers in the background. It was as if the city simply rose up around them. The larger of the two temples was holding a Buddhist service while we were there. There were large windows from which we could watch it.

As we continued back to the St. Paddy's day festivities, some people in our group found other friends. By the end of the afternoon, our group of 6 or 7 had turned to almost 20!  We met a bunch of other foreigners who live in our area. Some of them have been here for 5 or 6 years. A few others were new, like us. It is really helpful to meet people who can give us tips on how to get around the area.

Here are a bunch of pictures from Saturday! I am pretty sure you can click on them to make them larger.

St. Patrick's Day festivities! The day when everyone is Irish!

The parade!

They were doing free face painting as well!

Yes, it is what you think. A women's parking spot. It is longer and wider than all the others. Awesome.

Jogyesa Buddhist temple

The view inside the temple.

People light these candles for wishes and good fortune.

Amazing neon-lit horse drawn carriages!

Samsung Tower. It is not Samsung headquarters... just named after Samsung, like many other things in Seoul.

This is the street view near where we had lunch. As you can see, the sky is a strange color. This is from the Yellow Dust that blows over from the Gobi Desert. It is chock-full of all sorts of delightful pollution that makes you sick if you inhale too much of it. It started blowing in mid-afternoon and by around 5:00, the sky looked like this.

Overall, it was a great day! We left a bit early and found our way back home via the subway. We are thankful for the English signs in all the subways! This next week we will do a bit more grocery shopping and perhaps set up our bank account. Next weekend we may go back into Seoul to do some more exploring!

Our new home!

Here is a tour of our apartment! It is lacking in color or decoration... but it is all we need!

We live on the 4th floor... which is apparently bad luck. The word for 4 sounds like death, so we live on the "death floor".

Our building.

The view as you walk in the front door. We have gotten used to taking our shoes off and wearing slippers inside. Not that you need them on the warm floor.

The bathroom is to the right as you walk in the door. It is small, but it works for us.

Our kitchen.  Also tiny. Notice the washer beneath the stove. We haven't actually used it yet, as the buttons are all labeled in Korean.

The view from the top of our loft.

The bedding and bed were brand new when we got here. Apparently bedding is pretty expensive here, so we are grateful that this was provided.

This is the view looking back toward the door from our bed/couch. The loft is pretty much empty for now. We may get some pillows and turn it into a reading/computer loft.

First Week!

Well, the first week was a little crazy to say the least... starting off with practically no sleep and even less of an idea of what's going on at work. We're feeling much better now that it's the weekend and we're feeling fully adjusted to the 17 hour time difference. It's actually a little hard to believe that we've been here for a whole week, but a lot has happened in the last few days.

On Friday morning, we met an English girl who was just hired at our school. We met her at the subway to show her the way. She's been teaching in Korea for 2 and a half years but spent some time in Africa recently. She's a little quirky but nice enough and lives in the building next to us.

Saturday, we slept in with no alarm clock, which was WONDERFUL! and then began putting our apartment together. Later we did a little exporing in the surrounding neighborhood while in search for an ATM that would accept foreign debit cards. After finding one, we grabbed some inexpensive Korean pizza, took it home, and enjoyed it with a movie. In the elevator, we also met our new friend from Wisconsin. He and his wife live two floors above us and also teach at a nearby school along with another couple from Australia. They've been here only 3 weeks or so. It's nice to meet another couple our age that hasn't been here for very long that we can relate to, and it will be nice having some friends so close. They invited us over to their apartment this evening where me met the Australian couple, who are also very nice and live one building over.

Tomorrow we plan to do a little more exploring, and I'm sure we'll take a few pictures to share while we're at it.

This is the bridge over a river running through Bundang.

It snowed our second day here!

Our school, Grace Private School, is on the second floor of this sky-rise.

Seohyun Station... a shopping area a few subway stops from our apartment.

The door to our apartment.

A small section of Bundang, aka, the "suburbs" of Seoul.

Arrival

Well... after a long, sleepless flight, we made it to Korea. We landed at about 5:00pm (12am at home). It took us about an hour and a half to get to Bundang, where we will be living. Our apartment is small, but cute. It has wonderful heated floors and a giant window facing out to the street below.

Our boss took us out for Chinese with her mother (who also works at her school), and brother. The Chinese food was delicious. However, any notions we had of eating less over here flew out the window that first night. The food just kept coming and coming!  After dinner, we took a tour of our school, and didn't get back to our apartment until 11pm. Needless to say, work the next morning was rough.

After a few good nights of sleep and a few days on the job, we are both feeling a bit more comfortable.  We even made it to and from work today without any help! The kids are adorable and well behaved for the most part.  Both Clayton and I taught science today, which was a little hectic. Neither of us feel very prepared for the classes we are teaching. Luckily the experiments are already planned, so we just have to do them. Today we made "Strata" using cups with beans, sugar, rice, and flour. It was messy, but fun.

Last night this crazy guy from school took us out to dinner. He is from Tasmania, rides a motercycle, and sounds like he should be carrying around a bowie knive in New York. He ordered us a a dish that is basically thick bacon covered in red bean paste. You wrap it in lettuce and dip it in sauce. We also had this fluffed up egg dish. Both were tasty.

Our main challenges thus far have been trying to decipher the 12 different (and sometimes conflicting) schedules at the school, and trying to find an ATM that actually works in English. Once we figure out those things, we'll be great!

 Here are some pictures of our first day:


Our first view of Korea:

The Seoul-Incheon International Airport:

The city of Incheon, as we left the airport:

Have no fear, Audra will not die from Coffee withdrawls!

More adventures to come...