We left early Wednesday morning from Minneapolis, stopped in Denver, made another connection in Los Angeles, then, finally, boarded our plane to Seoul.
At the Denver airport. We were very tired!
Finally, on the plane to Korea!
24 hours later, we arrived in Seoul and crashed at our hotel (which we are pretty sure was a "love hotel"). We got to our shady hotel around 9:30pm and had no internet or phone to use to let everyone know we made it safely. No one spoke English at the hotel, and we were alone. Scary!! Paris Baguette came to the rescue! A little pastry shop a few doors down had free wifi, delicious pastries, and they spoke a little English!! We ate there 3 times over the next two days, just so we could use there internet.
Friday we went to school for our first, and only day of training. The other teachers we work with are all really friendly and helpful! The school is a private English school. Our first class is kindergarten. Jeff has 4 and 5 year old for the first 3 hours and I have 5 and 6 year olds. They are sooooooo cute! These little kids can read and write English at about a 2nd grade level! It's pretty amazing. Kind of puts us Americans to shame. The teachers took us to lunch where we had our first real Korean meal. It was delicious! In the afternoon we have kids who are a little bit older (6-9ish). They come to our school after they get done with Korean school.
Saturday morning we met up with one of my best friends, Megan!!! She helped us move into our apartment and showed us the ropes! She introduced us to lots of food, and she helped us go to the Target of Korea, which is called E-Mart (does not compare to Target!!!). We went to dinner at a Korean bbq. We sat on the floor while they brought out hot coals and put them in a pit at our table. We cook the pork right at our table, then roll it into lettuce wraps with lots of other fixings. It was so good, but really, everything here is delish!
Trying the crab.
Sunday we cleaned all day. They moved us into our apartment before it was cleaned, and the girl who lived here before us had a cat...enough said. We went down to a little restaurant right below our apartment and got take-out for lunch. We were so proud of ourselves for going to dinner by ourselves and ordering without pointing to a picture. We are VERY slowly picking up words here and there. We can say "Hello," "Thank you," "two," and a few different menu items. Hopefully, we will continue to learn more and more so we don't have to walk around smiling at people because we don't know what they are saying.
The top is Kim-bap and the two on the bottom are Mandu.
Living area
Our "kitchen" is behind the cabinet doors. Above the kitchen is our bed.
The kitchen/laundry room
Jeff's throne
Our bedroom that was made for little people. I think the ceiling is only 5 ft high!
View from the bed.
The view out our window to the east.
View out our window to the west.
Walking down the street.
