3 Week Update!

Hi everyone!

We thought it would be a good time to give everyone a basic update of how we are doing, what we are learning about Korea, and how things with the school are going ☺

How is life here?

• The location. For a city under constant construction, all of the buildings close to us are fully completed and so it is nice and quiet. We are near bus stops, plenty of food places, coffee shops, and trails along the rivers. The only downside to our location is its proximity to the major department stores (~20 minute walk to e-mart and ~50 minute walk to homeplus).

To put it into perspective a little more, for those of you who are still unclear where Sejong is:

Here is a screenshot from my phone using the Naver navigation app

The red dot is showing my location (near the apartment)

A little more zoom now

Our apartment is very close to the Geum River

The school is close to where the half-circle street is (just north of us)

• The apartment. Sam and I love our apartment. We promise to make a proper video tour of our building/apartment soon. The main perks are: perfect amount of space, we are situated on the top floor and the balcony has a cool view, large windows which let in tons of light, and a modern bathroom. 

Our building

In the elevator--our apartment is called The Rich

We've been working on our decorations! 

The calendar was left behind by the other teachers but we posted up all of the photos I brought with us ☺

The curtains we bought at e-mart ☺ privacy achieved!


Matching slippers from e-mart

• The school. As we have told our families, every day gets easier! Teaching has become comfortable now that we understand our textbooks and the school's system. Some classes are easier than others, some students can be a pain, but most are a lot of fun to interact with. The hours can feel odd because we are working 2pm-9pm, but so far we have adjusted to this well.
• The language. We were told by another English teacher, who has been here for 3 years, that Korean is not a language that you simply "pick up." You do have to work at it and practice and even dedicate time to taking classes. It is a totally different alphabet, the sentence structure is different from English, there are levels of formality built into the language, and the sounds are different... so yeah. We have been getting by just fine, mostly because everyone here is very, very kind. But we want to push ourselves to learn more words every day. We also use Google translate a lot! Technology has come a long way.
• The food. Our food experiences here so far have been positive. We haven't been out to eat a lot, but when we have it has been delicious. More food updates to come ☺

Sam @ Lotteria 

This is a fast food place right by the apartment, it is pretty similar to McDonalds

Pizzamaru 

Pizza seems to be really popular here but the pizzas are very different from America

Pizzamaru

Pizza place by our apartment, we went here for dinner last night ☺

W 11,900

Bulgolgi pizza with ham, peppers, and mushrooms (hiding under all the cheese)

Delicious crust! Full of mozzarella

Funny conversations with locals:

• Mamma Mia! Paris Baguette: We found a bakery near our apartment that makes fresh breads, cakes, pastries, and various other desserts. The baker there was clearly trying to communicate with us in Korean, but we tried our best to apologize that we could not understand anything. He asked us if we spoke Italian, and we apologized, No. He was able to tell us that he lived in Italy for seven years. When we told him we've only been in Korea for two weeks (this was this past Monday), he said, "Mamma mia!" 

Confirmed assumptions

• Korean students work incredibly long hours. In one of my classes we created a pie chart on a clock to illustrate how we spend our days (for example, between 11pm-8am my clock has "sleep" sectioned off). It was incredible to see how full each students' days were on their clocks. One of my students has only one hour each day of "free time" between coming home from school and going to academy to study more.
• Do you like spicy food? Every Korean we've met has asked us if we like spicy food... because sweat-inducing food is just a normal baseline for spicy here. The soups, the noodles/ramen, the snacks... I mean, it's that bad. Like, the flavor is great, but I need water handy.
• Dress is conservative. I've only seen a few Korean women here in tank tops and they definitely seemed out of place to me. This can really make things tough in the summer/early fall months though. And because of the humidity and drastic temperature differences between day and evening (real feel in the 80s by midday when we walk to the bus stop and in the low 50s when we are heading home), dressing for work has been a little challenging for me. 

Found this cute mantis on our way home one night

More updates to come later. Thanks for reading!


♥ Zoë