Happy December!

Thought it'd be a good time for another update post! Happy holidays to everyone, hopefully you all had nice Thanksgivings and are enjoying the influx of Christmas music and cold weather ☺

How are you doing?
We are doing well! It's been officially three months since we moved here. Routines have been developed, a feeling of "normal" has reached us, and we are, overall, feeling good. We still love the location, and work has been going well. We had our first snowfall about a week or so ago, which was really exciting.

Sam snapped this beautiful panorama during our date last night ♥

What did you do for Thanksgiving?
For Thanksgiving we were torn between getting BBQ and trying to track down some duck, (a'la Christmas Story haha). We opted for bbq out of ease, and were joined by two other foreign teachers who were also missing home for the holiday. We had a great dinner and then afterwards we went to a noraebang (Karaoke!) It was our first time going to one and it was so much fun. We were probably there for two hours, and they had a really extensive English songs collection.

Our thanksgiving feast of BBQ ☺

Neighborhood in Sejong called Dodam-dong where we ate bbq and sang karaoke

We also found a small street food vendor selling red bean and custard-filled pancakes. Mmmmm

Big snowflakes surprised us one morning

Are there lots of Christmas decorations up now?

Sort of. I wouldn't say it's as in-your-face as in the US, but when we were out shopping yesterday we saw some lights in the trees/bushes of an apartment building complex. We also saw some displays at Homeplus selling all sorts of decorations and etc. There was even some Christmas music playing. So I would say it's pretty similar here, it's a popular holiday.

Since Friday was December 1st we decided to put up some of the Christmas decorations left behind by the previous tenants, plus some decorations my parents mailed to us from home ☺

I love fairy lights any time of the year ☺

Gel clings for our many windows

Our little tree

How is work/school going?

We just had our schedules change on Friday, actually! 

It was a really hectic day filled with new books, new students, and plenty of other changes. Some students moved up a level, others stayed the same, and some of the class times got changed around. I had probably half new students (who were previously taught by one of the other foreign teachers), and half the same students. Actually, the highlight of my day on Friday was walking into one of the classes and recognizing every face, and when they saw it was going to be me teaching them, they all yelled, "Zoeeeeee!!" Haha. I was relieved that some of my students stayed the same.

This week should be equally hectic, since we will find out who else we will be teaching and what our other classes might be like.

Is there anything you're missing from home?
Definitely. But at the same time we are embracing as much as we can while we're here.
Foods we miss: Burgers, good pizza, burritos, bagels, cheese (yes there is some cheese here, imported.. it is expensive), and craft brews.

(center, bottom) I'm holding up what is essentially a small slice of Korean-brand Gouda cheese for $4.50. We bought imported colby jack cheese yesterday at the store for around $7.

That's all for now, Sam is finishing up the video for our pt. 2 Seoul trip, that will be up this week, and we now have our schedules for the next three months so we will be planning some trips soon! ☺

Thanks for reading, happy December!