Well it has been quite a week! We successfully taught our first classes this week, moved into our apartment, went to our first Korean English speaking church, and successfully navigated the public transportation system; and we survived it all!!!

Classes were a fun, unique experience for me. Each class was so different AND each individual class was different each day. I love the kids! They are so adorable, even my most troublesome student! Some classes required a lot of corralling, while others required none. I like those classes:-) I teach 2 kindergarten classes, and several (I honestly don’t know how many) elementary school classes. I have been blessed with being given older children (my kindergartners are all 2nd year students who know a good amount of English already) in my classes. There are kids who are only 3 years old in some classes, but I think the youngest I have are usually 5-6, although I do have 1-2 four-year olds in my classes. The Korean way of counting age is different than ours, so supposedly I teach 7 year olds. Children are 1 year old when they are born, then they turn 2 years old upon the New Year, so if a child is born in December, then the next month, they are considered 2 years old. This can be scary, not to mention hard to figure out how old your children really are. But classes are fun, and hard. I am still learning how to manage the younger ones, and trying to get the older ones to slow down a bit and learn more. They like to rush through all their work and be “good students” but sometimes they miss the lesson in their hurry. I am learning though, and so are they (I think).


Our apartment was both more and less than I was expecting. The main floor is larger than I thought it would be, but there was hardly any furniture or much of anything at all for that matter. The loft area is a bit of a letdown as it not possible for me to stand upright in that “room.” It is only about 4 feet high, so when I am up there I have to bend over a bit to move around. We are hoping to find a futon mattress or something similar that can be comfortably sat upon up there and use the room for a short get away spot. It is rather cute though, now that I am used to the idea of it being so short.

Our company had 2 apartments in this building, but since we only wanted one they are getting rid of the other. Since they owned all the furniture and such in both, they gave us the key for the other apartment and told us to take what we wanted. So we made several pillaging expeditions to the tenth floor and carried away all sorts of treasures. In both apartments, the previous teacher had left some items they did not want to take with them, so in our pillaging we acquired several pans, a few plates, a nice chopstick set (stainless steel chopsticks and spoons), a power converter, and several other interesting items; not to mention a full sized bed, three chairs (little comfy blue ones), and three pieces of furniture. It was quite the experience.

The apartment is small and cozy, but we are adapting well to it. The bathroom is so small that we can barely shut the door after we enter it, but the shower is just large enough that we can turn around and not brush against the glass enclosure, so that is a nice thing:-) The floors are heated, and that is the only heating system in the apartment. I like heated floors, but if you forget to turn them on and wait until you are cold to do so, it will be a while until it warms up. They take a good hour or more before they make a serious difference in the room temperature (unless you have your feet on a hot spot;).

The stairs require special effort to get up. This is because they are not quite normal. I can’t figure out how to explain so we will try to post a picture of them soon. Our bed is soft when compared to the one in our hotel room (we almost couldn’t sleep on that one), but still much harder than we are used to. We are going to try to get some kind of extra padding for it. Most mattresses here seem to be of rather stiff construction. In fact, I heard that some richer people actually have stone slabs under their mattresses; but I don’t know if that is true or not. Our refrigerator is hidden behind a cabinet and we have a bonus fridge above the sink that is about the size of a microwave. Why? I have no idea.

Church was good today. I don’t recall the denomination or any of that type of detail, but the pastor preached the Word from the Scripture and what I heard from him lined up with what I read from my Bible. So far so good. He did say a couple things that sounded a little odd, but I am pretty sure that was due to language barrier issues not theological problems. Don’t ask what the things were because I have already forgotten. I do remember that they were not major and that I could see how someone from a non-Western culture could phrase things a little differently than us and would sound slightly off. We are planning on going their next week and learning more about the church.

Charlie came again this Saturday and we had a blast with him. He helped me get a photocopy of my passport for the cable guy (he hooked up and turned on our internet), which was part of the requirement for service. Then we all went to the Costco and picked up some needed/wanted items. Jenn made Charlie and I a good home cooked meal (our first since arrival) and it was good. Charlie also showed us how to use the subway system here and helped us get our T-money cards. These cards are used for all public transport and provide a quick (I think slightly discounted) way of paying for public transportation; which by the way the Koreans do very well. Buses have never been more convenient then here; at least not that I have experienced.

Speaking of public transport, we got to ride it by ourselves for the first time. After church we ate at the church’s cafeteria (it’s a large Korean church, but has a small English service in addition to its Korean services) and fellowshipped with some of the people we met there. Afterward, Georgiana, a fellow teacher at our school, had a Korean class (she is learning Korean) there and so was not returning with us. Since we knew where we needed to get off and what bus to take we decided it would be fine and we took off on our new adventure. In short, we made it just fine. We got off several stops after our apartment and went shopping (literally a daily experience since we need many things for our apartment, but can’t carry that much with us [it’s a ten minute walk from the nearest store to our apartment, and after that long even not too heavy things get heavy!]).

Our acquisitions for today were a toaster oven, some printer paper (we got a printer at Costco, but no paper. We did not want a heap of it, just one ream, which you cannot get at Costco), and some power strips/extension cords. Korea does not seem to have what we Americans would traditionally call an extension cord, just very long corded power strips with additional outlets (which we needed). Now my electric toothbrush is charging and I will be able to use it again. It has been dead for a while and we were unable to charge it because both adapters we have are not long enough to fit inside and stay there (they fall out!). For the record, I have been brushing my teeth for the last week, just not with my electric brush. Oh, we also caught up on laundry. The machine we have is VERY small. It fits something like 5 large shirts or something like that. It barely fit the blanket we put inside it; just a standard queen/full sized one. And we had a lot of laundry since we had been unable to do any laundry for the whole week before we moved in. Then we had to figure out how to use it since its buttons are also in Korean.

In short, life has been quite an adventure and we are surviving. I figure we will be thriving soon too;-) Oh, our various teachers at our school are pretty cool ladies (I am the only male in the school besides students and the PE instructor who comes on Fridays). Both the Koreans and foreigners (We have Canadians, Americans, and Britons). God has been good. More later, I am tired.

Chris