A Message From Jennifer

Our luggage made it. The roasting pan did have dents in it, the knob where the on switch is got broke and got pushed inside so we don’t know if it will work or not. We think we can fix it. All of our bags of chocolate made it to Korea with all 5 of our bags. We think that the reason out Roaster got broken was because when we were getting off the plane in SF I saw the guy who was unloading the bags pick them up and then drop them from about his shoulder length. We got our food through customs. It was a good thing because we didn’t have any food our first day here and had to eat granola bars and beef jerky for breakfast. The airline fed us well. We had about three meals on our SF to Seoul flight.


The flight went really well. We enjoyed talking to the girl who sat in our row. We are excited that we got to sit together. Chris got an aisle seat and I sat in the middle of three seats.

When we got through customs, Richard, our driver was waiting for us. We drove to Ilsan and got our stuff from two out of the three people who had it. The guy who has stuff still was not going to get home until 8:30 at night. We will get the items from him later. We were happy that our fans and Chris’ coffee were in the stuff we did get. ALL of my clothes are not here yet. We also do not have the power converter to plug in the roaster. That is why we have not tried to fix it yet.



We love our apartment. Our only complaint is that it is on the fifth floor and there is no elevator. It is very large. We have a nice sized guest room. We appreciated that when we got here there were pillows and blankets (Ours are not here yet), but we needed the sheets that we brought. So that worked out great. Most of the furniture in the apartment matches. The green is growing on me. I think I like it now. I exiled the orange couch onto one of the enclosed balconies because we already had another one in our living room and there was too much furniture in it. Our apartment is about three times the size of the last one. There are three enclosed balconies of various sizes. The one beside our bedroom has a drying rack. We can reach through our bedroom window and grab our clothes to put away. The AC it our apartment works great.



What can I say about school? It sure is different from what we experienced last year. First off we are not at a school it is a camp. So the students are never here for more than 6 days. We had a group of students today that were only here for one day. There is a group of Junior High students who are here for the week. I don’t like that we don’t really get to know our students before they go away. We also don’t have time to learn their names.



For the first four classes in the morning, the students are studying from a language book. Today I taught the same lesson four times. Then it was time for lunch. After lunch they have theme classes. First I helped in flight class, where they got to make paper airplanes and then have a contest to see whose went the farthest. (Mine did, because I googled how to make a paper airplane instead of using the instructions that the kids had). For the 2nd afternoon theme class I observed a class called god’s eye. It was an art project where they loop yarn around two popsicle sticks. That was interesting. Next, I observed a theme class called “Plastics”. They take a piece of plastic, draw a picture on it with permanent marker and they put the plastic in an oven. The plastic shrinks and becomes a cell phone charm. It is neat to watch the plastic shrink. The final class that I helped teach this afternoon was called “Waffles.” That’s right it was 40 minutes of teaching the students how to make waffles. This class was easy because I taught it yesterday.



We have not found an English speaking church yet. We are in a remote area. We were spoiled last year living in a big city. Now we live near the coast. From the class room you can see the water clearly.



On my way home from school today, I was walking from the bus stop where the school shuttle drops us off and these cute little boys ran up to me and said “Hello, how are you?”. I said fine and they asked me about 10 times. I think it was one of the few questions that they knew in English. I asked them their names. One of the boys told me that he was 7 years old. I believe that the others were the same age. Even as I walked away they kept asking “How are you?” It was quite fun. They are the only neighbors that we have met. The other foreign teachers live just down the street from us. The nice thing about taking the school shuttle is that it gives us time to get to know our co-workers. The most classes we will teach a day are eight. (I hope). Most of the foreign teachers are American. There is one couple who is from Ireland. They are leaving in two weeks. A guy from Texas, one from LA, one from San Francisco (I complemented him on his A’s hat today) and a girl from Seattle. We are laughing that the majority of us are from the West Coast.



Our kids are great. This week they are all 15 years old. We like that the girls really do want to learn English and they try to talk to us in the halls. Some classes are more interactive then others. They are well behaved.



We have been having trouble with jet lag. I keep waking up between 2:30 am 3:00 am and cannot go back to sleep. This has caused me to not be able to keep my eyes open past 7:40 pm. I am proud of myself today because I woke up at 2:30 am but fell back asleep until 4:30 am. Tonight is the first night that I stayed up past eight. But now that it is 9:15 pm. I think I will go to bed. I enjoyed getting up early and getting a lot of things done.



I will write more later.