Sunday, May 18, 2008

We're Here!




We made it into to Seoul on Friday evening after leaving New York on Thursday morning. It was the longest 30 hour day ever...... We chased the sun around to the other side of the planet. It literally didn't get dark the whole time we were flying. After arriving in Seoul, we took a four hour long bus ride to Gwangju. Two gentlemen from our schools were waiting for us at the bus station. They gave us a quick tour of our schools, took us to 7-11 so that we could get something to eat in the morning, then to our apartment. We were t-i-r-e-d. He tried to explain to us how our thermostat worked, but we half listened and now are taking hot showers with the trial and error method. Our place is small, but cute.


Our bed complete with cutesy girly duvet provided by our school.






Our "living room". It came with a desk and one chair and a tv with only Korean channels. We bought that little table so we'd have something to eat off of.


This is our little kitchen! (I'm in a PC bang and Windows is all in Korean so I can't rotate this image!)


We were lucky to arrive on a Friday so that we had the weekend to recover. Saturday, we went to E-Mart, which is akin to a Super Wal-Mart with several floors. We bought some food, pots, pans, etc. We found the 1000 won Store (1 dollar-ish) and wished we found it the day before. They everything we needed, but cheaper. It's now our new favorite store. We also bought a rice cooker. They have rice cookers that cost up to $450! Apparently, it's the most important appliance in a Korean kitchen. I guess it would be like a Cuisinart or SubZero fridge in the states. They looked like they were about to take off for the space station at any moment.




We ventured out for dinner on Saturday and ordered by pointing, which works well if there are pictures on the menu. We went out to for lunch on Sunday and walked into a restaurant that didn't have a picture menu. There were three waitresses talking to us in Korean and pointing at things and all we could do was give blank stares. The manager came over and pointed at one thing on the menu and said "steak-uh". We put up two fingers and food arrived shortly. It came with several side dishes and one tator tot! There are tots in Korea and you may only receive them one at a time, but they're here!


Two other teachers from our school live on our floor. Last night they took us downtown to see a movie. We saw Iron Man and then went out to a sushi restaurant. Downtown is pretty neat. It's full of cute little clothing boutiques everywhere. Ceci- I think you would freak out at the cute.

Today, we go into our schools for the first time. I think we'll just be observing classes this week.

3 comments:

Cecilia Peterson said...

i probably would, i'm already freaking out at your cute cute toy kitchen! i'm jealous of all the interesting food you're going to get to eat--try something wierd for me, will you?

Nathan said...

Kate bought you guys a box on Saturday. It is a special box that took several long minutes to pick out of a stack of many boxes. We are going to put things in it and send it to you.

Kate and I will argue about whether we should send you practical things or pretty things. Expect both.

We require your address for box-sending and google earth-ing.

Julia Meadows said...

I love the can of Spam...like a safety net for when the Korean cuisine becomes overwhelming and you long for good American food...