Now Onto the (Nearer) Past...

I intended to make one more post with photos from the Europe trip this summer (the Czech Republic was the last country)...but for whatever reason, Blogger won't upload any pics right now. It's not the Internet's fault, as it's blazing fast at my school, so I'm not sure what the issue is. At any rate, it's probably about time we started writing about our present country anyway.

We're in South Korea, in the town of Seosan (pronounced "so-san"). It's about 20 minutes from the beach on the eastern side (yay!), and about 1 1/2 hour due south of Seoul, the capital. It's large enough (200,000 people) that just abo0ut anything we need can be found here, but small enough that we now understand how to navigate it, mostly.

We're really enjoying it so far. The people are very friendly, and life is pretty easy so far. We're adjusting to Korean culture and food, of course, and learning about the Korean school system. The first two weeks, I was teaching 1st & 2nd graders by myself, but now I'm teaching 4th and 6th graders with my co-teacher. My school is very close to our apartment (less than a 5 minute walk), which I'm very grateful for, and I'm sure will be even more grateful for once winter hits. Brenden's school is much farther (a 15 minute drive), but he gets a ride from a teacher who teaches at his school (but this teacher's wife teaches at MY school). Brenden is teaching 3rd-6th graders. It's going well so far.

Koreans love sports, which is great! We played badminton for the first time last Tuesday night, and had great fun! So we've decided to practice on our own also, and badminton is, luckily, a very easy and cheap sport to get into, so we bought our own rackets and birdies and began practicing this past weekend! Additionally, every school has "volleyball time" on Wednesday afternoons for the teachers, so Brenden and I are playing with our respective schools. I was a little nervous before the first game, to be honest, since I really haven't played since high school, but I shouldn't have been. Not only are there multiple levels of players, but I'm actually not half bad. I made a few points and saves in our first match, so I'm looking forward to match #2, this Wednesday. :)

We'd love to hear from you back at home what's going on there! So far, culture shock has been minimal, and thanks to the Internet, it's so much easier to keep in contact with all of you back at home, which has reduced homesickness also.