My Korean Business Card

I've never even had a business card before but now I have a bilingual one. I guess that says "Tom Meyer" in Korean?????

Subway Salesman

Osan

Check out a new photo album on the right!

This past weekend Bonnie and I did a lot of great things. On Friday night we went to Outback Steakhouse (yes like we have in the USA) with some of your fellow teachers. It was everything I had ever hoped for in a visit. There was tons of rye bread loaves, a bloomin' onion, and wonderful dishes. It was nice to experience a bit of America (via Australia) in the midst of Korea.

Saturday was probably the highlight of the weekend. We went to a town just south of Suwon called Osan. There is a US Air Base there and right outside the main gate there is closed street shopping mall with all kinds of interesting shops. We went with 3 other teachers from our school and shopped for about 2 hours and then went and ate at a Thai Buffet (delicious but $15 each). We then walked through an open air market, which was filled with all sorts of interesting and gross smells.

The great thing about the shopping is that you could haggle and stuff was pretty cheap. We ended up getting a rugged looking bag that could be thrown over the shoulder or could strap around your waist like a huge fanny pack for $19. Bonnie also got a little metal case to put cards and such in for when she doesn't want to carry a purse for $13 (basically a business card holder). We thought both were good deals.

We also unintentionally went to a cool date type coffee shop. We wanted to just hang out and read but they ended up bringing a menu to our table and the drink were really nice looking and actually tasted okay too.

Sunday we took an adventure and successfully navigated the Seoul Metro (train/subway) to go to a church in Seoul. We met some very nice people but I'm not sure that we will make a return visit... It wasn't quite our style for lack of better terminology.

That's all for now!

the train came to town

My friend Leslie (fondly called, L Train or Trainer) came to visit Tom and I!!! It was great to see a familiar face from home. Trainer had been teaching in the southern tip of S.Korea for the past 5 weeks and she stopped to stay with us in Suwon for two days while she was on her way back home. In preparation for her stay Tom and I were able to find a air mattress from HomePlus (like a wal mart...kinda) on sale for 9,000 won (9 bucks) so she could have a semi-bed. So, if any of you people are thinking about visiting us...keep in mind that you too could sleep on a small air mattress on the floor.

We had a great time. We ate some GREAT Korean food and got to share all of our Korean stories. It really was a miracle Train even found us because we had to give her directions to get here from Seoul to Suwon to our apartment....let me tell you, this was not an easy task! People here don't understand us and we are illiterate and we don't have cell phones...it's an intense situation. But I am proud to say L Train made it and was a fantastic house guest. We look forward to having more guest in the future.

the package

Back in my college days my best buddy Mary Kate would always get these elaborate packages from a family she knew at her home in Chicago land. These packages were incredible....so many types of cookies, cakes, candies, and even fun little treasures like candles and holiday decorations. For every big holiday Mary Kate got one of these HUGE boxes and we'd eat out of it for at least a month. "The Package" usually contained a ton of food so Mary Kate always loved to share "the package" with her friends (this was especially wonderful when I lived with Mary Kate because it felt like I got a package too, even though it wasn't mine. Tom would even enjoy "the package" treats and then he would organize the contents of the box into neat piles and sections, which is very Tom like and very un-Mary Kate like.)

Well, my friends, the day has come...Tom and I received our own package from the states! "The package" is wonderful and delightful and everything I could have wanted from home (what can I say, Jerre and Mike know how to make a great package). You can see above the package being received by us at school in all of its glory...Jerre's homemade cookies, Kaldi's coffee, a coffee grinder, magazines, candy, spices....and so much more. Simply Beautiful.

The only bad part about "the package" was getting it here. My parents had asked if they could send us anything and we quickly rattled off a wish list. They sent everything without too many problems and we were able to track it over the internet. It only took 3 or 4 days for it to arrive in Incheon, South Korea (the airport), but for some reason we noticed it wouldn't leave the airport. We quickly discovered our package got held up in customs! It was a long ordeal (4 days to be exact) but basically because we had some expensive items in the box they wanted to tax all of our goods. They also wanted copies of our passport and our alien resident card, which we won't get for a couple more weeks. (At one point we even thought we'd have to wait to get the package until after we got our alien cards. could you imagine Jerre's cookies just sitting in a box in korea for weeks???!!!) Long story short, our awesome Korean staff figured everything out for us and got them to not tax us and not wait for our alien cards. It was a pretty ridiculous process honestly. But, friends, "the package" was worth the wait.

from the roof top

Here are some pictures Tom took from the top of our apartment. If you look really closely on the top one you can see our school right in the middle of the picture above the trees. The other two pictures are pretty sunsets looking out onto Suwon. Pollution lends itself to some pretty night skies!

in honor of the Jaegers

We found Cold Stone in Korea! The portions were smaller than home, but the price, taste, and atmosphere were about the same. I was pumped to find it!!!!


If only the Jaegers would've been here to enjoy it with us like the good ole' days back in Co-Mo...

Mich-al-ah Phel-ps-ah

That's how they say Michael Phelps here in Korea. So just after I went on my little rant below about how we only get crappy Olympic coverage here in Korea they actually did something cool. They showed a series of 200m freestyle races right in a row. It was a first qualifier, second qualifier, and then the final. Phelps was swimming in each of these races. Let it be known that Korean superhero swimmer Tae-Hwan Park (400m free gold) was also swimming in each race as well.

Regardless, the first race Phelps looked pedestrian. I think he placed 2nd. The second race he looked just okay. I think he placed 3rd. The Final was a whole different story. It was unbelievable. There was no doubt that he would win after about 10 seconds of the race. He just smashed everybody around him. He made them look like they shouldn't have even tried. It was staggering to see the progression from relatively meaningless race to the center stage. I don't know if I've seen an athlete that can flip a switch like that... amazing.

Weight Lifting, Archery, Judo, Handball, and Badmitton

So school has been going well for Bonnie and I. We have been teaching and planning a lot so when we come home we often just want to veg out. Well we have been exploring the Korean cable that we get at our place.
First off I'm glad we aren't paying for it because all but about 5 or 6 of the channels are in Korean. Korean culture on TV can be funny by itself. There is a channel that teaches English lessons. One time when we were flipping through they were teaching a lesson on the words "Hafta, gonna, and wanna." Pretty funny stuff let me tell you.
Anyway, we thought that at least we would get to be watching the Olympics on live TV. Then we began to slowly catch on to the fact that Korean TV only broadcasts events that Koreans are actually good at. Hence the title of this blog post. That is pretty much the extent of the coverage we get to see. Maybe some pistol shooting or swimming every once in a while but that is about it.
So you may say that we have an advantage in the Olympic viewing area but really I would rather watch delayed USA basketball in English than live handball in Korean.
Thankfully we don't find ourselves watching TV too much. All is well for now. We only have 1 more day of class this week and then a work day on Friday.

the first day

You only have one first day of teaching ever in your life...and I just finished it!

In honor of my parents who always took my picture on the first day of school, Tom and I took pictures of our first day as teachers at GSIS. (they're kind of bad pictures, but you get the point)

The day went pretty well. We're exhausted. We had an extra crazy schedule so the students could do some first day of school activities and then we had professional development stuff after school until 5:30. The biggest news of the day was that Tom seems to be becoming quite the attraction at GSIS. Some girls were heard saying, "that new algebra teacher is hot. he's mine!" No, no ladies...he's mine. So back off.

all that for a pink whale

Last night Tom and I decided to be brave and do some exploring. Suwon, the city we live in, is pretty big and we've really only explored our little portion of the city so we wanted to branch out and go somewhere new and unknown. With map, phrasebook, and flashcards (our school made us cards that have important korean sayings on them, i.e. "take me to acro park" (where we live) or "take me to GSIS" (our school) we headed out on our journey. Our ultimate goal for our adventure was to get a bus pass that we load up with money and then we swipe it every time we ride the bus. We had heard it was a pretty easy process to get one and that we just had to get to Suwon Station (the big bus, train, and subway station) to purchase them.

The adventure begins...we went to the bus stop right outside our apartment and jumped on the first one that we saw. We've never taken a bus here, but other people we know said they just jumped on a bus and they ended up at suwon station. Tom had our Suwon city map in hand and was following our progress as we traveled on the bus. We noticed we were traveling the opposite direction from the station, but thought...well, it will circle back around. However, after 30 minutes we realized we no longer could figure out where we were on the map. The feeling was beginning to settle in of, where are we and where are we going?!! We asked a friendly Korean to point out our location on our map. His response, "Not on map." This was an unsettling moment. He spoke fairly good English but we couldn't figure out where he was telling us we were because place names are obviously Korean names that we don't understand very well. The nice Korean man told us to get off the bus and go back the way we came. The picture above was taken right after we got off the bus in the midst of not knowing where we were.

Once on bus #2 we found our place on the map and discovered we were indeed heading in the right direction to Suwon Station. We arrived at the station and after getting to this point we thought the worst of our confusion was over...we were wrong. It took us an hour to find a bus pass. The long and the short of it is that we couldn't find the place that sells passes for buses, then we couldn't find anyone to speak english, then we found someone that spoke english that gave us bad instructions, then we got really mad and frustrated, then we got lost some more, and at our breaking point a nice young korean came up asking, "do you all need help?" YES!!! She directed us in the right direction and we eventually got our bus passes. My electronic bus pass (you just swipe it in front of a sensor on the bus) is in the shape of a pink whale. Why not, right? You can get boring cards, which tom did, but i chose the whale. I think her name is Naya.

Mission accomplished! We got our passes! But we still had to get home from Suwon Station. We were able to show our flashcards to some more nice koreans (Koreans rock) and they got us on the right bus. They even told the bus driver where we were going and our bus driver told us when to get off...so wonderful. When it was all said and done it took 3+ hours. Did I mention it started to rain in the midst of all this?

Overall, it was a very humbling, frustrating, exciting, and quality Korean experience. Just another day of being a foreigner in Korea.

Picture Time

We have added a picture slideshow to our blog! It has pictures of our school and some funny Korean things. To get to the album, just click on the slideshow on the right side of the blog (under our picture and "about us" section). The picture above was taken last night at a Korean restaurant. We had some great food with new friends!!!

The fun and games are over... for now.

Well, we had a great first 3 or 4 days getting adjusted to Korea. Our school took us on a bunch of awesome adventures. They took us out to a couple of fantastic lunches. Saturday we went to a Korean galbi restaurant. There is a grill surrounded by toppings and side dishes inset in the middle of the table. Then meat is dumped on the grill and you cook it and turn it yourself. When it is done you pick it off of the grill, put some toppings on it, wrap it in a piece of lettuce and enjoy. It was great and I stuffed myself.

The next day they took us to a Chinese restaurant where we were served probably 8 to 10 courses of fantastically delicious food. It was far and away the best Chinese food that I have ever had. Though I wouldn't have expected it I was way more stuffed at the end of this meal than the last.

Monday we were taken to Costco and released into the madness that is a two story Costco filled with tons of clueless teachers and Koreans who don't understand the concept of a "space bubble." This was exciting because there were so many American products but harrowing because of the imposed claustrophobia. We also got to eat lunch in the food court which was awesome because we got to eat pizza. Friday-Monday were filled with some awesome adventures.

However the focus for Tuesday and Wednesday was sharply turned to school and the impending start date on Monday the 11th. To make a long story short this is a big year for our school because they are hoping to achieve International Baccalaureate (IB) certification and a lot of that falls on our shoulders. This was made quite clear to us over the past few days.

Our lives will most likely be consumed by school for the next 2 weeks or so but that is okay. That is what we are here for and we look forward to that but also look forward to the return of balance to our lives as well. That's all I've got for now. Peace out.

this picture says it all

I went to ask Tom a question and he had fallen asleep watching tv with the remote still in his hand! We just got home from school a little bit ago and we are exhausted. We love Korea. We love our school. But we are tired! The school has kept us on a busy schedule since we arrived. It's their cruel but kind way of helping us get over the jet lag, which has hit us both pretty hard. I woke up today at 4am and couldn't go back to sleep. Maybe this is God's way of making me a morning person?

we made it!

We made it to Korea! Our flight was long and we are still fighting jetlag, but honestly that is the only thing there is to complain about. Our apartment is phenomal. It's nicer than what we had at home. Our school is so great. We're making new friends already and the school is a top notch facility. We want to write more about how everything is going, but we are just too tired tonight. We had a full day of orientation and we have an even busier orientation day tomorrow. Overall, we have been so impressed and feel so loved.

ps- We made a video that gives a tour of our apartment on it, but we're having trouble loading it. We'll try to post some pictures and hopefully a video asap.


UPDATE! We got the video posted on Youtube! Thanks Zach. Here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uX3wvITFYw0