Cool happenings in geoje!

Hello!

Sorry it has been a while since I updated, and I again forgot to bring my camera cord to the PC cafe ( although this has been a slow week since we started full time teaching this week... so we really have not had many opportunities to go sight seeing, I am going to try and get some pictures of the school though)

But as always I want to update you with a list of things going on in Geoje! Here is my list of 12 things that is cool/new/exciting.... at least for us!

1.) We have finally gotten over Jet Lag and now have a "schedule of sorts"... By this I mean, we now wake up when the sun is up and go to sleep when it comes down. Last Thursday when we had to teach for the very first time, I was so tired, I thought I would never make it through a full week, and probably would not have made it through that day, had our Manager Daniel not brought us some coke! I was nervous starting to teach this week, but even though this week was difficult it was not because I was tired. I think we have finally recovered from the jetlag of traveling for 30 hours straight. This is a very good and exciting thing. We now can wake up earlier and utilize our mornings for food shopping or for exercise or just sight seeing!

2.) We have now taught all our classes and met all of the kids at least once! Because of the Holiday and wacky schedules ( some are mwf classes some MW some MF, some T/ TH classes. ) today was the last day of new stuff... So as of today Joseph and I have met all of our kids, and so far they are great! Joseph works mostly with the older kids and Me with the elementary age kids... which is fine with both of us... I worked with littler kids when I worked as a camp counselor and when Joseph worked at Boyscout camp he had age 11 and older... they really could not have given us better schedules!

3.) Saturday we are going to meet some other native english speakers. I joined a group on facebook called the Geoje Teachers Group (GTG) and they have invited us to a party for all Native english speakers on the Island, it is fairly close to our apartment, so we are planning on walking, and hopefully someone will give us a ride home or help us call a cab ( something we have not figured out yet!) We have so many questions and it will be nice not to have to pull out a cell phone translator to do that ( yeah, they have those here!) That will be very cool and exciting

4.) Our kids like us. Every time they see us, they say "Hello Teacher______". We actually have seen students and their parents walking around town so I always feel really happy if I can actually remember their name... The parents don't speak much english so they usually nod and wave or say hello, but at least I don't have to do any unscheduled parent teacher confrences ( and I would not have much to say since I have only taught for one week!) One girl today even brought me a hershey kiss and said "it from America like you!"... I can tell I am going to love these kids!

5.) Our co-workers like us! It is very exciting to work with people who are close to my age. I was lucky to have that at my last Job, and now have struck gold again, Jenny, Sen, Daniel and Sera are all close in age to us, and hopefully next week we will all go out for lunch before work one day! We have talked with Jenny and Daniel alot ( I think they are dating too!) so it is fun to do couple things, and we can all work together to translate the conversation so everyone can have an enjoyable time! We are very happy at our school!

6.) We finally know our way around the city. We are starting learn with ease how everything relates to other places, Our school is right next to the Harbor ( you can smell the sea air coming through the window when you teach) we are learning where all the stores are, and how to find the quickets ways to get places. Joseph is very map oriented, so he has a mental map of almost the entire city! We discover new places each day, and now we can remember how to get there again, Yesterday walking home we saw a restaurant that had a picture of a delicious looking hamburger, so we thought we would try it today, We were able to find the restaurant again, but unfortunately they said they didn't have it... just chicken, so we ended up getting a box of chicken legs and pickled radish for dinner tonight... which was really tasty... the honey mustard sauce tastes just like the stuff at chick fila... SCORE!!!! ( that made me really excited! it is the little things people... the little things in life!)

7.) We now have something to search for... Hamburgers close in quality to those at Fat Daddies... They have a burger place here called Lotteria.... which reminds me of a MacDonalds or a Burger King ( but just add shrimp crunchies instead of fries and squid on the menu!)but nothing like a really awesome fat daddies burger... or even a char grill burger.... so now, we have a quest... find a good burger... or any burger that is not fast food! We shall see...

8.) Now we can go into most any restaurant and order with ease. We have been to several sit down restaurants, and the take out kind, and can now order food without the worry that we are actually ordering squid or some other foreign sea creature! This is because there is some english and... it leads me to #9

9.) We are Learning Hangul, The symbols are fairly easy to read you just have to learn the sounds each character makes. We made flash cards and we study them a little everyday and usually between us we can at least figure out what it is supposed to sound like even if we don't know the Korean word. We figured out that there are about 50 norebangs... aka karaoke bars around here, and can find and use every PC Cafe on the Island!

10.) We like digestive biscuits And trying new foods! We live very close to a 7-11 type store ( no gas though) and it contains many different types of food, which we try one new thing every few days... or at least once a week! We have tried some digestive biscuits because Joseph was looking for a fiber substitute... they have no granola bars here... which is very sad since both Joseph and I ate one a day when we lived in raleigh... so we are having to try and find new foods that appeal to us in the morning... although we walk past a fabulous bakery each morning, you have to be careful... I bought what I thought was a small bread doughnut, only to find it was a doughnut alright, but it was filled with pickles, egg and kimchi... not quite the breakfast on the go I had wanted that morning. After that run in, I switched to a bowl of cereal at home. It is cheaper and I know for sure that there is no kimchi in my breakfast... although I think we accidently bought whole milk at the grocery store so it is a bit rich too... Lots of food adventures here people... we will call them adventures! We also figured out we really like rice cakes... which is good as they are served everywhere, there is a street vendor that sets up near our apt, so we may try one of those one night on the way home from work one day!

11.) One Mans trash is our treasure. People throw out perfectly good stuff all the time... we constantly see stuff that looks brand new in the trash. The sofa that we had in our apt was such a treasure. Adam and Jennifer, the people who live there before us took in this sofa that was missing a leg and brought it into the house and used three books to set it right... It still works as a place to sit, and it was totally free... tonight as we were walking home from work we saw two almost new looking golf bags in the trash! ( we almost picked them up thinking we should go to the Indoor golf place we walked by last time!) I see really pretty tables and other furniture... Right now we have what we need, but if we move to a bigger place, who knows!

And Last but not least... because I can't stand having 11 things on a list instead of an even number:

12.) I apparently have hairy arms. Well this is not really cool or even really exciting, but I had a student tell me today that " Ohh teacher... I have hairy arms too!" ... which was kinda funny. They have a very blunt way of speaking in English here. We will be in a teacher meeting in English and then Grace will say, Ok, that is all you need to hear, we will now speak in Korean, you can get up and leave"... and she means it nicely, but is sometimes it come out as harsh... That is part of the translation barrier we go through everyday... we just always try to remember people mean well and I don't think anything truly hurtful has been said since we got here... In fact, I think people show us extra kindness since we are obviously different, they may stare at us in a restaurant, but we get wonderful service, and people always try to help explain things to us even if they are not competent in English. Many of the restaurants here are home run ( aka the people live above the restaurant their families own) and we went to one near our apt that looked really interesting, The woman working, brought us a menu outside ( we were trying to read the menu from outside the window), and pointed to a korean hangul phrase and told us " chicken" and welcomed us into her restaurant. She then poured us water and even gave me an apron to wear since it was a place where they cook at your table place and I was wearing a white shirt and she didn't want the juices to splatter one me while we ate the food she prepared for us. She was so kind we will probably go there again, not beause the food was amazing, but because she worked so hard to make us feel comfortable and to fill us with food. She even tried to have conversation with us, but her english was bad and we only know a few hangul characters... but she chatted away in Korean like we could understand her.. she reminded me of my mom a bit... just chatting away, and being helpful. Even though I am still not sure what we ate, I felt at ease, in her tiny street corner restaurant, which is a pleasure I no longer can take for granted.

So there you go, 12 Fun, cool and exciting things that have happened in Geoje this week! I will try to get some more pictures up this weekend!