I was SO happy to be able to go to our apartment right away. A lot of times people have to stay in a hotel for a week or so into whoever they are replacing moves out. Both times I’ve come to Korea I’ve gotten to move in right away, lucky me. Our new place is a HUGE upgrade from last year. We actually have space and separation- unlike last year just living in a room. I almost cried when I walked in and saw the regular size oven- I can continue baking even from halfway around the world. Little things like having a microwave this year are also amazing in comparison. We have two bedrooms- the second room has become our laundry/my exercise room. The bathroom and shower situation are pretty much the same- a shower head attached to a wall, but there’s a window in there to reduce the mold build up.
My new school is called Alphabet Street School. So far it seems pretty similar to my school last year. This year, I’m going to be teaching 7 year olds to begin with. In March I’ll get a new class, but I’m excited to work with the 7 year olds for now. They all speak English pretty well; they have been studying since they were 6 years old. I have 4 boys and 5 girls, nice small class. I officially start teaching them next week so we’ll see how that goes. Conor has started already with his class, he also has 7 year olds- but they’ve been studying for 3 years now!
It was very easy to settle into things this year. It’s a good feeling that I know how to do a lot of basic things that I had to learn last year (example: how to ride the subway). It made it a lot easier for us to immediately go out and purchase our brand new flat screen TV that we couldn’t wait to buy. It makes our apartment truly start to feel like home. Conor and I have also done some hiking since we’ve been here, but now it’s starting to get too cold outside.
A fun thing we did last weekend was go to a food and drink festival. It was in a giant hall in an even more giant mall. There were a few floors filled with Korean food, some western food and samples from all over the world. Our favorite part was the craft beer sampling station- every there got a free bag of tortilla chips too!
All in all it’s been a good first few weeks back. It feels like we’ve never left, been here forever, but I still miss everyone at home every day. I’m excited to start teaching this week because I’ve been pretty bored during the day. And I’m excited to start planning our vacation for December in a month!!!
