Dubbed "the number one food of Chuncheon" Dakgalbi, or chicken ribs, is actually pieces of marinated chicken (with or without the bones), vegetables (sesame leaf, cabbage and  sweet potatoes) with tubular rice cakes.  The dish is roasted on a steel pan, with lots of red chili sauce, right in front of you. 

Every so often, one of the attendants (not sure if they are officially the chefs or wait staff) comes by and stirs the mixture. As you can see, we are sitting on the floor.  This is common in many traditional restaurants and shoes are left at the door. 

Soon, all the chicken and vegetables are cooked and you scoop it into lettuce leaves with raw onions, large pieces of garlic and more red chili sauce.

The verdict? Very good!

These peppers were parked legally.

Monsoons are here and with them, the thunder.  We awoke to a clap so loud that neither of us knew what was happening...was it an earthquake?  was the building collapsing?  was the world ending?

Not a bomb, just a storm. 

A pipe that runs from the roof and through our balcony is constantly funneling water.  The other morning, when I heard it for the first time, I thought Nate had turned on the bath tub tap, left it running and overflowed the bathroom.  I think I even yelled "Nate! what are you doing?"  Now the sound of water spilling everywhere is just typical--like the fan whirring, the cicadas humming and the elevator talking to you.  Everything here has a pre-recorded message: the cross walk...some toilets...people drive around broadcasting advertisements...and the other morning, some pre-recorded message played in our apartment--still don't know where it came from or what it said!   

We are adjusting, but there is so much that we don't understand--like menus!  We're still eating lots of pizza. Oh, and tomatoes.  I bought an enormous bag of tomatoes from our neighborhood roadside market.  They are perfectly delicious--just like out of the garden.  So we're also eating toasted tomato sandwiches, and I'm planning to make sauce from scratch. 
Thanks for visiting us on our blog!  You've helped us cope with the last two weeks!
Kate

So, one week in, pretty much adjusted to the time now, slept in till 9:30 today.  Still rippin' hot and humid but in a few weeks that's supposed to change.  We've eaten a fair amount of pizza the first while, sweet potato and hot chicken last night.  Pretty affordable too.  5 and 6 bucks Cdn respectively (approx)  It's not that we don't want to try Korean, it's just that sometimes you're hungry and you don't want to spend time figuring out what you ordering and then when it comes, finding out it's something else. For example, the Korean version of sushi has ham in the "vegetable" roll.  It comes standard, different from a "vegetarian" roll, I guess.  You need to specifically ask for them to take the ham out.  So, pizza's our go to food right now.  We did find a nice restaurant with a picture menu and my comprehension of menus is slowly improving, but when you got the munchies, pizza it is at the moment.

So, what else can I tell you?  The majority of my students are really good, in the sense of attentiveness, so that's nice.  The books that they are reading are challenging and maybe too difficult. There's this one called "The Phantom Tollbooth" which is all about word play.  (Characters like "The Which, The
Spelling Bee, The Watchdog, The Mathemagician...)  Now I can see the powers that be want the kids to be exposed to idioms, wordplay and puns but I don't know how much the kids are understanding and enjoying it.  Granted, at 9:30pm, after a long day like the Korean kids have, I probably wouldn't be putting too much brain power into a foreign language lesson either.  But this is what I have to teach so you do the best you can.  The boss also mentioned that he is interested in paying foreign teachers to write short stories to develop his own circulum I believe.  Sounded interesting.  We'll talk to him about that again.

So teaching has gone fairly smoothly the first week.  Some ways of interacting with students have come back from my teaching in Japan days.  Everyone at my school has been nice and helpful.

peace,
Nathan

One of my friends told me I should stick to 3 letter words the first week.  Fox is three letters, but turns out, it can sound like four. 

So far, I've successfully taught little Korean children to swear in English.  Not the best outcome. But will keep trying.

So far, classes are fine, but knowing what we are supposed to teach, for how long and when to test--these are the questions.  My schedule is so complicated it takes a degree in complex math to understand it...Mason help!   I have fourteen different classes per week and almost thirty classes total.  My biggest  surprise is what is considered an age appropriate literature choice. For example, I am reading a Sherlock Holmes mystery/Jack the Ripper story with nine year-olds (yes, some deranged creative writing student has re-written Sherlock as Jack the Ripper).  This just seems wrong to me--but I am willing to consider that there are different ideas of age appropriateness in different cultures...still, I hope they don't have nightmares. 

I hope this doesn't sound too negative...Positives...students and staff are very nice.  Everyone is helpful.  The kids have long days, and considering this, their behaviour is good.  I have one extremely active class (four 7 year-old boys), so I am trying to make it as much fun as possible--without injuring anyone (scissors made a swift exit) or putting a hole in the wall. 

Juk, or Korean Soup, is a rice porridge style dish with various additions.  Nate had chicken and cheese, and I had a seafood medley.  Many dishes are served with condiments.  This dish arrived with kimchi (spicy , pickled radish or cabbage--a Korean specialty), shredded beef with sesame, another pickled radish and a spicy chili sauce.  The smiling server gave us complimentary tea and walked us to the door when we left. 

Saturday.  9:00am.  We're packing up and leaving the "Love Motel" and are off to our new place: a 3 bedroom, UNairconditioned! apartment.  (Hopefully not a sweatbox, we have one fan but may need more.  Right now, South Korea is one humid place!)  It will be good to be able to unpack and settle.  I imagine that this weekend will also involve prep for next week as it feels a bit like we've been thrown into the deep end of the pool.  (Kate more than me, but I think we can both tread water.:)  But we'll roll with it, do what we can, and cut ourselves some slack: we're not going to be perfect teachers with perfect lessons.  But we can learn and we can keep a sense of humor and try to maintain a positive attitude.  Life lesson of the day:  It's sometimes hard to see calm waters ahead when everything is turbulent around you. But that's we're heading...:)  (insert wide angle shot of the sun setting on a calm ocean...ahh...)

Ok. Enough mediocre philosophical ramblings.  Observations of South Korea so far:

1. Driving:  every car for itself it seems.  You either buy in or you get off the road.
2.  Eating:  we are going to be eating things that we have no idea what they are.  One of my co-workers mentioned silk worm larva being a tasty treat for Koreans!  He said that they were an "acquired taste"...oh boy...
3. Weather: sweaty (as mentioned previously)
4. Teaching: doable (as insinuated previously)
5. Hygiene: ask Kate

annyeong gyesayo!

Nathan

Just came back from lunch with our new boss and his wife (she did her TESOL Masters at Trinity Western).  They seem nice.  We had Italian food at a little eatery beside Shim's Language Centre--the main campus--where Nate will be teaching.  I'm teaching at an affiliated school under the name Shim's Language Academy (there are 50 or so schools under this name throughout the country).  Nate has middle school/high school and some adults (a house wives group) and I have kids in grades 1-3.  We're adjusting to the sights and sounds--and especially the smells...not going to say more.  Culture shock has officially set in.  This morning, on our java hunt, we bought two cans of hot Starbucks coffee from a small, glass counter-top 'hot box'--not sure how to drink hot coffee out of a can--the can is awfully hot.  There are also tins of cold coffee in cans--we're going to miss our Canadian Joe.  Nate is working hard to read all the signs and labels and directions--I'm glad one of us is paying attention:) The Korean phrase book is our new best friend. 

We leave for South Korea this Tuesday!  It's been an emotional and tumultuous past two weeks (to put it mildly), but we are on our way, visas in hand. Thanks to everyone for the love, support and prayers the last while--for us and for Matt and the Dewhurst family. We hope to stay connected with your lives and adventures through this blog and Skype.  If you plan to visit South Korea between Aug. 2010 and Aug 2011, come stay with us--we have three bedrooms (read: vast amounts of space) about 1.5 hours outside of Seoul. Will write more soon.  Love K and N.