So it's the end of week two and so far so good...still. Julie and I have been eating more and more Korean food, mainly because it's much cheaper then cooking for yourself. But we have been doing that as well. We finally found some good old fashioned dried pasta so we had Alfredo with chicken and a garlic and onion red sauce as well. I learned a valuable lesson with the red sauce, don't go cheap....next time we'll be buying the Classico.

The hardest thing about going out to eat is we have no idea how to speak Korean yet, so it's just a lot of head shaking and pointing. For lunch we go to the CGV building down the street, when Catherine, the other teacher, comes with us she tells us what to say because she's learnt how to read Hangul. But reading and understanding is two different things, I meant to order a small stew with porkribs in it and ended up getting a soup with a whole chicken inside it. Hard to finish that and the five side dishes you get with just about every meal. Usually each meal comes with Kimche, a soup, rice, a pickled vegtable of some sort. You guys would be shocked at the stuff fussy Trevor has been eating.

We went out for Korean BBQ twice this week. The first place was a restaurant where you grill chicken at your table. It was really spicy but I managed. Ordering there was horrible, no one spoke english luckily I had my guidebook with me, the guy pointed to the Korean side and I read the English translation. But for the extra side dishes I just pointed to three things that turned out to be corn, a soup and ramyon(a type of noodle). The waiter would come around every so often and stir up the BBQ(which is right in the center of the table). After about 10min. he threw some corn and some mozarella in the center, with the cabbage, noodles and chicken, let the cheese melt and we were eating. You throw a mix of the stuff in a leaf and pop it in your mouth, it's actually really good.

Yesterday after work Tammy took us all out and we went to a new place and had pork in the BBQ, there was so much food, it was crazy. It was Julie, Catherine, Tammy, Todd (the guy who interviewed us), Branch (the receptionist), Jenny (a Korean co-teacher), Mr. Kim (bus driver), and another guy whose name escapes me. There were 4 different types of Kimche, some deep fried sweet potatoes, two soups, and the marinated pork which we cooked ourselves with garlic and onions. It was the same procedure with the leaves again, but this time there was two types of lettuce and seasame leaves to chose from. Also very good. We also tried some soju, it's like a strong Korean Vodka made of rice I think, pretty strong stuff.

The beer situation is great it's 6600 won for a six pack, so basically 7 bucks. So far I've tried Hite, Cass, and OB Blue. It's all pretty good. You can also get Bud, MGD, Miller Lite, and Heinekien but it costs about 7500-9000 won for 6, still a good price compared to back home. I've also noticed that you can't really buy 355ml cans of soda it's all dinky little 240ml and you can get cans of Gatorade which is weird. THey've got pretty much everything, but Ginger Ale, 7up and Sprite, instead they have this weird cider drink that taste like a mix of Ginger Ale and 7up.

We've also found all the foreigner's and got on the Iksan mailing list and on Friday night for the first time in weeks I went to a Trivia night. We didn't win but it was still fun. There were about 30 foreign teachers at the bar, "The Red Rock", and the majority of them are Canadian. There were 3 Yanks, 3 Scots, and 1 Briton, English Dave he set's the whole mailing list thing up. It was really cool talking with the guys I found out that they always meet up at the Red Rock on Friday, and that they do other things all throughout the week. There's a poker night, soccer, frisbee, and road hockey......AMAZING. So once I find out what my schedule is like I can figure out what activities I can take part in.

Well, I don't think anyone wants to read anymore...so I'll wrap it up. Tomarrow we head to Pusan for the night and catch the ferry in the morning for Japan, we've got a nice hotel in Fukuoka with saunas and hot tubs which will be awesome...even though it's ridiculously hot as it is. We're also really close to the Korean Embassy. Still no internet, but that should change soon, so I'll have lotsa cool pics from the mini-trip to Japan.

Till then,
Trev

Hey All,

Well I'm in Korea, I probably won't have another posting on for about a week or so...just waiting to get internet and phone for my apartment. Both of which cannot be done until I have a visa, so right now I'm writing this in a PC room, basically a dollar gets you an hour of internet access.

The flight was pretty good, we had an empty seat beside us which was great...took turns streching our legs out. I slept for probably half the flight or more, Julie was not so lucky, she barely got any sleep and the Korean Airline food was pretty good. There were no problems getting through at the airport, and Tammy's husband and one of the school bus drivers were waiting with a sign.

The drive was pretty long 4hrs to Iksan from Incheon, but we stopped twice to strech out and get a drink. The funniest thing about the drive was that for 2hrs they were playing Anne Murray. I'm not sure if this was becuz we're Canadian, or if they just like her. None the less I was trying very hard not to laugh.

For the last two days we've been wanderin around checkin everything out around where we live. Found the Pizza Hut, 7/11, Dunkin Donuts, Baskin Robbins, but not the McDonalds yet. The big Wal-Mart store was pretty cool, it's 4 floors (1=food, 2=appliances/household stuff, 3&4 = clothes).

The apartments are nice when I get internet goin I'll post some pics, but pretty much what you would expect, small little hallway of a kitchen between the bathroom and the main room. The bathroom has a removable shower head beside the mirror and is controlled using the same tap as the sink. Good thing I didn't bring a shower curtain Mom becuz the entire bathroom is the shower stall with a drain in the center of the floor. The main room has the bed, fridge, table, TV and DVD player, closet and AC unit. Thank God for the AC, it is stinkin hot over here about 32-35, so I usually spend 1/2 the day inside watchin TV. We have about 70 channels, and at any given time as many as 10 might have english programming, but there's lots of sportson, which don't really require commentating. There's always baseball on either MLB, Korean or Japanese, there's also alot of MMA (Mixed Martial Arts), and they've also been playing the World Basketball Championships. And there's also about five movie chanels which play alright movies. All in all, so far so good. Next blog hopefully I get some pics on here so you guys can see what it's like. Till then taker easy.

Here are some pictures of the school. Keep in mind I got these pics about 2 months ago, so the school wasn't done yet. I'll send updated pics once I get there.

(From top to bottom; library, classroom, lobby, frontdesk and front view of the school.)

Hey all,

Welcome to the first of many entries. Well it's Aug 7th and we still haven't left yet, the intial departure was supposed to be on the 31st of July, but hold-ups have occured with Korean Immigration. Fortunately, since Julie and I make up 1/2 the teachers, and since the two of us have zero teaching experience, we've been told the dates are all being pushed back to give us time for some form of training. Currently we are scheduled to leave on Aug 12th @ 7:30pm, so hopefully we can get everything taken care of in that period time. If not we've been told that we'll still leave on the 12th, but we will wait in Japan for our visa's. That would be interesting but right now I just want to get over there and get settled...ya know.

Having difficulty putting pics on right now, so bear with me people.