Updates on Life

For those of you who were worried from the earthquakes in Japan, we are fine.

The islands of Japan basically act as a barrier reef for the Korean peninsula, effectively protecting Korea from things such as the recent tsunami. Additionally, Korea is a very mountainous country-- so with the exception of the beach areas in the south, most of Korea is similar to the Appalachians in the U.S. It's perfectly safe here, but tragic what is happening in Japan.

Our new school year has officially begun. After a crazy "Winter semester" that was crammed into 7 short weeks, we have transitioned to the Korean school year. The school year starts in March and ends in December. We will have a 1 month break in July, and a 1 month break in January. There's also a few breaks in between, which means we would love to have visitors (hint hint).

Taylor is teaching 3 subjects: AP World History to 11th and 12th grade, US History 10th grade, and Global Studies/Comparative Politics to 12th grade. I am teaching Speech and English, both to 9th grade. My semester is going to be easier than his but I need the break. Last semester I taught AP Psychology which was a TON of work. Hopefully, next semester I will be teaching a general Psychology class.

We have remodeled our apartment! One of the other teachers is leaving our school to go back to her home country of Kazakhstan with her 3 children. Almagul, Sarah, Farida, and Ayan will be missed. Maybe we will visit them in Kazakhstan someday?

I'm glad I had my camera for the moment that Taylor and Cody started moving out our old couch. We live on the 8th floor, so they were determined to cram it into the elevator. All 3 of us and the couch fit in!

Since most of the furniture we have belongs to the school, we switched out our beat up, torn up leather couch for 2 of her couches, plus a few other additions, including new curtains. One of the couches is a pull-out so we have even more room for people to come stay! The curtains don't really match the furniture, but hey, what can you do? Maybe we'll get matching curtains in the future once we're out of debt- WHICH IS LESS THAN 2 MONTHS AWAY! Here's a picture of the old couch and chair that have been replaced. You can't tell from the picture, but there are multiple holes and tears in the couch and chair. They were comfortable (besides the tears) but they were so ugly and beat-up.

Daylight's Savings Time
Korea actually doesn't have any time changes for Daylight's Savings Time. This means that we are now only be 14 hours ahead of Central Standard Time. So, for all you people in the Midwest, when it is 7 AM there, it's 9 PM here. 7 PM there is 9 AM here on the next day. On the East Coast? 7 am there is 8 PM here. Confused? Don't worry- we've added a local time clock to our blog, so if you are ever wondering what time it is for us, come check the blog. Which brings me to another point- once you have the time zone in mind, you can give us a call. We bought a Skype number, so your call will go to our computer if we are online, and if we aren't, it should forward to our Korean cell phone. None of this will cost you any extra money. In fact, we have a 913 area code number, so for those of you in Kansas, you can call us from your landline with no long-distance charges.
Our number is 913-815-1093. Give us a call sometime!


Lastly....this was our dinner tonight.

Fried Chicken (Which I would never,ever eat in the States...but I've succumbed here. That's not the point of this picture though- notice all the Banchan on the side. Banchan are all the side dishes that comes with every Korean meal. Koreans fully embrace the fact that fermented and or pickled foods help aide digestion. So, you can expect Banchan with every meal in Korea, whether at a restaurant, or ordering pizza or fried chicken. The white stuff are radishes, which I love. I almost at both little boxes of radishes on my own tonight. When you come visit us, we'll enjoy all sorts of Banchan. More on that here