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Published: September 18th 2010
Video Playlist: 1:
24 secs
Jenju University street view
This was the view from the cafeteria at orientation in JenjuStacey here. Sorry it’s been so long since our last entry, we just got internet at our apartment today. Speaking of our apartment we got lucky and have an extra computer room as well as a general living area. It’s fairly compact but it already feels like home. Our only complaint is a neighbor who we believe to be clinically insane. He holds screaming monologues that last ~10-30 minutes multiple times a day including early in the mornings. Maybe his voice will become like traffic noises…
This is my third week of teaching. The first few days were a little rocky but now I’m loving my job. I think this year will go by really, really fast if the first two weeks are any indication. I am at Daesong Middle school and our apartment is just a 20 minute walk away. I’m teaching all grades and all levels which works out to seeing about ~600 students a week (740 in the school)! This may seem overwhelming but I have great co-teachers who help me with the classes and the students are so happy to see me. It’s like I’m a celebrity everywhere I go, constantly getting stopped by hellos from children
A great style building in Jenju
I have no idea what this building was but it was huge and beautiful of all ages on the street, hallways, and stores.
We’ve only briefly explored a few areas of the vast city of Busan (Here are some stats: Oregon has 3.8 million people, Busan has 3.6 million people. Oregon is 251,000 sq km and all of Korea is 100,000 sq km). Our first experience was visiting Nampoo-dong, an area of the city that is most famous for the international film festival in October (something we’ll defiantly do). Although our original intention was to see a movie (dubbing movies is rare, most are presented in the original language with subtitles) we ended up just touring the area. As we stepped off the subway we found ourselves in a giant underground shopping center. This then lead to the discovery of a 13 story mall. This mall was bran new and nicer then any mall I’ve ever seen. We went to the top of the mall and had quite a nice view of the city and the sea. We came back to this mall for our anniversary and discovered the same view was even more beautiful with the city night lights. As we had Cold Stone Creamery we watched a group of acrobats performing
Underground shopping center
As you step off the subway in Nampo-dong you enter a gigantic underground shopping center in the mall. There was also a cultural area in the mall that had a small art gallery.
Our next main adventure was meeting up with Ed Kendrick, who works in Ulsan, at the famous Haeunde beach. Here we got our feet wet in a much warmer pacific ocean then seemed normal and we walked on the sand. There were also wooden paths that lead through the beautiful rocky coast line. Ed had to return to Ulsan but Eddie and I visited the Busan aquarium. It was quite cool but honestly nothing in comparison to the Oregon Coast Aquarium in Newport. For example there was an underwater tunnel that was the longest in the nation but this was about 1/3 the size of the one in Newport. Still they had marine life from around the world and I saw many fish that I had never heard of before. This was also the day another Typhoon hit and we rushed in to eat Chinese while it poured rain harder then anything I experienced in Corvallis. The weather probably helped limit the crowd though and didn’t damper our spirits in the least. To further escape the weather we went to another mall
that was almost all clothes. There was even a men’s lingerie section. All in all it was wonderful to visit with Ed and to explore a famous area of Busan. That’s all for now!
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anonymous
non-member comment
Looks like you two are having fun! We miss you