Wonderland School So our school is called Wonderland. But, it’s not actually a school; it’s a Hagwan, better known in Canada as an academy. If anyone has heard of the Sylvan math program then you will understand the concept. A Hagwan is an after elementary school “school”. So children go to school until about 1pm, and then they go to these Hagwans. Ours is an English Hagwan but there are many others too. They range from math, sciences, art and social sciences, to Tae Kwon Do and other sports. Essentially these after-school schools are for rich kids to get a better education in specific topics. Education is very competitive here, and if the parents aren’t satisfied with their child’s learning they will simply switch hagwans. We’re having fun though, our fellow teachers are all very nice ... read more

Sangdangsanseong I know it’s been a while since our last post. We’ve spent the last few weeks settling into our school and getting over our various illnesses. Rachel and I both got the flu... On top of that Rachel also got some kind of bronchitis for an extra week and a half. Awesome! Naturally we didn’t do much with our free time except relax and recover, which I am happy to report, we have! This weekend we had ourselves some fun. On Friday night we went out with four of our fellow teachers to a Noraebang—aka a karaoke bar. On Saturday we sat around all day and recovered from our previous night’s exploits. On Sunday we went to Sangdangsanseong the mountain fortress just east of Cheongju. This entry will be about our fortress trip because it’s ... read more

What can you say about a thirteen-and-a-half hour flight? It was long, really, really long. Comfy but long. Our attempts to sleep failed. As we found out, sleeping upright is difficult and somewhat uncomfortable. In total I got around 2 hours and Rachel got a little more. It wasn't all bad though. We had televisions embedded in the seat in front of ours with many movies (lots of new ones), music and TV shows. The service on Korea Air was great. The stewardesses were very helpful. All in all though there isn't much to write about... we flew... from Canada to South Korea, that's it. Oh, it was raining when we arrived... The real fun began when we got to Incheon International. We arrived at 3:00 am local time, a little later than expected because ... read more