I start this entry, for all intents and purposes, behind in the count due to the lashing I received from Mt. Birobong last weekend. Korea 1… Jon 0. Here is where we begin this weekend’s little shenanigan, beginning Friday after school and ending Sunday in Seoul at a magnificent palace dating back over seven hundred years. I received another teacher’s dinner invitation after school Friday, and of course, I accepted. Soju sounded rather good at the time, even despite it’s rankness. So I went home to drop off my school stuff and picked up Cass. We went downtown, just o [View Full Entry]

---

---

Boy, oh, boy… just shy of one total month living in South Korea and things have stayed at about the same craziness level. I actually thought I’d have a nice and easy week, not have some of my classes because my school is preparing for an arts festival that will happen Friday and Saturday. As is the norm, what I thought would be, never really is. Cass, on the other hand, has enrolled in the ‘School of Hard Knocks’ and has hit a bit of a wall. I would have had to teach a mere Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday until I [View Full Entry]

---

---

I need to preface anything I mention in this blog with the fact that I am a fairly seasoned outdoorsman, I think. Okay? Just keep that in mind as I take you though our little endeavor in our first Korean National Park… We went on Saturday, but the Friday before that, following suit, was another practice in Yeoju magic. Just as last week, stumbling on a crowd of English teachers in the Gu’s pizza joint, a similar fate awaited us as we strolled the aisles of E-Mart (the Korean version of Wal-Mart,but only half the size and the parking lot is [View Full Entry]

---

---

We’ve officially been here for three weeks, our apartment is feeling more and more like home- we just got the internet, that’s a big step. As with anyplace I’m sure, there are positives and negatives that, while still being funny to us and probably always will, we have come to expect as, ‘just how it is.’ It seems to be similar to an adaptation or evolution… at first things were shocking (“are they seriously feeding us fish bones?”), then hilarious (“dude, the crazy drivers never stop!”), now quite normal-ish (“So… ah&he [View Full Entry]

---

---

So I was invited to an observation with Mr. Kim on tuesday afternoon. He is a 'head teacher' in the school, kind of like a liason between administration and staff, almost like a mentor for the younger teachers. Already, I recognize that beeing a teacher in Korea is a tough job. Classes have upwards of thirty students, every other week you have school on saturday (I know... right?), there aret these things called 'official tours they atttend all the time (like an observation in another school, i think) and then there is this thing teachers of five years or less must [View Full Entry]

---

---

I’m now quickly becoming convinced that the beginning craziness of moving and working here may just never stop. As far as school goes, there is somewhat of a routine, or an attempt at one, with all kinds of things popping up told to you after-the-fact. Outside of school, the opposite of normal is the norm, and along the lines of the food, well, that’s another story. School is going well for the both of us, still crazy, but good. The ‘rock star’ phenomenon hasn’t died down- where there is a mob of children following you around discussing what they might be [View Full Entry]

---

---

We were visited by an angel from Tennessee this weekend. Cass’ friend, Renata, whom she worked with in Americorps in Florida, has been living and teaching english in South Korea for over a year. She pretty much dedicated an entire weekend of her life to showing us how to survive in this hectic world. She got in to the Yeoju bus station around dinner time, we dropped off her things and went to eat. There are a lot of restaurants close by the apartment, but are still a little too intimidating for us to wander in and communicate, yet, but with [View Full Entry]

---

---

I cannot begin to let you all know what a rediculous amount of things I've learned, literally in the last five days. After our sketchy, back alley drop off late monday night, it has certainly been a wild ride. I continue thinking of how people can possibly get by being completely illiterate, well, that's kind of what's happening now. There are signs all over the place that people completely understand and skim through without a thought, and it looks like a bunch of chicken scratching to Cass and I. It is a strange concept that you really cant relate to without [View Full Entry]

---

---

Holy Cats... Imagine staying up for twenty five hours straight, stuck inside a box all that time, and stepping out of the box onto a different planet. ... and not knowing anything else, or how to communicate to anyone after that point. Ah, yeah, that pretty much summed up our journey half way around the globe. We went from bozeman to denver to san fran to seoul. And from that point on, it was anyone's guess. we had email confirmation that someone was goin to meet us at the airport right after customs and that's it. By the way, if you [View Full Entry]

---

---

Jackpot, the package we were expecting arrived. Funny, that both Cass and I were both out of town, she at a conference in Helena, and I had to (yup... had to) check out the Mt. Helena's ridge trail on my bike. I got back early to sign for it at the post office. It definitely didn't create a sense of calming for either one of us, since it really only contained what we sent, with a bit more korean writing on it. Interesting, but a few emails later, we found out that is all we needed to take to Seattle and [View Full Entry]

---

---