Blogs from Yongin, South Korea, Asia

While I was off Saturday afternoon, I caught up on laundry and marking and whatnot. My friend David had taken a lovely photo of the sunset a few days ago, but I teach every day between 4pm and 6pm, so I always miss it. I looked out my window around 4:45pm to see the sun just starting to go down, so I went out to the rooftop garden at my dorm to snap some pictures. I then went out every fifteen minutes until the sun had set to get a time lapse of the sunset. It was gorgeous! It was probably the most beautiful sunset I'd seen in years, with perhaps the exception of ones at Woolsey. However, Woolsey is completely different because you're on the beach. This was from the dorm at HAFS.... read more

One day this week, it started snowing as I was walking to Illinois' class after lunch. Towards the end of the period, one of the students looked out the window and saw the big, fluffy snowflakes. I lost them all to the pretty snow. Since there was maybe five minutes left in the period before break, I decided to just take them outside. We tried to catch snowflakes on our tongues and had a snowball fight...or at least we tried to. The snow wasn't really packing snow, but we sure did try. The kids loved it! Later on, Carla's students asked her why she didn't take them outside. I guess I just wanted to go outside and play too!... read more

Now that I've been here in Korea for about a week, I've managed to pick up a few words, such as hello and thank you. I can also count to ten, and am learning to write the numbers in Korean. I can write 1-5 well, but am still working on writing 6-10 independently. My students are quite amused when they see me practising on the board while we're between classes. I can read the days of the week, but can't write them yet. When I first arrived at my dorm, my room didn't have any toilet paper. Brandon, my coordinator, managed to find the end of a roll for me for the time being, but I still ran out a few days later. I got to put my Korean writing to the test, to ask the ... read more

...so you're probably thinking that Kimchi is a bit weird for a name. In Korean, kimchi means pickled cabbage. Kimchi is actually the national food of Korea, and there is a whole museum devoted to it. Check out their website for more info. Anyways, my friend Kimchi is actually a stray cat. A few nights ago, my friend Ryan brought Kimchi into our dorm...or rather, Ryan claimed that Kimchi followed him in. I believe this, now that I've seen Kimchi follow me outside (like Mary Had a Little Lamb). All of us teachers were very thrilled to hear about our special visitor. We decided to name the cat Kimchi in honour of Korea's national food. We all got some time to cuddle and play with Kimchi before Teresa brought him back outside. I've seen Kimchi a ... read more

As expected, I have quickly fallen behind on this blog. Oops! I have done well at keeping up on my paper journal though, which I'm happy about. The first night in Yongin was freezing! Probably the coldest night since I arrived five days ago. After a flight of not at all Kate-friendly food, I was starving. Almost all of us went into town to a place called Pizza School. I ordered a cheese pizza for the low price of 5,000₩ ($4.50 CAD) The one twist is that their cheese pizza came with kernels of corn on it! It was definitely different, but it definitely hit the spot! I actually didn't really notice the corn while eating it. Some teachers went to the pub, but I decided that I badly needed some sleep. Before bed, I decided ... read more