New apartment in Sang-In Dong - Daegu.

About the pics:
My feet in a pool of mini fish eating away at my dead skin.

Losing at a drinking game - sinking the shot glass in a cup of beer.

Fully clothed Koreans on the beach in Busan.

Korean BBQ and Kimchi - I can't remember what it's called in Korean.


So I've been here just over a week now, and it's been really great so far. The school I am working for is a private school, and famously known for being among the best private school chains you could work at here - for both the Korean teachers and the foreign teachers. Pretty much every foreigner (the English teachers are from all over - USA, England, Scotland, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia, etc.) that works there was in Korea for at least one year before working for our school, and they never fail to remind me how lucky I am to be at this school my first year.

We have a group of Korean guys that are our "reinforcement team." Generally, they help us with anything we need, get us set up with cell phones, and internet, fix problems at the apartments, and generally anything that we may need. My first weekend here, the school took us on a day trip to the beach in Pohang - it's about 2 hours away by charter bus. It was pretty nice, but the beach was all rocks and the water was freezing! Much like Eilat, minus the crystal clear water and awesome coral reef. Then, we were spoiled at the Hyandai Hotel with a very nice buffet with unlimited drinks included. After that, we came back to our city, Daegu, and the school continued picking up the tab at a bar. It was a lot of fun and a great way to meet many of the teachers at our other branches. The next day, I went with some friends to another beach in Busan - the 2nd largest city in Korea. The beach there was nice, full of people, and the water was great! Also, the Koreans are terrified of the sun and even though it's easily 95 to 105 degrees here, they are fully covered from head to toe, even while they are in the water!

I started teaching my first classes on Monday, and it went pretty smoothly. Our school is very structured and there is really no prep work required. We just have to take up a 50 minute class period with minimal information, so it's sometimes a bit tricky to take up all the time. They want us to repeat everything and have the students repeat everything several times - repetition is the thing here, but I start sounding ridiculous in my head while repeating things so many times. My students are all pretty good - I have one class that is painfully quiet, and I have one class that is pretty non-compliant, but besides that, they are all really good.

I just moved into my permanent apartment on Monday and it's not bad at all. Nothing fancy, but could definitely be worse! I'm not complaining! I have a small kitchen with a stove top, fridge, microwave and very mini toaster oven. They also gave me a table and 2 chairs, so that's good! There's a sliding door that separates the kitchen from my room/living room, so I don't have to waste the AC cooling down the kitchen. My bathroom is fine also, not too small - the shower head is attached to the sink, so i turn the sink on and loosen the knob and it switches to the shower. The apartment is a studio, but it's a fairly good size - they also provided a TV, and washing machine but gotta hang to dry.

The weather here is pretty awful - it's insanely hot these days, always upper 80s to 90s, but feels like 90s to 100s with this humidity! It's also the rainy season and the last day it's been very rainy, and doesn't look like it's going to stop for a few more days. Add 90 degrees to humidity and rain - it's not fun! It will be nice in September, and then freezing cold by November - so weather is definitely not one of the positives.

Besides that, everything is great! The city is amazing, there is so much to do here. The public transportation system is awesome, I've made many new friends, been staying very busy and having a lot of fun. The food is not bad at all either. My friends have mostly been here for at least a year, so they are pretty good at ordering food and making sure I'm getting beef and not pork. Everything is very spicy, but I can handle it well most of the time. I've been having a lot of Korean BBQ - the beef, of course. Many restaurants only have pork bbq, so sometimes that's a challenge. They also have "American" restaurants that are pretty much Italian food, pastas, pizzas and the occasional burger. I had some Italian style food at a place in downtown Daegu called "about" - it was pretty delicious! I hear they have good burgers around here too, but the one I had in Busan was quite awful. You know how much I love burgers! I also went to an Indian restaurant nearby and it was great, but again VERY spicy!!! I haven't seen any dogs or anything around, but I have been told from many people that they have them around here and there. One person I met tried it - blachhhhhh!!!

Oh, and tomorrow I am going to the Handsome Furs show in downtown Daegu at a place called Club GUESS. I'm super excited to have some good music coming through Daegu! Dan Boeckner of Wolf Parade is the lead singer - it's going to be a great show. From what I've seen of past shows, it looks like we'll be getting a good show about once a month, I'd say. 8)