Life in Korea,

Well I'm back and finally online again and now living in Korea. How is it you ask? Well in the words of lock stock and two smoking barrels, "Its been emotional" I am now an English teacher at ECC (English Childrens Center). I have a pre-school class of eleven really cute kids who are only 5 yrs of age and a right handful most of the time. However, this only occupies my mornings. In the afternoons I teach and ensemble of kids aged anywhere between 7 and 15. Most of them are little a-holes, but they do have there good moments. Think of us as the substitute teacher you had in intermediate, you know the one you ran riot with and pushed them to their limits everyday. All in all though its not that hard. The hours at school are long but the actual teaching hours are only 25 a week. I liken it to a university timetable. Some periods you have class while others you can sip coffee and hang with your friends. If our apartment was close to school it would be even better, unfortunately at the moment its a 25 min walk. Rumour that we may be moving into some apartments right beside school. (fingers crossed)

So what else have I done. Lets see, I've bought a digital camera, seen some really cool palaces and temples, been hiking in the mountains and travelled the subway to plenty of different areas in Seoul. So life here in Uijongbu is not that bad.

Our flat is huge. We have a bedroom the size of some peoples apartments, a living room, bathroom, dining/kitchen, and and even a spare room to store stuff. Its starting to feel more like a home these days, so we can't complain.

So whats different here. To start with as Katie has elegantly put it, everything here is very schizophrenic. By this she means there is no real order, not that we are used to that anyway. Apartment buildings are mixed in with work buildings that are right beside little shanty towns, with main roads and just off them tiny alleys that you wouldn't really think were safe at first glance, but they're fine. The people can be extremely friendly in one sense and then completely rude in another. A good example of this was we were on the subway just last weekend and a little boy kept coming up to us, smiling and running away. Katie gave him some chips she was eating and he bowed and ran away again. Not a minute later he was back with a gift from his parents for us, which we accepted so as to not offend them. (It was rice cakes --duk--) Now where else would you accept a gift on the subway in this world, I know I wouldn't do that in the states thats for sure. However when it comes to getting a seat on the subway its first in first served, your simply pushed out of the way if your too slow.

Ok thats enough for now here is a pic of me with my pre-school class. Now that we have the net I'll try and keep this more updated with things we've been doing.

Jared (a.k.a fatti)