It is 4:10pm on our 6th day in Korea and we are feeling pretty good about things. We've made some friends with other KIS teachers, used the subway, learned how to find taxis, and have explored our neighborhood. Tomorrow starts a new challenge. We are going to our first day of orientation which means we have to have our wits about us and must tackle the new challenge of navigating our way around the school and our co-workers. But, that will be for another blog.
We bought some new plants, which are beautiful and have finally bought enough hangers to hang all of our clothes! (note to self, when moving to a new country, bring hangers!! They are expensive and not as good of quality as our old ones. ) We actually donated close to 300 hangers from our home in Henderson!
Some things we've noticed about Korea(ns):
Korean women are modest about the top half of their bodies, but don't mind wearing short skirts.
Korean food is very meaty and they don't know what a vegetarian is.
Some Koreans seem very ready to help you, but not many speak English. In fact, they would sometimes ignore our presence rather than have to try to communicate with us.
Everyone lives in an apartment.
You can buy hot coffee from a vending machine!-yummy
It's hot and humid.
E-Mart is like a Walmart, but much bigger where you can find all sorts of stuff from hamsters and fish to electronics to clothing to food!
They also have big, ritzy shopping mall areas like Samsung Plaza and Shinsegae which are so ritzy they are also intimidating to us and the Korean shoppers get excited about $30 shirts on sale. (yikes for our clothes buying ventures!)
Korean like their electronic gadgets. Our apartment doesn't have a lock, instead it has a key pad. We also have a camera call button where we can see who is calling us from the street. We have a speaker phone in the bathroom. We have a built in kitchen radio, Kimchie fridge, a strange fridge above our sink for who knows what, a remote control for our light in the bedroom, and a couple other gadgets we don't know how to use yet.
Throwing garbage away is not easy! They recycle EVERYTHING! You have to buy garbage bags. ( this is how you pay for your trash). You must sort your garbage into 7 categories, food waste, plastic waste, aluminum, glass, cardboard, styrafome, and non-recyclables which go into the bought garbage bags. We still don't have it down.
There are many other things we've noticed but I think that's it for now.
I hope you enjoy the pics we've uploaded for you as well as the tour of the apartment!
These are some pics from our neighborhood. We are in a residential area compared to many of the other teachers at KIS but as you can see there is still a bunch here. For more info on Bundang, check it out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundang
There are a lot of churches around Bundang which is strange since we read that Korea is only around 20% Christian.
All of these pics were taken at Samsung Plaza. On our way here we got lost walking for an hour and a half in the humidity looking for a subway station and then had no idea how to purchase tickets because the machine was completely in Korean- but we overcame!
Many other apartment buildings and the top of an elementary school.
