My Apartment and a Walk to School

A little upgrading has been happening from time to time in my apartment, and I thought I would show you some of the latest improvements.

The one I am happiest about is the new bed that I inherited from one of the departing teachers at the end of February. Let me show you!

Isn't it all kinds of awesome! Having a regular sized bed really helps me feel more at home in this place. For some reason, although the twin bed was fine, it really felt so temporary. Also, now that I have a queen sized bed, and a mattress for the floor I can entertain guests! **hint**hint** Don't miss out on this once in a lifetime opportunity to visit Asia! As an added bonus the dollar is really strong here, so you'll find everything soo cheap! Whoo hoo! Book your spaces now, they're filling up quick! :) hehehe...


Aside from the bed other noteworthy (but not quite as big) changes include the plants that I bought from HomePlus and potted myself, and a wall hanging that Andrew Bown brought me back from Australia, that is currently my only decoration that is not Christmas themed. My mother says that I must be related to Aunt Shelia. Hopefully she reads this!

Although the route I take to get to school everyday seems a little mundane to me these days, I remember finding it fascinating when I got here first, but was too shy to take pictures, already standing out as much as I do. I thought I might put up a few for you so you can get an idea of the area of Seoul that I live in. Gangseo-gu is the name of the district of Seoul that I live in, and although it is pretty much the suburbs you will see that there's not much that you and I would consider suburban about it. I'm not sure how far outside of Seoul you would have to go to see single family homes like we are so used to, but I haven't seen it yet.

Ricki has been asking for months to see the view outside the window in my apartment, so I am going to start with that. Here are a few pictures that I took for her the other day.

That's the view out the left and right sides of the window respectively and then a view of the street below. Even though the street is a dead end just past the left side of this picture, it is always sooo busy!



Next, here's what my apartment looks like from the hallway. Followed by a thrilling view of the elevator! Hooray!

Living in a house my whole life I was pretty amused to find myself living in a place where not only did I take an elevator to get to and from my apartment, but I was also living on the 7th floor! There aren't even that many buildings at home with that many floors, but here tall buildings are much more common than short ones. I guess they have so many people to cram into such a small space one can hardly blame them.



The rest of my walk to school can actually be quite interesting at times. Selling things on the side of the road is very common here, and I walk past soo many street vendors on my ten minute walk to school. That is pretty neat in and of itself, but amazing considering I live in one of the slower and more boring parts of Seoul. There are people here selling anything you can imagine on the side of the road. Food, to electronics, to household supplies and even a mobile dollar store with everything lined up in baskets on the side of the road.



The first thing I see when I walk out of my building and head towards school is HomePlus, a huge department store right next to my apartment building. You can get almost everything there, although you'll pay a little more than if you shop around. It's pretty much gigantic, a lot bigger than any single store in St. John's I would think. Perhaps not bigger than department stores in other place.

I guess with everything said and done, it makes sense that the department stores here would be so big, with such a high concentration of people in such a small place. There are so many apartment buildings here, and where they are they are very concentrated. If I hadn't been so dazed on my way into the city from the airport I would have taken more pictures, because the horizon here is very interesting. It looks like a normal city for the most part with average sized buildings, but then all along the horizon there are pockets of a dozen or more high-rise apartment buildings. I'll take a picture when I see a good example for you some time soon. I have a few good pictures of apartment buildings, but none that really show the horizon the way that I would like to.

The next thing I saw on the particular day that I went out to take pictures was convenient, because it was the bus I take on rainy days, or when I'm feeling lazy. I take this bus pretty often, so I thought it deserved a picture and a spot on my blog. Here it is.

Isn't she a beaut!

As you can see there's a little bit of construction going on around where I live. They're putting in a new subway line right next to my house which I am finding pretty exciting. It is due to open in May, and will take us from where we live, pretty much right into the centre of the city. That will make doing summer time touristy things all the more easy!

Here are a few intersections and a few apartment buildings, so you can see this concrete city that I'm up against here! There are some parts of the city that aren't so bad and also, nothing living is turning green quite yet, so the whole thing is looking pretty bleak. I'll have to take a few more pictures once summer is here!

Everywhere you look in this place there are people, buildings, cars, apartments... its amazing!

The last part of the journey is of course the destination, which for me is school! Aside from the classrooms and the kids that I have already showed you the school also has a staffroom which is my first destination of the day. Its pretty crowded, and here's what it looks like!

That concludes another fascinating insight into the life of Laura in Korea! Stay tuned for more fabulous updates to come! :)

A New School Year!

March 1st started a brand new school year in Korea -- the same as September at home -- and that means a whole new batch of classes, and approximately one million new kiddies. I am no where close to beginning to know all of their names.





** As an interesting side note: One of the classes I inherited from another teacher is full of Disney Princesses -- Ariel, Jasmine, Belle ... **



Its been a lot easier to start fresh with a new batch of kids, knowing what I'm doing, compared with when I started in November, not really having a clue. I know so much more about teaching Korean children now than I did then. I know the mistakes they're likely to make, the shenanigans they're likely to get up to, what programs I'm teaching, acceptable discipline methods and best off all how to understand their English speaking through sometimes very thick Korean accents. When I got here first I found them so difficult to understand, even when they were using proper vocabulary and grammar. Of course, the goal of being a foreign teacher here is largely to reduce just that, but its a work in progress and being able to understand the kids in the mean time is very valuable.

Also, my hours have been condensed, which is great news! I'm teaching the same number of hours, but I am spending 1.5 hours less at the school three times a week than I was before, which I'm really happy about! I'm not soo keen on teaching in the evenings like I do, but I'm sure that I'll get used to it. I had really been hoping for a preschool schedule, but there are definitely perks to working only in the afternoons as well.

Aside from the new school year there's been much more of the same so far this month. Working, hanging out with friends... we've been playing a lot of games recently which is quite fun. Jenga, Apples to Apples, Scrabble, Trivial Pursuit... you'd never think I'd come all the way to Korea to spend my time playing board games with the people I work with, but its true!

Some of the the more notable games include this monster Jenga tower:

And this game of scrabble:

Also not to be forgotten from February of course are the kids, and some good friends!

Three weeks of fun!

So it was just about this time three weeks ago that I last posted for you all to hear about life. Needless to say, January and the first half of February were a little on the crazy side. I'm still loving my life here, although in spite of the craziness there's not a whole lot to report.


January was very busy because I was teaching a special program while the kids were off school. Almost as soon as that was all over it was report card time which swamped me again for a little while. But the report cards are all finished, and now I'm free!


Its really great to not be quiet as busy with work for a little while, but truth to be told I'm not home free yet. The new school year starts the first week of March and things are still buzzing a little here to get ready for that. We'll have lots of prep meetings and getting ready to teach all new classes and all new kids. I'll let you know how it all goes. :)


Aside from that I've developed a rhythm here and I really am finally settled in. The weather is still a little cold for being out and about and doing touristy things, but I'm told that it will warm up really soon and then I'll have more new and exciting things to tell you about!


One of the touristy things that I have seen recently is the Kimchi museum which is located in this huge mall in in east end of Seoul. It took us a while to get there, but we did have a lot of fun. I think the fun was more about the company than the kimchi, but let me show you a few photos.

Aside from the Kimchi Museum we've mostly been up to very normal things such as birthday's, going out to eat, shopping, and perhaps a little more eating. I know that its hard to believe that those kinds of things can happen in Korea too... so I'll let you see a few pictures of that too! :)

Of course in this post I must also talk about Valentine's Day!

Traditionally in Korea women do something special for men on Valentine's Day, and then men return the favour one month later on March 14th which is called White Day. Randy and I decided to shirk Korean tradition and go ahead with a normal Valentine's Day. (I am going to see what I can do for White Day! ) It was absolutely fabulous, and although I'll spare you the gooey details I did want to tell you about one of the activities that was planned for the day. We went to Dr. Fish! Now I don't know if you've heard about Dr. Fish, but the basic premise is that you put your feet in a pool of water teaming with tons of little fish, and they nibble the dead skin off your feet, like a natural pedicure! I am not a person who is easily tickled, but oh my! At first I could barely keep my feet in the water! I am sad/pleased to announce that they like Randy's feet better than mine; sad because I wanted them to nibble my feet, but pleased that they found nothing to nibble. =)

Here are a few last pictures before I sign off for the day:

Happy (Lunar) New Year!

Hello everyone!

Finally having a few days of much needed nothing time, I also have managed to carve some time into my day to write a little message to all you folks back at home. My extra busy month is almost over, and I can't wait. Today is Monday and there is no school because of the Lunar New Year here (we call it Chinese New Year at home) and I'm loving having a four day weekend. The Lunar New Year is a big deal here, so just about everything is closed, and I have done absolutely nothing except go out for a quick breakfast at one of the few places that is open all day... ahhh, rest! It is wonderful!

The past week flew by without much incident. I'm really getting into the swing of things right now at school, and am not really feeling like the new teacher any more which is very nice. There are also two new teachers since me which really helps. One arrive just about six weeks ago, and the other last week. We are now down to two Newfoundlanders in the office unfortunately... a sad tale, but it will do. :) Fortunately both of the new girls are really nice, and I think they've been adding to the office dynamic wonderfully.

The New Year's celebrations have been pretty nondescript. I was invited to the house of an older Korean couple I know on Saturday and had traditional Korean rice cake and dumpling soup which was actually much more delicious than it sounds. Yesterday, I mostly did nothing and today was more of the same. I was in the mood to go exploring today, but everything was closed because of the holiday. Tomorrow promises to be a bit more interesting on that front, which I am very much looking forward to. Hopefully the weather will be as nice as it was today. Even though it continues to be frigidly cold here in Seoul it is plain to see that slowly but surely winter is lifting. The days are just a little bit longer, its seems to be just that little bit warmer from time to time. I can't wait until the spring time, and the cherry blossoms!

A little update..

As many of you know, but also many of you don't, I have been teaching extra courses at my school for the month of January that have made it very hard for me to blog or be on skype as frequently as I would like. I thought I would take a moment here during my break at school today and let you know a little of what I've been up to.

January has been going pretty great so far, to be honest. I really do love being busy, even though it can be a little stressful from time to time. I blogged last about the holidays and since have gone back to work and have just about successfully gotten back into the swing of things. My apartment is not as neat as it has been in the past, but there are only a few more days left to the month, and then I'll be back on a more normal schedule. Yay!

The extra class I've been teaching is actually pretty interesting. I teach them for 1.5 hours every day of the week and they are pretty great kids. There English is really improving from all the extra work they've been doing. The vacation schedule here in Korea is very different from that at home. Kids get almost two months vacation in the winter and then more vacation in the summer. Except, its no vacation. These kids work soo hard! They still do all their regular classes at SLP (my school), plus extra classes, and they are also going to a million different academies and winter camps where they spend there days doing more work. We're also encouraged to give them lots of homework because they're on break, as I'm sure all the other teachers they see are too... Instead of calling it vacation they should call it time-off-from-public-school-so-we-can-do-even-more-work-at-private-institutions-ion ... yikes!

I've also been attending a really cheap Korean class offered at one of the universities here. Korean is a really interesting language to learn. It looks like characters, like Chinese, but it is actually phonetic, and pretty easy to learn the alphabet. I got a really neat electronic translator for Christmas which has really been helping me out with new vocabulary and stuff. Awesome!

I was thinking about putting some here for you to see, but I don't know how to start. Hmm... Let me show you some of the basic symbols.

ㄹ = L/R
ㅗ = O
ㅏ = A

So, if you put these sounds together you make, 로라 = Laura!

Usually Koreans pronounce my name Rora, because of the L/R thing, but it normally works pretty well.

Also, in interesting news, I really have been missing cheese a fair bit since I got here, because it is rare to find, and expensive when you find it, so cheese dishes have quickly been climbing my delicious list. (Not that they were ever that far down the list... hehe) When we were at a place called Rocky Mountain Tavern a few weeks ago which is a Canadian bar around an hour or so from my house, we had the most disappointing poutine... Randy knew how much good poutine means to me so somehow he managed to find out that there was a New York Fries in Seoul! I also didn't know until the day he took me there as a surprise that New York Fries is a Canadian chain... it was an interesting day of discovery. But oh, so delicious!

Anyway, I have more lesson planning to do and a class that starts in less than 15 mins so I should go and get ready, but I'll be back soon with bigger and better Korean adventures to tell you about! :)

Happy New Year!!

So, we left off with me feeling a little achy, and promising pictures.... and here they are!

This is a picture of my favourite, still nameless turtle! He's pretty tiny, and pretty awesome. I changed his water and cleaned his tank yesterday for the first time... that wasn't awesome, but he's totally worth it!

These fishes on the side of the road looked tasty, so I thought I'd take a picture for you all so you could feel both hungry and jealous at the same time... hehe. Some people actually think they do look tasty. I have no intention of being around when those same people try to eat these little (or big!) guys.

This is how I've been spending large portions of my vacation, and I know you may think less of me because of it, but I think its fabulous! As you can see its become a bit more complicated since the early days, but it sure is great fun!

The first picture here is the bus we took to get to the ski resort. The second is some silly looking, tiny haystacks that I took a picture of from the bus because I thought they were cute.

Here is a picture of me all decked out in my ski gear, looking cool and eating a hotdog from the Dog and Chips stand behind me. Particularly in this picture I think I look like I'm having a good time, but not in Asia. I also look like I'm snowboarding, but its not true! I did ski up a storm though, when I wasn't munching on delicious onion dogs.

The first picture here is the ski lodge at the resort, and the second in the hotel we stayed in. I believe that both look nicer in the photos than they actually were in real life, but we had a fabulous time, so we didn't mind. The hotel especially was a bit of a shifty operation. The first day when we went to the ski park, the people organizing took lift passes off a bunch of kids and then put them on us.... shady! It all worked out for us though, which I am very thankful for, and I'm very glad we went!

Here are a few pictures of inside the hotel. Skis on the wall, no bed... doing it right, Korean style!

Two Busy Weeks! (Happy Holidays!)

Oh my, its been a while.

The last two weeks have just been absolutely crazy, but I wouldn't trade them obviously!

Randy got here the very same evening of my last blog post and we've been tearing up Seoul (and its outlying areas) and/or working for the past two weeks.

Christmas was fabulous and we both had a really great time. Randy came over, we went to Christmas morning brunch at Lindsay's house (one of the girls that works with me) and did a Yankee gift exchange with the girls I work with. We exchanged presents and guess what?

Randy bought me a turtle!

I have always wanted a pet, but alas haven't had one since a certain fish that I caught in early elementary school that 'died mysteriously' one day while I was at school. I am soo excited about the turtle. Its so much better than a fish, you can feed it, and play with it, take it out of the tank! It still has no name however... I have received many suggestions, but have yet to decide on anything certain. He's pretty awesome though, so I think its normal to give proper time for careful consideration.

For the past three days Randy and I have been skiing at a resort with my co-workers from SLP. We had the most amazing time, and took a bunch of pictures which I will post tomorrow when I upload them from my camera. We just got back around hours ago, and as much as I really enjoyed all the company, I am also enjoying being alone in my apartment with no expectations and peace and quiet. I'll post more details when I wake up, but for now I think I'm planning on curling up with a good book, and catching some early Zzzzz's. My muscles are not sore or achy yet from the skiing, but my whole body is pretty tired.