Our Apartment, Our School and a Mud Festival Trip

I have been snapping a lot of photos with my iPad and iPod touch lately but have been neglecting to put them on the blog until now.
Here is a video of our apartment before we had furniture. I will upload a video soon of it now

Pictures of our apartment now.

There are so many chicken and beer places here. I was very surprised.

Don't worry dad, I brought the seashell you gave me four years ago to Korea!

 I am slowly making you a collection of seashells from Korea!

The entrance to our school is on the right...the door on the left is a bank. The school is on the second and third floor.

The school bus. I have not once seen a yellow bus like we have in the States....they are just small vans.

My desk at work. Bobby's is right next to mine.

The kindergarten classes are divided into classroom with animals games. I teach Bee class, Otter class and Elephant class. They are all really cute classes with murals of animals on the walls. This is Huni from my Bee class. We were learning about animals and he was coloring his monkey...turns our he likes Seahawks colors!!

The women on the left is one of my co-teachers. But she barley speaks English. Sometimes I feel like I am teaching her and the kids. She even takes notes on what I am saying to the kids so she can learn more. Lol. The kids names are Sally and Tony.

Here are some of the kids in Elephant class

Shiloh, Abigail and Ashley's drawings of ocean animals

My older students reading "A Horse Named Seabiscuit".

One of my older students, Min

Every month the kindergartens get to go to Kids Cafe (a very large play area) to celebrate birthdays.

I see this all the time here. I think they do it to get rid of extra items. 

But here you buy a coke and sprite and get a bag of laundry detergent for free...

More pictures of the mud festival.

This is Julia and I. We met her and her boyfriend while waiting for the bus to the mud festival.

This beach is the most popular beach in South Korea...and even better, it is a half hour subway ride away!.

At supermarkets you put in 100 won (9 cents) and you get a shopping cart..
.when you return the cart you get your money back!

We are started to formulate a list of things we LOVE about Korea so far.

 Here is what we have:

• It is cheap to eat out (only Korean food.. There are a lot of places to eat American food.. but it is spendy)


• When most Koreans drink they just go to a restaurant and order soju which is some sort of watered down vodka. Soju is very cheap and when you order it at a restaurant you have to order food with it. Most restaurants and bars stay open as long as there are people there (6am , 8am, whenever)


• Korean men in the 20s carry their girlfriends purse and they also carry some sort of purse for themselves


• You can drink any sort of alcohol at any time anywhere. 


• Transportation is very affordable


• They have a  GREAT subway system


• You can get a card and load money on it and use to pay for busses, subway and TAXIS! It is great!


• There are no locks on peoples doors, they just have a keypad type lock.


• The wifi here is ten times after than USA.


• It is impolite to let someones drink get empty.


• Many Koreas think Bobby looks like Matt Damon


• The produce can be very expensive in the supermarkets.. but there are local markets everywhere in Busan where you can buy very cheap, locally grown fruits and vegetables.


• Stop lights are a suggestion, especially at night with taxi drivers. 


• Taxi drivers HALL ASS through streets at night


• American movies are released here before they are in USA and are only $7


• School busses look like small vans


• They recycle EVERYTHING. At our apartment there are 10 bins each for something different. It is great because after you recycle everything there is not much left to actually throw away!


• You have to buy a special bag to put your garbage in that you can't recycle. By purchasing a special bag, there is no garbage tax in the city.

Thank you for reading, 

-Jestine