Burgers & Dong Exploration

What a week! For both of us! The weekend couldn't come soon enough. We took full advantage of enjoying ourselves & relaxing.

These are so delicious!

Our week started off great with Nicole getting some bacon & surprising John with awesome BLTs for dinner! First time we've had bacon since we left the U.S.A... We're surprised we lasted so long. We're getting better acquainted with all of the stores around us & what food we can get the best price for at each place. It's truly a science. We have 4-5 different grocery stores to choose from.

An enjoyable, yet childish, fun-fact: Nicole saw a tour bus the other day called, "Dong Bang Tour". Funny enough? Nicole was bummed she didn't have her phone or camera to take a picture! We assume it's a tour of the different neighborhoods in Daejeon. In Korea, people don't know a place by what street it is on, but by what neighborhood it's in. We've mentioned this before. A neighborhood is called a "dong". Our neighborhood is Mannyeon-dong. Nicole's school is in Doryyong-dong. John's school is in Galma-dong. And so on.

On Wednesday evening we ventured out to Time World (in Doonsan-dong) & went to a Mexican restaurant called Cantina for dinner. It was burger & fries night, though. We have been told by many people that they're pretty good & only $6. For a Mexican restaurant, those burgers were pretty good, but we can make better; the fries were fantastic though! The thing that threw us off the most about the restaurant... the fact that most people in there were speaking English! And the owner did too! We were like, "Oh! They can understand us!" Something we just aren't used to here. We do enjoy that most of the time we cannot be understood. The amount of times we've yelled with English curse words at Koreans not getting out of our way when we're riding our bikes (or for other random things they do that make us mad) is a lot. We already know it will be an issue for us when we come back to the states in a year.

Think we got enough stuff for the boys Nicole babysat in BR?

After a mid-week for both of us having some "work issues", Friday & the rest of the weekend were fantastic. John had a great workout at the park, while Nicole had cheesecake with her coworkers for lunch. It was one of her coworker's birthday so all of the foreign teachers went to Pascucci Cafe to celebrate with her. It was a lot of fun. About 5 minutes after singing 'Happy Birthday' (in English, French, & Spanish), one of the workers at Pascucci brought the birthday girl 2 coupons for free items! How amazing are they! So many Koreans are absolutely amazing when it comes to customer service!

During the day, John also bought tickets for us & all of Nicole's coworkers to see Iron Man 3 (with Korean subtitles)! We all enjoyed the movie a lot. Especially singing the song in the beginning. We had fun, as usual. We recommend the movie!

At Home Plus... enough said.

Saturday we explored some new territory & finally made it to a store called Home Plus. We went through a few parks as well & even discovered a skate park, with half pipes & several other ramps. It was awesome. We also found more tennis courts! Last week we said we just needed rackets to play, but truthfully, we need rackets & time to play too! Several flowers are starting to bloom & they look gorgeous. So beautiful riding by all the parks in Daejeon. Nicole took some pictures but mostly on her camera so those will have to come later & will probably show up on Facebook eventually.

Subway token

We went on another new adventure on Sunday... We took the subway! We wanted to find this burger place called House Grill in Yongmun-dong that everyone we've ever talked to here has recommended. It's a bit too far for us to ride our bikes so we decided to use the subway. The price is only $1 per person each way. Public transportation here is ridiculously awesome. We were so proud of ourselves for figuring out how to get tickets & where to go without anyone's help. After eating at House Grill (truly the best burgers in Daejeon), we went looking around in the Lotte Department Store. 10 floors & a basement full of every name brand of shoes & clothes you could ever think of. We've discovered in the last couple of days that if you linger too long looking at something you will be "attacked" by a worker pushing you to buy things. And by too long, we mean, maybe 1 full minute. When we reached the mens floor with suits, it was mostly empty & we were getting Korean stares that made us basically run up to the next level! The whole day we had perfect weather too! First time Nicole wore flip-flops since our arrival to Korea & we both wore short-sleeves. The most beautiful day today; glad we didn't waste it!

Beware of the Hades Cafe!

Waiting for the subway

Delicious Lemon Iced Tea at House Grill

These are up all along the main streets.
Buddha's birthday is coming

Random facts:
-You can take your own food into the movie theater without having to be sneaky.
-Traditional Korean breakfast is usually rice & kimchi.
-Koreans aren't familiar with/don't like baked fruit. You don't find pies here!
-Trash/recycle bins & restrooms are always difficult to find.
-Buddha's birthday is on May 17.
-We've noticed that most Koreans dress like hipsters. Especially the guys.

Lost and Found

John has successfully finished his first week of school. He observed most of the time but taught a random class here & there. He is observing each of the teachers so that he can meet & get to know all of the kids. On Monday, a very small & feisty 10 year old (who looks like he could be 6), said, "John teacher short." John replied, "I'm taller than you" & the boy hissed at him! It was really funny. The reason he said that was because the kids are used to John's friend, Jude, who is really tall. John enjoyed his first week & really likes the school he will be teaching at. Also, on his first day, he came home & told Nicole the three "problem children" names... The same exact names that are Nicole's "problem children". Except, Nicole only has one of them now - the other 2 used to be in her class but they switched. So strange! We officially don't like those names.

Nicole has a busy week ahead of her... 19 report cards to do! 9 of them are 3 pages long, 10 of them are 5 pages long. Neither of us ever remember having any report card that long. EVER. John got lucky & he will never have to do report cards at his school. Nicole is a little bit jealous.

No more job talk - just Korea! On Wednesday evening, Nicole went to a football game (actually, soccer) with most of her coworkers at the Daejeon World Cup Stadium. It was a lot of fun! Everyone had a great time. Everyone was shouting random phrases in English - we were pretty obnoxious! One of Nicole's coworkers actually dropped her camera onto the field! After some searching for security people & yelling at random people on the field, she was able to get it back; and it still worked! Some of us also got pictures with the 3 cheerleaders & another one of Nicole's coworkers got 8 free tickets! It was a very fun time. When we were all leaving, there were some kids playing 'rock, paper, scissors' in Korean & half of us joined in. One kid tapped Nicole on her shoulder to play with him; it was so much fun & now we have learned how to play the game in Korean! Here is a fan photo we got of all of us! 

http://pics.dcfc.co.kr/photo/photo_view.php?photo_seq=6104&p_gbn=fanPhoto&sel_cate_gbn=170&sel_cate_name&search_gbn=photo_title&searchtext&page=4&sel_year=2013

The American teachers of Maple Bear with the cheerleaders
(all of the other teachers are Canadian)

We would like to thank everyone in John's family who has decided to help us pay for an oven!! We are so grateful for & surprised by your generosity. The news brought Nicole to tears! As soon as we get our oven, we will be sure to post a picture of it. Thank you, thank you, thank you so much! You all are fantastic! We can't wait to start baking with it!

Friday evening was an interesting night for us... First, Nicole did some shopping & met John after he got off of work. We went home to relax a bit & then were on our way back out to meet some friends at a bar. We walked around what's called Time World for almost an HOUR before we realized that this bar was not in the middle of Time World. Time World is like Times Square, but much brighter. The amount of bars in the area is infinite. So we started walking towards where we thought it might actually be & when we got to the area, it took us less than 5 minutes to find it! For 45 minutes neither of us even gave it a second thought that this bar might be somewhere else. But, it was a fun adventure & we got to see 7 Redbull cars driving down the streets of Time World. And we will never have a problem finding that bar again!

Headless mannequin scarecrow

Saturday evening to Sunday we went on a little road trip with some of John's coworkers & bosses. His bosses time-shared a house in the mountains on the east side of Daejeon so that we could all go celebrate a birthday & a coworker's last weekend in South Korea. It was so beautiful & peaceful! We grilled some meat, had ice cream cake from Baskin Robbins, jumped on the awesome trampoline, played Cards Against Humanity (which was highly entertaining with Americans, Brits, & Koreans), & drank. Needless to say that we were both doing some flipping on the trampoline! It was great getting to know some more of John's coworkers, for the most part. One of his coworkers caused quite a scene & it was beyond ridiculously dramatic; like 13-year-old girl drama, & it was one of his male coworkers. But all turned out fine in the end & everyone had a great time. Also, we got to see some scarecrows... They were headless & naked mannequins! Out of about 7, 2 were clothed & positioned like they were headless zombies. Too funny! Everybody got a kick out of that one!

View from the house we stayed at

On the side, we are both trying to learn how to read Korean. Nicole found a great website that breaks down the consonants & vowels very well so we are learning from that. It really is easy! Hopefully we will be able to read & start writing it pretty well soon!

A few more facts about Korea:

-Koreans believe that if you leave your fan on while you sleep, you will get hypothermia & die.

-Up until very recently (like this year), street names didn't exist. There were only neighborhoods (dongs) & building names. Our dong is Mannyeon-dong.

-In South Korean schools, getting a check-mark is considered bad. It's a circle that is good.

Giant rice cake anyone?

Sunset view from the Expo Bridge April 19

Adventurous Week

Earlier this week, we found out that we both passed our TEFL tests and are officially TEFL Certified!! (TEFL = Teaching English as a Foreign Language). We were very thrilled & can't wait to receive our certificates.

We haven't mentioned this yet, but we should. Traffic laws here are basically non-existent. It's scary! People run red lights all the time, & it's not just the last second of making the light because they don't want to stop; the light will be red & someone will just randomly go if they think they can! Even when a crosswalk turns green for pedestrians & bikers, you still have to make sure no cars are going to come & hit you. We don't like it but we also don't want to die so we do our best to be careful! Taxi rides are still a little nerve-racking for us.

We went on a few new "adventures" this week. Earlier in the week we ran into one of Nicole's coworkers while walking around & she showed us some good chicken places & got us some teriyaki chicken. We also went to a pizza place on our own later in the week - the pizza was cheap & delicious! On a side note, while we were waiting for our pizza, the phone rang & it was the ringtone for Jingle Bells. Yes, we did start to sing the song. :)

Wednesday evening we ventured out to find another store called Emart Traders (Target, but everything comes in bulk). The store is very big. It took us a while to figure out how to get to the basement floor - it took probably 10 minutes. Maybe longer because Nicole got distracted by puppies on the 2nd floor. We went back Saturday to get a few more things in bulk & we figured out a few things... First, carts can slide sideways! Second, when on the escalator, the wheels automatically lock with the ridges & the cart doesn't move. Third, to actually get a cart, you have to put a 100 won coin (approximately a U.S. dime) in a slot to unlock it from the cart in front of it. When you put the key/lock back, you get your coin back! Oh the things we learn. We also found tennis courts at the park by Emart Traders. Now we just need rackets to play!

Also, on Wednesday, there were a few helicopters in & out of the river after Nicole got off work. We have no idea why they were there but Nicole got a couple of good pictures. And also a little wet.

A couple of kids in Nicole's cooking class this week thought it would be a good idea to taste a finger full of salt (because it looked like sugar) - the faces were priceless! They made yummy chocolate chip muffins!

Having an oven at our place would be really helpful. We almost got one this weekend, but we missed out & it was sold. We'll just have to wait a little bit longer.

In our apartment, we think we have finally figured out our hot water system. Everything is in Korean. This week was the first week we both had consistently good showers. FINALLY! Showering in cold water is no fun! Now we don't dread taking showers.

In other news, Nicole is starting to miss her clothes. We had packed things to be in China for just a few months & then everything changed so fast that we didn't get a chance to repack for a whole year in South Korea. A shopping mall is in our near future!

Birthdays at Nicole's school are a huge deal. She got to experience one this week. When it is a student's birthday, the celebration lasts for 45 minutes. All of the kids bring in presents for the birthday boy/girl, everyone sings happy birthday, & we all eat cake, fruit, & whatever else the birthday kid's mom/dad brought in. It is fun & elaborate & yet, slightly ridiculous. But, hey, free food is free food!!

Some beautiful cherry blossoms on the way home from work.

Friday was another adventurous day, Nicole's school went to the Science Museum. It was really interesting & very large. We will have to go back without the kids soon.

A dinosaur? And some planets behind it at the Expo Science Museum

In the evening we went out to Self Bar for dinner with a couple of Nicole's coworkers. The restaurant is all you can eat meat for $10. YES!! We all had a great time. And we found an adorable store called Artbox - definitely going back soon!

John starts his new job on Monday! He will be observing for the first day & then he will be teaching & introducing himself another day in the week. He is trying to think of some icebreaker games for all ages since he will have young elementary & gradually teach up to middle school age each day. He is excited to finally start working! And his school is actually closer to our apartment than Nicole's school is - that was lucky. The school is nervous to hire him because of a few of their recent hires that have been bad, but they have to hire someone & John has done his best to convince his bosses that he will work his hardest & not let them down. It is going to be a great experience!

Here are some more facts about Korea:
-Recycling is very specific here.
-When you go to someone's house/apt you have to take your shoes off - even in some restaurants, & at Nicole's school.
-Some keys are round (picture of our apt keys below).
-Stealing here is considered taking somebody's bad luck (which is why stealing doesn't happen often).
-In the summer, Koreans will still wear long sleeves because they do not want to get tan.
-The water here is very harsh & has a lot of chemicals - too many to even drink it. No wonder bottled water is cheap!

Our apartment keys

Korean beauty

One thing that the pictures can't capture here - the smell. We love so much just walking or riding down the streets smelling all of the delicious food that Korea has to offer, & wishing so much that we could just go in anywhere & order. But we don't speak Korean... yet. It's great for us that we know many people who know enough Korean to be able to order food for us when we go out to eat though, so we're not completely at a loss for yummy Korean food.
Nicole loves that the beautiful sunset she sees almost daily can be captured thru the camera. It really is an impeccable view. And now, with a bike she can watch the sun go down right in front of her all the way home.

Last Sunday, we ventured out on our own to explore the botanical garden near Nicole's school. There is a very large outdoor staging area nearby & the whole place was PACKED!! So many families & friends out together riding bikes & skateboards, walking, having picnics, flying kites & just playing. It was amazing. There is also a large playground that was filled with kids. The garden hasn't quite reached the beauty it will have in a month or two, but it was still pretty.

Nicole has been told by her Korean coworkers that she has a small face & big eyes - that is high praise here! That's what all the ladies want. And to also be as light skinned as possible. BUT, she also has a student that rubs her stomach everyday & then says "baby". No!! But next time this little girl says that, Nicole is going to say, "no... two babies!" Just to see her face. Kids are funny!

John got a haircut this week - finally! He's been missing his clippers to do it himself & finally went somewhere with his friend (who can speak some Korean). It wasn't the cut that he usually gets, so John calls it his "Asian cut". But at least it's much shorter again! Easier to handle.

This week, Nicole's cooking class baked sugar cookies & then decorated them!! This month's theme is "Bakery Shoppe". She really loves that it is more of a baking class right now than a cooking. Baking is more her forte! We really wish that we had an oven or a microwave or even a toaster. Maybe in a few months we can get a small oven.

Our little apartment is starting to irk us a bit. Our bedroom in Baton Rouge was as big as our entire apartment is here. But we are making improvements to make the space work - slowly but surely. We got a wireless router today so now we don't have to pass the internet back & forth! And we got toilet paper to last us the rest of the year (huge sale!) One thing we really need is an air filter. This morning we woke up almost choking to the smell of smoke. Who gets up at 9:00am & starts smoking?!

We have also found a butcher shop that has just about every kind of meat... for very cheap! And it's right next to our apartment. Thanks be to a couple of Nicole's coworkers for showing her the place. The guys working there taught us how to say "duck" in Korean too. They are pretty awesome.

Right now it's Cherry Blossom season! There is a bike trail next week that we would like to do but it takes up the whole weekend & is costly. Maybe next year! In the meantime, we will just go walk around here & take pictures because there are cherry blossoms everywhere!

Also, just to set everyone's mind at ease back home, we are safe. North Korea is no dire threat. Even if they are a threat, we have placed ourselves on the state department list that will send us automatic warning if there is a problem. Right now the only warning is "If you go to North Korea, be cautious." WE'RE OKAY! :)

What we've learned:

-"Say, 'kimchi!'" instead of 'cheese!' when taking pictures - love it!

-How to count to 5 in Korean.
-Parents only focus on if their child is the "best" in the class (it's rather annoying!)

-Toronto is hated by everywhere else in Canada.
-We can go explore the Expo Theme Park by Nicole's school that has closed down!
-Korean girls wear very short shorts or skirts, no matter the weather.

View of baseball game we went to on March 23.

They taste exactly like corn but in chip form!

Our kitchen. There's also a small table & refrigerator.

View of the street from our apartment at night.

Expo Bridge & Smart City. Nicole crosses the bridge daily to get to Smart City where her school is (but in a much smaller building).

Smart City at night.

Korean barbecue

Soju

Taking a walk in the botanical garden on March 31

Kimbap to go!

Beautiful day to play at the park, March 31

Beautiful view from the Expo Bridge on April 1.

Expo Bridge at night