Check it out...he is certainly famous!

Ed's school loves him.

They love him so much they already added him to their web page. Check it out!

http://buyeong.hs.kr/

This should take you to his school's website. Look on the main page. Among the Korean, you should see his name in English (close to the top of the page). Click on it and there you go.

Look! Look! A rockstar!!

Oh wait. It is just the two wayguks (Ed and I) walking up the street. Fortunately (for now at least) we have celebrity status, especially among 5-10 year old boys. You see, this whole pointing and shouting at foreigners was something that we read about before we came to S.Korea. Amazingly enough it is true. People stop dead in their tracks and stare. Some with open mouths. And if that person happens to be a young boy, then he jumps up and down, points, and shouts at the top of his lungs "Wayguk! Wayguk!", then runs to tell his friends/mother/brothers (now who are also shouting and pointing) that he has seen someone who is different. I had a student ask me yesterday what an outsider was (it was really the title of her book, so she had good reason to ask and was not being rude). The best way I could describe it was by pointing at myself. Ahh its is still pretty cool to have such high ranking status, though.

I can see why so many celebrities complain. This whole wow status is very cool and somewhat funny at first; but after a while both Ed and I think it might get old. Although I don't think it will ever get old when random people tell me I'm pretty or "ahhhh" at Ed (I get the biggest response when I show Ed's picture in the boy's classes---"Ahhhh so handsome. You very lucky". Yes. Yes I am.)

Anyways, the first few days of work have been going well for the both of us. Ed is receiving a lot of positive feed back, especially about his use of Korean and his sexiness (he was introduced to the Principal as sexy). He told me yesterday that a student came up to him and said:

"You pooh"

Ed thought it must have been a nice Korean term of endearment (it is sometimes hard to understand [p] starting words from the students. But he asked the girl to repeat herself.

Apparently she said "You know yellow bear." Again Ed pauses.

Yes my friends, she was comparing him to Winnie the Pooh. He says because he is cute (which he is), but I will just leave it at that!

I just receive comments on my use of chopsticks; which I use quite well when I'm eating lunch and enjoying some mystery dish and suddenly see an octopus leg in the mix. Enjoyment over. Chopsticks down. Stomach flip. Ahhh school lunch.

Speaking of school here are a few pictures of my classroom

And here are some views from my classroom!

The mountain behind our apartments (there is a rice terrace to the right of the picture--just carved right into the mountain side!)

You can actually see our apartment buildings (the big ones in the background)

This is what we had for dinner yesterday. Potato wedge pizza. It actually is not bad.

So that's about all for now. Until later rock on!

Photo Gallery

Just a quick note.

I figured out how to get the photo gallery up and running. Just click on the picture to the right of the page and it will take you to the photo gallery, where incidentally enough, you can buy them off the web (or at least you should be able to).

Any questions or not working links let me know!

First Week

Hey Everyone,

I have gotten several emails from people saying that you all are checking this blogsite to see what is going on. Please bear with me as I attempt to use this feature. Right now I'm trying to figure out how to load a photo gallery so that it can link you to all the photos, so that it is not all on here (if you know what I'm talking about and know how to do this please email me).

Anyways, the first week in Korea has been great. I know, honeymoon stage and all. We were pretty much in a bubble all week with our orientation group, so now is the real challenge. The JLP program (Jeollanamdo Language Program-the people who hired us) took us on some field trips; one to Nagan Folk Village, and to Songgwang Sa Temple. Both of these places were very interesting and were a neat break from classes and meetings. I was able to meet my co-teacher "Krista" at Nagan Folk Village. Already I can tell she is a very nice lady and I can only hope our work relationship goes well.

Ed and I arrived in Yeosu (specifically Yeocheon) last night. Today we walked around the city, which is not small-sorry Yeosu-ites. We thought it would be fun to get down to the water to see the Dolson Bridge. Well after about two hours walking towards the water we finally see it--except it is still about 10 miles away! So we attempted to catch a bus; which we did eventually and rode it down to the Yeosu market (it seems like we know where we were going, but in reality we had no idea. We just got off and got lucky). We walked around the market and saw our first whole squid (huge), pigs heads (no biggie-I saw those in FL), and other animal parts (I don't know what they were). There was a lot of live and drying fish available, some of which didn't look too bad except Ed and I would have no idea really what it was and how to cook it properly. Anyways after a little bit we took a 30 minute taxi (which cost 6 bucks) back to our apartment just to chill for the afternoon. There is a ton to see here so I'm sure there will be plenty more adventures to write about. So until next time, both Ed and I are healthy, finding some good, edible food, and are looking forward to school on Monday. Annyeong Higaseyo!

Hey everyone,

Just letting you know that we made it to Gwangju with ease. The plane flights were long and tiresome, and both Ed and I are experiencing some good ol' jet lag; but besides that everything is going well.

We are still at orientation and will be until Friday. They are slowly introducing us to Korean food, and it is going to take some getting used to.

Not much to report, just wanted to let everyone know that we made it alright!

International Date Line What??

For those of you who have traveled outside the US, you may have experienced the question from friends and relatives: "What time is it there?"

Ed and I thought we had figured it out; that was until two days ago when all out panic occurred (okay only on my end).
Let me start from the beginning. All summer long we've been telling people that Yeosu (South Korea in general) is 12 hours ahead. We were certain.

We received our travel itinerary a few weeks ago. We both looked it over (quickly I might add) and saw no problems. We have our six hour lay over in New York, then off to South Korea on a 14 1/2 hour plane flight, take another plane down to Gwangju and bam! We are there a mere 40 hours later. We leave on Friday and get there Saturday night. No problem, right? Right.

Rewind to two days ago. We started getting emails from Canadian Connections about last minute details, like who is going to pick us up from the airport, how to exchange money, etc. Well, Ed takes out our travel itinerary and looks at it closely this time. He realized that it shows us leaving JFK on Friday at 2:00 pm and arriving in Seoul at 5:30 pm. But wait. 5:30 pm on Friday??? That would mean we would be staying in Seoul for a whole day before our next flight to Gwangju. We could take a bus (or several for that matter) and get down there before our next flight even took off. This didn't make sense to either of us. Could we have been wrong with the time zone thing?

Enter panic mode (okay not so much panic as general confusion and lots of questions that ran along the line of "How does this time thing work?").


Well several hours later (including phone calls, internet serches and an extensive world map drawn on a paper plate) we figured out the answer: The International Date Line. That mystical line that only exists on school globes. The line that is the backside of the Prime Meridian. The answer to our "How does this happen?" question. Ahhh the International Date Line. Okay now it makes sense. (kind of). I knew it was there all along. I just momentarily forgot (kind of).

Either way, 12 hours ahead or behind or sideways, I know that I get to Gwangju on Saturday. That's good enough for me.