Korea!

Well here I am in Changwon, South Korea and it has almost been a week since we first arrived! Honestly I think it flew by- so that is a good sign I think :) There is so much to catch up on I'm not even sure where to begin. . .

Tim and I flew in on Monday evening and were picked up by one of our Korean co-teachers, Nikki. In Korea they call their teachers "Nikki Teacher" rather than simply "Teacher" or "Teacher Nikki." So I am "AmyRose Teacher" to all of my kids :) We were glad to see that someone was at the airport to pick us up because that was one minor detail we forgot to ask our recruiter about. Ha! We were put up in an hourly hotel for the first 3 nights because our apartments still had the teachers we were replacing living in them. The hotel was. . .interesting? It charged by hourly rates so basically it was sort of a brothel. It's where all the prostitutes do their business. In the elevators the prostitutes would leave their half-naked business cards lining the elevator floors. Also we saw a TON of barber-shop pole things on almost every corner. We thought, "Oh wow that must be a universal symbol for barber!"

FALSE.

Those barber shop poles are code for "FIND PROSTITUTES HERE."

Welcome to Korea :)

Ok so what else. . .Oh we finally got moved into our apartments! Tim and I are in the same building. He is on the 9th and I am on the 4th floor so that is quite nice. His apartment has HUGE windows and he can see blue sky!!! I, on the other hand, open my window and literally have ONE FOOT between me and another building. 4th floor. No sky :( I was super bummed at first and tried to get Tim to trade me but I've settle in my humble 4th floor abode and actually like it now. Except that I only get 5 minutes per day of hot water. I learned that the hard way when I took my first shower last night. I also learned that the ginormous bottle of 'shampoo' I thought I was buying was actually conditioner. So I only have like 2 oz. of shampoo I brought from the States.

I attempted to do some dishes today and learned that my 5 minute hot-water issues I ran into in the shower was an apartment-wide issue. I can only hand wash dishes for 5 minutes at a time in 20 minutes intervals. Or I can wash them in cold water. Gross. We have washer/dryers in our apartment but they are two-in-one and apparently they will shrink all clothes if you try to dry in them. So we all had to buy drying racks. The washer is in Korean/Hongul so I am going to have to guess when I wash things I suppose. . .

Ok enough on my apartment. The area we live in is pretty nice; it is only a 2 minute walk from our school! That makes for very convenient lunch breaks :) Changwon is actually one of the "smaller" cities in South Korea but it has over a million people! Korea is smaller than the state of Arkansas but there 50 million people living here. Crazy. We've been told by other internationals though, that we actually live in a really great location. Apparently we are sort of downtown Changwon and teachers that live/teach on the outskirts of Changwon come to where we live to do everything. I also learned there is a Hot Yoga studio very nearby so I am stoked about that!

Alright I have to go attempt to make toast in a frying pan for brunch. No toaster yet. . . Peace!