Pogue Periodical: First update from Korea

안녕하세요 [an-nyeong-ha-se-yo]. Translation: Hello!

What a joy it has been to finally be here! It's now been about 2 weeks that we've been settling into our life in Korea. We had about 6 days before classes started in order to plug away on getting a few things for our home and just exploring the neighborhoods closeby. Once we arrived we bussed it about an hour to our new home, which we expected to be itty bitty. But my oh my, we were very wrong! It's HUGE. Well, huge for Korea and even bigger than our place in Greenlake. It came fully furnished, but missing some important appliances that we've been scoping Craigslist for :). All in all... we are overjoyed with our living arrangements.

It's been an incredible blessing to know so many people here already. We live literally a 5 minute walk away from a lovely couple that graduated from Trinity as well. We also have good friends that live about an hour away on the subway that we've already been able to see a few times. They've all been a huge help in showing us around and explaining a bit about Korean culture to us.

I must say, it was a little daunting/overwhelming our first few days with not recognizing a THING. Our first grocery trip only took us a few hours to finally find the 6 story building with close to nothing that I recognized or could even pronounce. However, we do have a Costco only 7 stops away on the subway... HUGE plus! But even in two weeks it's slowly getting easier to communicate with the language barrier and cultural/food differences. It mainly consists of pointing and saying "how much". One important lesson we learned is to not assume a street cart is serving cream puff balls and buy 5 when in fact it is actually breaded creamy octopus... woops... won't make that mistake again. It's a little scary to be adventurous with the food here, but in we've found some Korean food we enjoy.

Some of you already heard, but we have in fact adopted a little kitty already! She's just about a year old we think so she's not so much a kitty anymore. We've already fallen in love with our little Tigra. She has a big personality and thinks our lap is where she belongs at all times... or under our bed covers.

Our first week of school has gone exceptionally well. It will take a little bit of time to get a momentum/rhythm going as far as lesson planning and all that, but Nathan and I are both excited for the year. We're both teaching 4th grade, which is nice being just down the hall from each other. Nathan is deemed the 4th Grade Social Studies & Math English Teacher and I am the 4th Grade Writing & Composition English Teacher. I'll spare you the details with the setup of the school/classrooms to avoid too many boring details, but we are INCREDIBLY lucky to be placed at such a prestige school for our first job here. Plus, we are only a 10/15 minute walk to the school from our place! We are the only teachers out of 24 English teachers that have not spent over 1 year in Korea teaching. We will certainly be kept busy with these little kiddos. They're a handful and at all different levels in their English progress, so we'll have to continue to be creative!

There is so much more to say, but we'll share more stories over time! It's getting late here and we have a busy day tomorrow. I've posted some pictures below that are also on facebook. We send you our love from this tiny country. Until next time...