An yeong hasayo.... Greetings

We arrived safely to Busan on Tuesday night (Tuesday morning for those of you in the U.S.) pretty tired and gross from a day of travel. Our flight from Detroit to Tokyo went well, they played 4 movies back to back, which was long and kind of overkill since we were sitting in the second row from a huge screen tv/projector.

*Jon eating shrimp on the plane to Japan.*

Anyway our first few days have been good. We are staying in a temporary apartment right now. It is pretty small, but it works for a couple weeks. Then we will be moving into a bigger apartment that an American couple is currently living in. Their names are Dan and Katie and they have been so wonderful to us. The first night we went up to their apartment for a while to e-mail home and they helped fill us in on things. Our first full day here we went to the supermarket in the morning and that was interesting. It wasn’t too busy and we just kind of walked around and looked at things, trying to figure out what they were. There are so many fish products here!! We didn’t have any Korean Won yet so we didn’t get groceries yet. However, we had our first meeting with the director and got some Won so we went back later in the day about 5pm and let me tell you it was crazy in there! I won’t be going to the grocery store in the evenings unless I have to. There were people everywhere and a worker on each corner of each aisle. In the produce department there were several people on microphones shouting out things we couldn’t understand in Korean. It was definitely interesting!!!

*Our first purchase at the grocery store.*

Last night we went out with Dan and Katie for dinner and it was Korean Barbecue....which was so cool because the coals and grill is in the middle of your table and they just bring you raw meat and you cook it for yourself right there on the table. We were not expecting that. It was really fun. We will surely lose a few pounds because we are not very skilled at using the metal chopsticks yet, and that’s pretty much all we get as far as cutlery, unless you are eating rice or soup and you get a spoon.

*Our first Korean Barbecue meal with Dan & Katie*

Today (Thursday) was our first day job shadowing. We will each teach 2 kindergarten classes in the mornings and 3 to 4 elementary classes in the afternoon. My kindergarteners are 3 and 4 years old and sooooo adorable!! Jon’s are 5 and 6 years old and they are a little crazy. We are already so impressed with how much English they already can speak and understand and write and read as kindergarteners! School was soooo much fun!!! I can’t wait to start teaching them. They call us “Jon Teacher” and “Nicole Teacher.” Precious.

The other interesting adventure this morning was our hike up the hill.... it was about 15 minutes up a steep hill and what we discovered was totally shocking. We were told that along the trail there are like out door workout things... so we were expecting to see a pull up bar or something like that.... but no, there was a whole out door gym with bikes and all kinds of machines all in the mountains and it was full of probably 30 Koreans in pants and long sleeves and hats working out. We stuck out like sore thumbs but it was fun.

We are loving it!!! We are planning to go out and explore on Saturday and Sunday.. I'm sure more stories will follow.

Blessings to all!