My New Apartment!

Room as you walk in

Another angle of the place

My kitchen

Bathroom/laundry room/shower

My lil fridge

Weird shaped key

View from my window, if you look at an angle

Outside of the building I now live in

I got my apartment!! I have my own place to live now! No more Love Motel :-DThey always give you the apartment of the person whom you are replacing. Some teachers' apartments are a little larger than others, but they are all pretty nice and have the very basic necessities provided for you. One of the teachers who just left was here for 2 years and had a large apartment with separate bathroom, bedroom and balcony. This girl who has been here a while got that apartment, because of seniority, and so I moved into hers. It is a studio flat that is about 3 or 4 blocks from my school. My bed, kitchen, closet, and fridge are all in one room, and in my bathroom is my toilet, sink shower head, and laundry washing machine. There's no tub, but a drain in the middle of the floor, so you just shower right in there next to your toilet and washing machine. I guess that's common for small apartments. Also, no one ever has dryers, or screens on your windows, or ovens, so my apartment doesn't have those either. But it does have 3 different types of locks on the door, and a really  weird shaped key. I think my pictures will explain better. Oh, but that greenish yellow thing in the middle of the room is the mattress cover. It's on 2 chairs drying because the girl washed it for me. So it was like that when I first moved in, and then I started taking pictures and didn't stop to move it :)

Magical Meat

"Pork that Tastes Like Beef"

I was so busy telling you about the penis fish before that I almost forgot to tell you about a restaurant that I went to with my fellow teachers. They call the place, "Pork that Tastes Like Beef". Apparently there is a magical part of the pig that tastes exactly like beef, and the Koreans have found it and serve it. Beef is preferred for their foods, but it is expensive. So I guess this certain cut of the pig is great for them to use because you get a great beef dish, but you pay for pork. They brought it to us and we cooked it in the center of our table. I totally thought it was beef until they revealed the magic :)
Speaking of magical meat, I also tried a McDonald's hamburger here, because the school got them for the kids for an event today. It's not your typical hamburger though. It tasted just like Korea. It's a bulgogi burger with Korean veggies and sauce. I liked it though! If we had that in the US then maybe I'd actually go to McDonald's (maybe!)

Warning: If not a 'Twilight' fan then do not read!

For all those who I know would appreciate this, I just wanted to mention that I saw Edward, it was so weird! Well, of course not Edward exactly. I went to a company dinner where we said good-bye to the teachers leaving, and welcome to me and the other new teacher, Laura. Lots of girls brought their boyfriends. When this one girls' boyfriend came in, I had to look 2 or 3 times because I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me.... no! does he really look like Edward from the Twilight movies or is that just me?? But no, he's got the same haircut, tousled on top, same cheek and chin bone structure, and very similar eyes. I wanted to take a picture of him to show you guys, but I didn't want everyone there to think that I'm crazy (not yet anyways, hehe!) Just had to share.

Just a little exploring

Look! I bought something, with won!

The foreign teachers at my school (Western teachers) have been showing me and the other new girl, Laura, a few good places to eat, to shop for necessities, and all of that. They've been very helpful, however today we were wanted to go explore and find somewhere on our own to eat. This was fine, but it made me realize how much I had depended on reading signs. Back home, I could just look down a street and read the signs to see how many restaurants are down there, what kinds they are, etc. Here, everything kind of looks the same still since I'm new, so I have to literally walk right next to a store front to look inside the window and see people eating. This might make me a little creepy till I learn to read Korean.

Take that, Iron Chef!

Yumm!

After some looking around we went into a place where they sat us down on the floor and handed us a menu. It was all written in Korean and there were no pictures like the menus at some other places I had been to. The lady pointed at the first thing on the menu with a smile, so we said ok, might as well take her word for it. She then came out with a large pan of cold, raw octopus and vegetables, and placed it on the burner in the middle of our table for us to cook. Not quite what we were expecting, but hey, we were looking for local flavor. We cooked it up and it was actually pretty good, we did it!! Walking back from there I noticed that most restaurants have a picture of the animal that they serve either posted or drawn on their store front....ours had a picture of some dishes with tentacles in them, oops. But it's all good, we're here to try new things...like banana cheese puffs and peanut fish crackers, which I tried the other day, accidentally :)

PENIS FISH!!

Outside most seafood restaurants you will find at tank or two filled with weird fish, huge prehistoric crabs, blobs of octopus, or any other seafood that they serve there. Going to dinner one day, I was lucky enough to come across a restaurant that had this eel-like fish thing. Now, I don't know what this fish is really called, and no one I asked knew either. But it's long, pink, wriggly, has no eyes, and apparently shoots out a stream of white liquid when it's scared or threatened. Yep, couldn't make this stuff up if I tried, penis fish it is! I was on my way to eat somewhere else so I can't tell you what this thing tastes like or if they even eat it at all. I'll let you know if I encounter this little guy again!

Where am I?...

So I'm in Changwon, South Korea. This city is about 30 minutes outside of Busan (which is one of the largest cities in Korea). Changwon is close to the southern coast, so apparently it takes about 30-40 minutes to get to beaches somewhere. It's also bordered on the other side by beautiful green mountains, and it takes less than 10 minutes to get to those. The city is pretty big, and it has been taking me a while to walk around all of it in my free time. It's also hard to walk around because it's so freakin hot and humid over here! It's been vacillating between 80 and 90*F, with 70-80% humidity. One day it was 60%, mmm, that was nice. And you know, these little old ladies will walk around in the heat with a visor hat covering their head, scarf covering their face, and long sleeves covering their arms to prevent from getting tan! I don't know how they do it, because I'm melting over here! But I heard that this weather will only last for about 2 more weeks and then you get to the beautiful fall weather.

My school and motel room are right in downtown Changwon. There are several blocks of tall buildings with tons of flashing lights on them, to the point where it's incredibly amazing (like Vegas on steroids) yet at the same time every block looks the same, which makes it really hard to find your way around. Having a 7-Eleven or a MiniMart on every single corner doesn't help either. But I am starting to get the hang of it, believe it or not! The city is visually awesome and fun, but it smells like garbage or fish sauce, depending on which way the wind is blowing, and there are always bags of garbage collected in random spots along the streets. The drivers here are crazy too. I am SO glad I do not have to drive here! It's risky enough just walking because pedestrians do not have the right-away, in fact, they are the last thing on any drivers mind. You basically just walk around and through the cars willy nilly, and if one bumps you then you just thump his hood and go along your way. No biggie :) The men take about 8+ attempts to park their car, and the women keep the bad-female-Asian-driver-stereotype alive and kicking. But so far the people have been either very nice or indifferent toward me, and no one has yet asked me if I am a Russian prostitute! I met a lot of the other foreign teachers on Friday night at a local "international bar" (aka: where all the white people go) and some of them told me that that's what some Korean men will ask blonde girls! The foreigners were all nice and from various parts like New Zealand, England, Ireland, and Canada...lots from Canada actually. I can't get away from that country, can I?? Meeting them was fun and really informative since a lot of them had been there much longer than the whole 3 days that I have been here! 

And we're off...

So August 23rd 2010 was my first flight overseas! I have never been anywhere outside of the US (except Canada, but we all know that doesn't count), and now all of a sudden I was boarding a 10 hour flight to take me across the Pacific Ocean for a year's worth of working, confusion, and hopefully adventures!

View at Tokyo Narita Airport

Japanese Gift Shop

The flight was pretty smooth the whole way, just loooonnng. 10 hours to Tokyo Narita Airport (what what!!) where I had an hour to check out the Japanese gift shops. Then back on another plane for 2 hours to Busan, Korea! I arrived at about 9pm and stood in line for immigration and then to get my bags. 2 bags for a whole year and I did it, can you believe it?? I then exchanged my US$ for over 1.4 million Korean won, I'm rich!! A guy from the school picked me up, but he spoke just enough English to say, "Elizabeth? Get in." Which was fine because I was completely exhausted by this point. However, my night was not done. Before I knew it I was at the school (my new workplace) to meet my Director and all of my fellow foreign teachers (native English teachers). They told me my whole training schedule for the next week. Finally after all that, I was taken to a motel to get some rest.

The motel was nice, but there was something kind of weird about it. There were mirrors on the walls, on the dresser a box of tissues with a sex hotline ad printed on it, and condoms by the bedside...then later I found out that the name on the outside of the building translates to the Love Motel....and that I'm lucky that my bed isn't shaped like a heart as in some rooms....well alrighty then. But besides those lovely details, I slept like a baby from the jetlag, and woke up in time to start my first day of work!