We're having a VERY bad Korea Day.

Not much of a post to make, so I'll just get right down to it.

Today was the Graduation Ceremony for our Kindergarten classes. It's Saturday so that means we have to work even though we normally don't. Anyways we leave our apartment at 9:45, have a great time at the ceremony, then are treated to a wonderful lunch at a fancy restaurant by our boss -- He treated the entire Kids Club staff, very nice man -- judging from the menu and what everyone ordered I suspect it cost him 400$ easily. We returned home at about 4:30 to find.....

Our apartment had been robbed.

Yup.. Burglarized. They didn't break anything or really make much of a mess, but they hit us where it probably hurts the most. Both of our notebook computers were stolen. Monetary costs aside (which is quite a large aside ~2500$ or so) we lost all of our photos from the past several years, all our documents (resumes, letters, school work assignments we'd made for kids, lesson plans... everything) As well as being the only real source of western entertainment (Access to the TV shows we like from back home and movies and video games)

Of all the things in our apartment to take, they definitely took that with the greatest value, both in cash and in intrinsic worth...

So we spent the rest of the afternoon calling the building owners, our boss, the police, and only now (at around 8:45 as I write this post) are we done with the police reports, and other stuff. It looks as if our door lock was forced -- we have a REALLY cheap lock on the door, which I had fully intended to replace but then held off when we learned we were going to be moving back to the more secure building TOMORROW where something like this is a lot less likely to happen.. If only we had lasted one more day....

A broad daylight breaking and entering and of course we're out in the middle of no where and no one saw anything. The police sent a burglary detective with us after we filed the report with the uniformed guys -- and he did a good job asking questions and he went over the apartment and dusted likely area's for fingerprints but found nothing usable..


Well.

It's been a bad Korea day for both of us.

I have been contemplating leaving the contract and returning to Canada, where I never have been robbed.... Maybe that feeling will pass, but right now it's pretty strong.

I guess I have to buy a computer here in Korea after all....

My package arrived!

It took 2 months and 2 days, but it got here in tact. I found out this morning through very poor Korean that the package had been waiting at Adelia for 3 days already, but that they hadn't called me. This took 30 minutes to find out , but in the end, it was determined that the package had arrived and I borrowed a Korean staff member to help me ask for it.

We took a field trip to the new city hall today, which killed most of the morning, and the old apt. was just next door, so I got to open it and see the long awaited bounty for the first time right before lunch. The new city hall is actually quite nice and it was an interesting field trip all in all.

That's the bell, gotta go. Hope that everyone had a great Valentines!

A glimpse into young Korean minds

Every Monday I (Jo) correct book reports for my K8 class. They have now been at our school for 3 years and are able to express most of their ideas in English, grammatical errors not withstanding. This is the book report I just marked from one of the boys in this class. The book was about African arts and crafts.

"Africa people are strange because they is painting on the wall. I don't like Africa people because they are skin is black. I like white people Jo teacher. but I like beads."

Just a little sample for all of you to ponder back home. This is the attitude commonly held by most of the children and obviously by most of their parents. Now I don't think that Tommy would wish harm upon any African American, but he would certainly tell them that their skin is too dark and choose someone else to be friends with on that basis. It's like looking back on history. They are just a bit behind the rest of the world in common perceptions, or maybe it's just me being naive and thinking that a child back home wouldn't say the exact same thing.

It certainly doesn't help that they never see black people except on TV, where they are most commonly portrayed as drug dealers or bad guys in general. I can honestly say that I have only seen a handful of black people since arriving 7 months ago. I have seen easily over 100 white ones, and probably more, but they don't stand out as much for me, in contrast to the sea of yellow and white we work in.

Anyway, this week is a dream at work, 2 sciences, a field trip and a manners class for the graduating children, which equals a very light work load for me. Next week I imagine that there will also be a lighter workload as the children will be practicing for their graduation ceremony and once we finish our books there will be nothing new to move onto.

We are eagerly awaiting Jacqui's arrival and the gifts from home that she is bringing with her; like razor blades for Lucas and spices for me (yay chili powder!!!). It's down to only 2 weeks now and they are going to fly right by, as they always do anyway. This weekend is the lunar New Year here, so we have next Monday off, but since there is nothing really interesting to do with only 3 days, we're planning on having a very relaxing long weekend spent at home most likely.

Our new place is as Lucas said, quite nice and very functional. Not having an oven sucks, but if we end up staying the extra 5 months, we'll probably splurge, and aside from the noisy construction workers who start little before 8 every morning, weekends included, there are no problems. The landlord even put weather stripping around the door yesterday, and once the other buildings in the neighborhood go up we might even get street lights! Plus we have a rooftop that we can get to here, which will be nice come the summer, and somewhere to hang out in the sun, my plants will love their time up there in full sunlight too.

Hoping that everyone back home is having a nice Valentine's Day and enjoying the last of the snow. It sounds like it's supposed to warm up for you soon. We're already almost into the double digits everyday and just barely dipping below freezing at night right now. I'm pretty sure all chances for snow have passed and this will be remembered by us as the year without snow.

Our love to everyone back home, please keep in touch, and I promise to keep working on Lucas about the memory card.

The Update Continues

Well, we're now 100% settled into the new apartment and I must say that despite any initial objections, the new place is actually very nice.

There are a lot of nice things about it, and only a couple negatives so overall I'm convinced it is better then where we were. My father would be proud to know that I "Considered All Factors" and did a Pluses, Minuses and I...... forget what the I stands for...

Anyways, here's the breakdown on the new place:

Pros:
Perfect size for two people. Adelia was just too big, it was a hassle to clean and had too much unused space that just attracted clutter.

Brand new. Nothing is broken, everything works properly, and the only things there are things we brought. Adelia had about 5 occupants worth of left behind crap in it, and this place is free of junk.

Quieter. No more train going by every 30-90 minutes, though we are a bit closer to a busy road so there IS some road noise, but no BLARING train horns -- yay.

About the same distance to work and easier taxi access for when we want to travel by cab.

Also, for whatever reason (probably related to its newness) this building doesn't accumulate a layer of black guck each week which Adelia did.

Cons:
No bathtub or shower divider - Basically it has the standard Korean bathroom where the entire room is also the shower stall area so the entire floor does get wet, but we've got a few raised mats now that keep your feet off of the damp floor.

No Oven and a bit smaller kitchen - Even though its easier to keep the smaller kitchen clean, not having an oven kinda makes me a bit sad


That's pretty much it though, everything else is working excellently at the new apartment -- and we actually have it set up very comfortably, so that each of the two bedrooms functions as a working are as opposed to just a place to sleep, and the living room is nicely laid out. So even though the place is a bit smaller it sometimes feels bigger (at least to me)

Onto the school front. The Korean school year (public school) begins in March so graduation is coming up for our Kindergarten students. The older 4 classes will be heading off to Elementary school and we will be starting 4 new classes of beginners which I think will be a lot of fun -- I tend to have a lot of success with the brand new students. Also we will be getting 3 new teachers at the end of February as we are replacing ones who have completed their contracts. We're getting to the home stretch ourselves now, 5 months to go as of today! It's amazing how fast the time has been going by.

That's about all there is to say, please remember to keep us posted on the happenings from back home, we both look forward to any comments or emails from people in North America.