First Week Summary

Our apartment complex

First day as teachers!

So the first week is over and the second about to begin...oh boy!  (sense me trying to muster enthusiasm and energy?)  First impressions?  Doable but exhausting, fun but challenging, and will test my creativity in a number of ways.  We arrived in Suncheon Sunday afternoon to discover we were not really expected.  After about half an hour of waiting at the bus stop, we called the pastor, who called the assistant pastor, who showed up after a few minutes in a rather smallish car.  He soon realized he should have brought the van, but nonetheless, we managed to cram all 8 of our bags into the car, and ourselves, and were soon on our way.  We were NOT, however, on our way to our new apartment, which is what we were hoping/ expecting.  Turns out the couple who were leaving Suncheon had yet to move out and would not do so until the next evening.  So Sunday was spent at a hotel, and that day and Monday were spent exploring the institute we would be working at, meeting our coordinator, driving around Suncheon, and going out to eat with some of the junior Korean teachers. 

Before we knew it, it was Monday evening and we were finally and excitedly moving into our new home for the next year, getting ready to get up at 5:30AM to teach our first class at 7:00.  Yikes.  Our apartment is pretty fun.  We were expecting a tiny one bedroom/studio apartment, and instead ended up with:  our bedroom, kitchen, laundry room (with washer), guest room, bathroom, several closets, large living room, large balcony (with tons of places to line dry your clothes), and another bedroom/ironing room.  Sorry, no pictures yet, waiting to receive and put up all our pictures on the wall so it really feels like home.  Also, working with an established institute that takes care of you really has its perks.  Our apartment is fully furnished with desks and drawers and beds and blankets and couches, even hangers in the closests, and our kitchen has a random assortment of cutlery, pots and pans, and appliances which I still need to sort through and figure out what we'll actually use and what's just taking up space.  I know we do have a blender, rice maker, toaster, and water purifer/cooler, which we're pretty excited about.  And a full size fridge, which we still haven't figured out how to fill, after living in England with their mini fridges. 

Celebrating at Baskin Robbins

So anyway, we sort of unpacked and then tried to calm our nerves and get some sleep in preparation for our first day as real teachers.  5:30 came awfully early.   Those first few days in the first week were exhausting, no joke, as you can see from our schedule.  We usually come home and take a nap after our 7:00AM class, and after lunch our afternoon break is filled with trying to figure out what's going on in our junior classes on that day.   The Korean junior teachers are really nice and helpful though.  We defnitely feel more comfortable with our adult classes though, and the only real difficulty the first few days with those classes was the fact that my level one class was either super shy or really didn't know English at all, which make class kind of awkward.  I think they're warming up/getting better though.  Classes started on Tuesday, so tomorrow begins our first full week, and we're kind of nervous about that.  However, our religion classes don't start till Wednesday which is good (more time to lesson plan) and Thursday night/Friday morning is 'Mission Day' which means no classes during those times (more on that later, when I figure out what exactly it is).   Further descriptions of classes will come soon!

Weekend duties began already, as this last weekend I assisted our coordinator Beyanca with vespers, or Friday Night Live (FNL) as they call it.  The next day the other teacher Novia did a music club for Sabbath School, we had our tiny English church, the Koreans provided potluck for us (yum!), and then we went over to Beyanca and Novia's apartment with some other English friends who come from nearby cities.  One is a lady in her early thirties named Leandra who is studying Korean right now and comes to our church each week, and the other is a couple, Lenrick and Aindrea, who used to teach for SDA but now teach for another school in a town about an hour away.  So we all hung out at the girls apartment and made smoothies and played Bible jeopardy, listened to Heritage Singers, chatted, and then before you know it it was time to close the Sabbath, and of course the guys were already hungry for dinner.  So we got introduced to a cute little cafe just around the corner from us with good soup and sandwiches, which also had some serious Konglish (Korean attempting to be English that doesn't always make sense).  A great first Sabbath in Suncheon! 

Facts about Suncheon (pronounced 'soon' - 'chuhn')

• It is a relatively small, quiet city of about 250,000
• It is 4 hours headed south from Seoul
• We are about 30 minutes from the coast, which is not a beachy, sandy coast but kind of a marshy coast, known as 'the bay', and hosts the International Wetlands Center
• It is much warmer than the rest of Korea!  They say this is a bit warmer than usual, but yesterday, November 5, it was 75 degrees here!
• A lot of Korea, and especially our area, is surrounded by tons of small mountains/large hills, covered in beautiful trees