when pickings are slim and feeling jet lag, go for cass and soju

so i've been in korea for a day and a half now. it is good. the company that i work for is called avalon. from what other teachers here have told me it is an excellent first contract school. it has elementary and middle school age classes. there is also an advanced middle school program called nok ji won, which is where i am. currently there are four english teachers in nok ji won. nate and i are the new ones and we are replacing karen and dan who will be leaving saturday. yesterday i sat in on a few classes. they seem pretty straight forward. the elementary and middle school classes are very structured, the nok ji won is not. we have to make all of our lesson plans. nate has worked for avalon for a year now, he was teaching at a different school, so his experience will be helpful. karen and dan have been teaching for a few years and have been giving us a good idea of how it works.














yesterday morning i got up and went for an hour walk around the neighborhood. i stopped by a small mart and bought some apples, oranges, cucumbers and pickled radish, which then became my first meal. it was nothing new. later after coming to work, the four of us went to lunch and i had my first bi bimp bap, a bowl of rice with a plethora of different kimchi, pickled and peppered vegetables. it was very good. i'm learning real fast that the concept of vegetarian does not exist here. i'll get through it. today karen and i went to a lotte mart, it's like walmart, and she showed me all of my options, which were a bit slim. the lotte mart is close to the school, but there is a small independent mart near the apartment that i can get some things at. last night we went and checked out the apartments, they are nice, definitely doable size one bedrooms, with two gas burners on top of the washing machine, there is no bathtub or stall shower, the shower head just comes out of the wall and there is a drain in the floor. i think the neighborhood looks fine, they say it's the hood, but coming from philly's grime probably has something to do with that. a group of us went to a bar there and had cass beer, the pitcher said hite though, and soju, a rice wine which kind of tastes like vodka. fun stuff.