Well, so much to say, but don't quite have the energy for the "full version" right now.

But... we are settled in in Pusan, we spent our first few nights in a hotel (a love hotel, meant for couples getting the noise on, so the room was pretty deluxe with a big TV, bathtub for two, and a sex chair that we didn't realize what it was at first!) but have now moved into our apartment. We live on the 10th floor of a pretty modern apartment building, it is fully furnished, though it is a bit used at the same time. But we have a TV, couch and all other furniture one could need, a very comfortable bed, nice bathroom, and even a "porch" where our washer is looking out over our part of the city. We live two blocks from our school, so its a very short walk to it as well as anything else we could need.

Our school is amazing. Everything is brand new, the design was professionally done, with brightly painted rooms, and modern decor. Our director is extremely nice, as are the other Korean teachers, and they all speak English quite well. There are three other foreign teachers, they are all nice, too, and we went out with one of them, Rachel, last night to a techno club. The Vinyl Underground was having its 5th Anniversary Party, so we danced until around 5 am, met a lot of cool Koreans and other English teachers, and burnt a lot of beer energy dancing to house and drum'n'bass music!

Food here is simply fantastic, kimbop (veg "sushi"-type rolls) is our current fav, and both our director, Rony, and another school admin, John, have taken us out to fancier meals which were spectacular. We had a simple breakfast this morning at our apartment, great to cook a semi-real meal for the first time in ages.

Anderson spent Thursday and Friday in Japan, getting his work visa, and Liz will do the same tomorrow and Tuesday. That involved taking a ferry from Pusan to Fukuoka, the riding a few buses to the Korean consulate (which was entirely painless), then lounging in an upscale hotel for the night, enjoying the complimentary breakfast buffet in the morning, and then picking up the visa and returning to Korea by ferry. Anderson managed to only ride the wrong bus twice (so much for those high school Japanese skills...), and squeezed in a visit to a very relaxing visit to Sumiyoshi Shrine, which was within walking distance from the hotel.

So, how did we get to Korea you might ask?

It was quite the journey: we left Kathmandu on Tuesday at 1pm, flew to Singapore, where we had a short layover but ate some tasty food and sampled some free high-quality whisky. Then onto Seoul, where we arrived at around 7 am on Wednesday. We found out that our second bag, which cost $2 and was cheap plastic, had effectively ripped open, but luckily nothing had fallen out and we were able to tape it back up. Then we took the 10am flight to Pusan, which took around an hour and gave us a great view of our new city and home. Pusan is situated right on the water, with a river running through the western part of the city, and has mountains on the side without the ocean. A beautiful natural setting without a doubt.

We were met at the airport by Kelly, our recruiter, who is even nicer in person than she sounds by email, and who is also our own age which is great, so we will be going out with her sometime soon. We headed straight to our school, though Liz got to call her family for a few minutes, and we got to talk to two of our nephews which hopefully made their day! Liz's mother got the "hi, mom, we're pulling up at the school now, but we love you and miss you, bye!" which we were and we do!

As said our school is sweet, more details to come soon, but since Anderson hasn't actually taught yet, we'll save our first impressions for a later post this week. We've been trying to catch up on sleep, but at the same time enjoy Korea as much as we can, which means we aren't really sleeping that much! So be it :-)



Much more to come soon, but we don't want to live at this PC Bang (net cafe) any longer...

Peace and much love,

Anderson Teacher & Liz Teacher :-)