The last 2.5 weeks have flown by quite quickly, due not only to exciting weekends, but also because of a decent amount of vacation days.
Our weekend with Sunny in Jeonju was quite enjoyable, for a variety of reasons. It was very nice to meet her mother and brother (her father was away working), and Jeonju is a very nice smaller Korean city. We arrived a bit late in the day on Saturday, so we walked a bit around the town, ending up in a beautiful park that was having a cultural festival. So as dusk descended we got to watch traditional Korean dancing, which was made a bit hilarious by the wanderings and dancing of a few soju men! That night Sunny's mother made us a traditional Korean dinner, which was simply fantastic. Other highlights included checking out the traditional village, with all sorts of old-style Korean buildings, tea houses, and touristic shopping options; going hiking; checking out the zoo; and even going bowling at a rather high-tech bowling alley. The weekend was over all too soon, but we shall definitely return soon, we are planning on taking Anderson's parents there when they come in August to show them a different side to the city life in Seoul and Busan.

We also had a fun Teacher's Day on Thursday the 15th. The day before we received piles of sweet gifts from many of our students, which was unexpected and totally awesome! We got everything from clothes, to beauty supplies, to food, and even some Starbucks gift certificates and a bottle of nice wine. On Teacher's Day itself we had no school, and all the COREM employees, from every school (as in 200 people) all went on a hiking trip. It was a lot of fun, we had a big Korean feast before playing some games. Our school got 2nd place in both joku (soccer-tennis) and dodge ball, so we won enough money to have a Pizza Hut pizza party the next day as well, which was pretty sweet.

This next week our school gains a new foreign teacher. We met him last Friday, his name is Josh, he's from Vermont, and he seems like a nice guy. We are very happy to have another teacher, since it means our overtime is over! While we appreciate the extra money, the long hours are becoming quite draining, and now that the weather is very nice we want to be exercising and enjoying life, not working more. We have been riding our bikes by the Oncheoncheon river a lot, and are working out a bit as well - we need to lose our maekju flab and get ready for the upcoming beach season! We had planned on going hiking at a temple out of town, called Seongnamsa, but it rained all day on Saturday so that had to be postponed until next weekend. Anderson is going to write an article about it, for a new foreigner's magazine (out of Ulsan) called The Korean Sun. He just wrote an article about our favorite sushi buffet, Green Mong, that will appear in the upcoming June issue, and he is also going to start editing some articles as the magazine expands it focus to Busan. A good opportunity that should be a lot of fun.

That's about it, we're as ready as we can be for our last week of overtime :-)
Hope all is well wherever you may be, and a special congratulations is due to our friends Jordan and Nat for tying the knot - we wish them all the best now that they've joined the married club!

Peace & Love
Anderson & Liz