Here it comes... our monthly update!

November, it was a good month :-)

First of all though, Halloween! We wore costumes to school; A = lion, L = mummy. We went trick-or-treating (to parents' houses) with our kindergartners, and then scared them in a Haunted House... well, it was a dark room with spooky music playing, but for 6-year-olds it was quite frightening - a few even cried and many tried to escape out the door! The rest of the day we did Halloween-themed activities, passed out candy, and generally had a laid-back school day. That night, there were Halloween parties at all the foreigner bars, and Anderson DJed at The Basement. The bar was packed, so people danced until dawn - but that wasn't the highlight by any means: Liz, going on stage on a whim due to a plethora of shoddy costumes, managed to win the top costume prize (160,000won in bar prizes - about $125 in food and alcohol) with her reasonably-authentic mummy costume! Anderson's costume, Barack Obama b-boy, wasn't quite as well received :-).
The next weekend, Liz's old coworker from The Sanctuary in Iowa City, Matt Steele, came to visit us. He's been teaching ESL in Gumi, a small-ish industrial town located around 2 hours north of Busan by train. We went out for a delicious pumpkin dinner at this appropriately-named restaurant called Pumpkins, that serves baked pumpkins stuffed with all sorts of meat, vegetables, and cheese. And they have flavored soju, which is quite delicious... We also cashed in on Liz's Halloween prize, so we had a free-to-start party for all of our friends and coworkers! Sunday we spent some time relaxing at Haeundae beach, drinking coffees and watching kite-flying Koreans.
Now, mid-month, Anderson journeyed north early Saturday morning to Ulsan, about an hour away from Busan, to play with DMZ in a soccer tournament. Twelve teams showed up, from all over Korea, making it the biggest tournament outside of Seoul for expat soccer. While DMZ did well, placing 3rd overall and winning 5 out of 6 games, Anderson's tournament was cut painfully short towards the end of the first game when he was brutally headbutted, and knocked unconscious by an opposing player. With a badly sprained ankle, and an ear cut in two places - and bleeding everywhere - a hospital trip by ambulance was necessary, although thanks to the tournament and Korean health care that was entirely free. Twenty-plus stitches later he was back on the sidelines, but even now three weeks later his ankle is still not totally healed. Thankfully the doctor did a truly fantastic job on the stitching, so now with stitches out it is virtually impossible to tell where the cuts were. A consolation prize, and a decent one at that, was the DJ Shadow show that same night in Busan. DJ Shadow was the first real international artist to come to Busan during our time here, and it was great to hear some real music for a few hours. Most of the crowd didn't really know his music, so in that aspect it wasn't the best show ever, but nonetheless it was a great change of pace from the usual musical choices.
Another week of school flew, or limped by in Anderson's case, so up next was a trip to Gumi, where Matt's from, to share a DJ gig with him at the local expat bar, The Waegook Cook. It was definitely a small-town party, but the food was great, the people were appreciative to hear new music, and overall it was a very interesting and enjoyable experience, plus it gave us insight into what life in a small town as a foreigner is like... we're glad we picked Busan! Anderson also sold (for charity) his new mix CD, selling all 20 copies that he brought and raising over 100,000won to send to BBAS Memorial School in Nepal, which was quite sweet.
All right, moving through the busy month pretty quickly!
This past weekend, Anderson hosted a party at The Basement to raise money for Nepal. Perhaps due to Thanksgiving :-(, the bar wasn't as busy as hoped, but another 150,000won was raised for BBAS, our Korean kindergarten co-teachers surprised us by showing up, and a lot of friends of ours came as well, so in most ways it was a true success. On Saturday we had a Thanksgiving-esque potluck dinner with about 10 friends, which meant we enjoyed a fantastic feast and good times all night long - including a great game of charades!
So now it's December, and to continue our series of busy weekends, our cousin Reannon (who we traveled with in India/Nepal) is coming to visit us for about 6 days en route from Japan to America. She's flying standby, so if she can get on the flight that she wants to then she'll arrive here late Friday night. It's going to be very fun to catch up, and to see her insights on Japan vs. Korea.

If you want to download Anderson's mix CD, called One Friday Night In Busan, you can do so here: O.F.N.I.B. - enjoy!

We are currently uploading a bunch of photos to our Kodak website, you should be able to view them within the next few hours.

Hope all's well, only 3 short months until we're Stateside - and we can't wait!
We'll try to make our posts more regular as we begin wrapping up our time here in Korea, we promise!
Peace, and much love
Anderson & Liz

Again, not much to report over here, although our initial year's contract is up at the end of this week, which is definitely exciting! So we'll get our well-deserved bonus next paycheck, plus an equally well-deserved raise for our year of service... and then we just have 4 more months until we're home!
Liz is currently doing a weekly story-telling class for pre-kindergartners - their first experience with a white person, plus she's been promoted to head foreign teacher (more of a title than any real job change)...
Anderson is still DJing and is working on a much-delayed music mix, to be released at an upcoming party to celebrate his one-year DJing anniversary at The Basement bar where he DJs on Friday nights...

Work is going well as always, just had speaking tests today and our bi-monthly progress reports of our students are due this week as well. Despite some procrastination they are coming along well enough.

In addition to Halloween we are also going to go paintballing this next weekend, and tomorrow is our co-worker Blaise's birthday, so it will definitely be a busy weekend. Anderson is also back to playing soccer, now in a rather competitive league, and the team has a big away game this Sunday in the nearby city of Daegu.

So nothing yet lots going on :-)

Hope all's well with you and yours, only 84 more teaching days to go!

Peace and much love
A&E

Oh yeah... we have a blog :-)

Hahaha... seriously, the past couple weeks have been completely average and normal. Only highlight occurred this past week, when we got officially approved by Korean Immigration for our requested 4-month contract extension. So instead of being finished at the end of October, we'll be in Korea until the end of February. Family finances, avoiding a cold winter, and generally bad employment possibilities back home in the USA combined to shape our decision. As much as we want to return home, and it is quite badly at this point, a couple few months working and saving money here is definitely in our own self-interest.

We are working on planning a bicycling tour across SE Asia (Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam & Laos) for next summer, so we actually won't be in the States more than a few months, but we do like to keep busy :-). Should be a lot of fun cruising around with friends, getting in shape and seeing an amazing part of this wild world of ours. We're thinking late-June through October/November '09, but it's definitely still in the planning stages.

Lately we've just been working, taking Korean lessons twice a week (going slowly but effectively), partying on the weekends (going to an 80s-themed party tonight), and working out at the gym. Anderson's still DJing on Fridays, and we ate vegetarian for a couple of weeks in an effort to lose a few pounds and get healthier. It worked generally, but we need to work hard at the gym as well!

So that's that, sorry about the lack of posting, but there just hasn't been much to post about, you know?

Peace
A&E