Safe and Sound/Sãos e salvos

It's Big Test week! ECC divides its calendar into 28-day sessions, and we have a "big test" for each class at the end of each session. "Big Test" essentially just means a review of everything covered that session, but it's still a "big deal" to the kids. It can also be a big deal for us, as we have to schedule book reports, review, a speaking test, the actual written "big test," and sometimes an iTest (meaning the "integrated skills test") within the last three days of each class. It can be a little chaotic figuring it all out for the first time, but once you do, it can be pretty smooth sailing if you have all of your tests photocopied and ready to go. Joel and I have both had to do some scrambling as we learn by doing, but hopefully next month will be smooth sailing, as we should be familiar with everything by then.

The other great thing about the end of the session is that, starting Thursday, we no longer have to come into work four hours early! Everyone has to come in at 11 a.m. during their first session of teaching, which means that on long days we go from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. It has given us time to prepare for classes, and it usually goes by quickly, but it has still been pretty tiring. Now we will finally have extra time to do things like run errands, work out, and have a little bit of leisure time.

Speaking of errands, our co-workers were nice enough to take us to the local outdoor produce market this weekend. It's really pretty cool - it has everything I envisioned in an outdoor market and more: your standard battery of fruits, vegetables, and nuts, plus second-hand clothes, ten-kilo bags of garlic, butcher shops, seafood vendors (octopus, fish, eels, and massive mussels - oh yes), and a kind of dollar store.

More importantly, Joel and I were talking this weekend about the fact that this place is finally starting to feel like home. We are settled into our apartment (with a beautifully coordinated bathroom, might I add), we've made some friends, and we know where just about everything is in the area. I know the neighborhood well enough to go running in the mornings, and my co-worker recommended a yoga studio. We've even found a Catholic church close by.

I finally unloaded some pictures from the camera onto the laptop, but is Joel's official responsibility to post them...somewhere...for your viewing pleasure (except for maybe my pictures of Mudeung mountain). If you want to see them, bug him!

A Place to Call Home/Nosso Próprio Lar

We finally get to move into our permanent apartment! After four weeks of living out of suitcases in a transitional apartment, our permanent apartment provided by the school will be ready for us to move into on Saturday morning - just 36 glorious hours! Now all that stands between me and a rocking move-in cleaning extravaganza is a long teaching day tomorrow. Rejoice and be glad!

We are now in the full swing of teaching - planning lessons, making exams, disciplining kids and spending our own hard-earned money on choco pies for them. Ah yes, the teacher's life. It's such an interesting experience - on some days, I start with six-year-olds who know about twenty words of English and finish with middle school punks just itching to run out the door. Oh, the joys.

One nice thing has been getting to know the neighborhood. Our neighborhood is called Bongseon-dong ("dong" meaning "neighborhood"), and it is packed with fabulous restaurants, clothing boutiques, coffee and ice cream shops, and hogwans (private English academies). Joel and I have tried a different restaurant almost every night for dinner and have rarely been disappointed. They have everything from "Chicken and Hof" to traditional Korean soup restaurants, Korean porridge restaurants, ethnic food, and conveyor-belt sushi places. It is truly a culinary mecca.

Last weekend I took a day trip to hike up Mudeung Mountain. I will try to post pictures this weekend!

Adventures in Teaching - Begin!/Aventuras em Encinando - Começa!

Joel and I had our first two days of teaching this week! After a whirlwind orientation of observing classes, asking a million questions, and absorbing as much as we could from the two teachers that we are replacing, we jumped in with both feet yesterday and began. We teach from 3 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursday. We have to come in early during our first month of teaching (11 a.m.) to make sure we have time to plan our lessons and get into the rhythm of things, but the school serves free (and delicious!) lunch every day, so it is not a big deal (plus, the school has wireless capability, so we can bring our laptops in if we need to). The kids range in age from 6 or so to upper middle school (14) - we teach elementary-age kids from 3 to 6 and then middle school classes in the evenings. The elementary school classes are pretty simple (today I taught a beginning class about shapes and some of the older ones about insects), but the middle school classes can be pretty cool - Joel has a European history class, and I have two classes where we actually watch and discuss CNN news stories. Some of it is actually pretty interesting!

The kids all have so much energy, but many of them are enthusiastic and genuinely want to talk to us and learn. Middle school is a difficult age to work with, particularly in Korea, since the school curriculum starts to get pretty intense and the students have a lot of high-pressure tests. They are still pretty cool, though.

We are still in our transitional apartment, but we had a meeting with our school administrators today, and they told us that we should be able to move in mid next week. They are planning to replace the wallpaper and make a few improvements to the apartment, so that should be nice. We also went to the immigration office today and applied for our Alien Resident Cards. Soon we will be official legal immigrants!

We also had an awesome three-day weekend here in Gwangju last weekend. We decided to take some time to explore the city, so on Saturday we jumped on a bus and headed downtown. I wanted to go primarily to find the Gwangju International Center so we could get more information about Korean language classes, but when we arrived, we found ourselves in the middle of a rockin' party for "Red Festa," a festival commemorating the May 18th democratic uprising (there was a major protest against the South Korean Dictatorship here in the 80s, I think, and a subsequent bloody crackdown). The main drag had been closed off to cars and several different organizations had booths set up, and we even had groups of students ask to take a picture with us. Later in the afternoon we found German Bar, a bar downtown run by Mr. Song - a Korean who spent 15 years in Munich learning to brew German beer. He is a licensed beermaster (meister?) and brews his own beer, which is delicious. While we were there getting a drink, we met Sang, a neurologist here in Gwangju, who insisted on buying us a round - and then offered to show us around town on Monday!

We found the nearby Catholic church (and serendipitously wandered in just as Mass was starting), then spent the afternoon doing laundry in our coworkers' apartment. On Monday, true to his word, Sang picked us up and gave us the Gwangju Grand Tour, including bulgogi burgers for lunch, the Kim Dae Jung Convention Center (which was hosting a tea expo!), and the mall by the bus station. Joel has pictures - bug him to post them here!

Hopefully this weekend we will get a change to go to Mudeung mountain, which is just outside of town and supposedly has a awesome hike up to a Buddhist temple. I'll let you know if we make it up!

Aparelho de tradução adicionado!

Querida família! Esta nota é por vocês - eu adicionei um aparelho de tradução (feito por Google) para o blog para que vocês podessem traduzir minhas atualizações sem abrir um site de tradução e copiar e colar o texto. Está no lado direito, em cima do arquivo. Espero que seja útil. Beijos!

The Arrival/A Chegada

We made it! After hours of packing and hauling boxes, a minor storage unit SNAFU, and an epic suitcase-cramming session, we are here in Gwangju, South Korea! Many thanks to our awesome friends in Austin who helped us pack and clean, and to everyone who offered their support as we embark on this very exciting journey.

Also, CONGRATULATIONS to all of our friends who graduated from law school this past weekend! We were incredibly bummed about not being able to be there and share such a momentous occasion with you guys, but we are so happy for you! Study hard for the bar this summer and come see us while you wait for your results - Gwangju is a beautiful city, and the food here is delicious!

We flew out of Houston on Friday and had a short layover in LAX late Friday night. We experienced about an hour of Saturday and then skipped the rest of it entirely - since the 13-hour flight to Seoul crossed the International Date Line - landing in Incheon airport at 4:30 a.m. on Sunday morning. Then we took a lovely four-hour bus ride to Gwangju, the city where we will be living. On the subject of transportation, Korea's is fabulous! The buses are comfortable and clean, and they have individual seats that you can lean back to sleep (plus a satellite-fed TV!). I got to watch an hour of a Korean daytime soap and some kind of talk show about art on the trip up.

Some of the school staff picked us up at the bus station and took us to lunch (cold buckwheat noodles with dumplings - yum!). We are staying in an apartment temporarily until the couple that we are replacing moves out of theirs and it is cleaned. Our current place is about a ten-minute walk from the school, and our future apartment is just around the corner, which is even better. The neighborhood is really pretty, too - there are little hiking trails and hillside gardens everywhere. It is very hilly, though - after four days of walking, my calves are killing me!

We went to the school on Monday for our first day of work, but I will write more about that this weekend when we have had more time to absorb. On Tuesday we went to the hospital for our health check (required to receive our Alien Resident Cards) and will sit in on more classes.

Finally, I would like to close this post with a delightful video about the stellar (read: sarcasm) customer service of United Airlines. United operated our domestic leg to LAX and for some screwed-up reason does not honor the luggage policies of sister airlines, meaning that we had to pay a $70 fee for two of our checked bags. That's right, ladies and gentlemen - United, in their great wisdom, expects us to cram a year of our life into one checked bag apiece.

Enjoy!

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Chegamos! Depois de horas de empacotando e carregando caixas, um pequeno incidente na unidade de armazenamento, e uma sessão épica de arrumação de malas, estamos aqui em Gwangju na Coréia do Sul! Muita obrigada a nossos amigos maravilhosos em Austin que nós ajudou a empacotar e limpar, e a todo mundo que nós deu apoio nessa nova aventura.

PARABENS também para todos nossos amigos que se formarem em direito esse final de semana passado! Nós estávamos muito tristes de não poder ir para a cerimônia e compartilhar essa ocasião tão importante com vocês, mas estamos tão felizes por vocês! Estudam bem para o exame de certificado e venham nós visitar enquanto esperam o resultado - Gwangju é uma cidade bonita, e a comida é uma delicia!

Saímos de Houston sexta-feira de noite e tivemos uma escala breve em Los Angeles. Vimos uma hora de sabado e depois pulamos o resto do dia completamente - porque o vôo para Seul pulou a linha internacional de data - e chegamos no aeroporto de Incheon às 4:30 da manhã no domingo. Depois fomos quatro horas de ônibus (com visto lindo!) para Gwangju, a cidade onde estaremos morando. No sujeito de transporte público, o de Coréia é muito bom! Os ônibuses são confortaveis e limpos, e tenham assentos individuais que podem ser ajustados (e TV com serviço satellite!). Assisti uma novela Coreiana e algum programa de arte na viagem.

O povo da escola nós buscou na estação de ônibus e nós levou para almoçar (macarrão de trigo sarraceno frio com bolinhos - uma delicia!). Estamos morando num apartamento temporário até que os instrutores que estão indo em bora sairem. Nosso apartamento agora é bem perto da escola - leva dez minutes para chegar andando - e o apartamento onde vamos morar é mais perto ainda. O bairro também é muito bonito, mas e bastante acidentado - depois de dois dias de andar, minhas pernas estão cansadas!

Fomos para a escola na segunda para nosso primeiro dia do trabalho, mas eu vou falar mas disso nesse final de semana quando eu teria tido mas tempo para me acustumar. Na terça fomos para o hospital para fazer a avaliação de saúde (obrigada para obter o cartão de identidade) e vamos observar mais aulas.

The War for Space/A Guerra Para Espaço

I was evicted from my desk at work today. Well, not strictly speaking - technically they do not need my cubicle until Monday - but things got moving faster than anticipated and they wanted to re-image my computer as soon as possible, so I had to transfer all of my relevant files to the shared drive by noon today, and just cleaned out my desk and took down my posters while I was at it. They probably would have taken my computer yesterday, but my co-worker saved it in the nick of time.

The loss of one space, however, has been mitigated by another: I officially signed the lease on our storage unit today. We now have a 5' X 15' space with Uncle Bob to put (almost) everything to our name. Bob is a pretty cool uncle, though - he gives us a free truck rental to haul all of our stuff there, so that's nice.

We also opened up an online checking account connected to an individual brokerage account with Charles Schwab. This will be an adventure for us (mostly for me), since the only investing we have done thus far was with my 401k (and my dad picked those stocks). I also opened an IRA to roll my 401k into. Unfortunately, Google has informed me that money earned abroad cannot be put into an IRA if the foreign earned income exclusion is claimed, so we cannot continue to contribute to the IRA with the money we are making in Korea - but now we have the brokerage to invest it. So there's another silver lining, I guess.

My task tonight is to pack up our dishes so that we can sell our dish cabinet. Frankly, I would rather sit on my bookbag with my cat. But! An empty dish cabinet is one that can be sold, resulting in extra cash in our pocket.

So, to tally the positives and negatives this week:
Minus: Evicted unceremoniously from my work cubicle.
Plus: Physical presence at work can no longer be justified and thus is not required. Telework, anyone?
Minus: Signed contract for storage unit and, as a result, had to pay rent.
Plus: Free truck rental for our stuff.
Minus: Money we make in Korea cannot go into my IRA.
Plus: We can invest it with our new brokerage!
Minus: I have to pack our dishes.
Plus: Selling the soon-to-be-empty dish cabinet will bring in more money.

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Hoje eu fui expulsada do meu cubículo no trabalho. Bem, não é isso exatamente - não precisam do meu cubículo até segunda-feira - mais o movimento está acontecendo mais rápido que anticipado e queriam reatribuir meu computador o mais cedo que possível, então tive que transferir todos os arquivos necesários para o disco comum antes de meio dia e resolvi esvaziar minha escrivaninha e tirar meus cartazes na mesma hora. Provavelmente teriam pegado meu computador hontem, más minha colega o salvou.

A perda de um espaço foi mitigado por um ganho de outro: assinei o contrato de arrendamento de nossa unidade de armazenamento hoje. Agora temos um espaço de sete metros quadrados com Tio Bob (uma companhia de armazenamento) para guardar (quase) todas nossas coisas nesse mundo. Más Bob é um tio legal - ele nós empresta um caminhão de graça para trazer nossas coisas para a unidade.

Também abrimos uma conta online de banco conectado com uma corretagem com o banco de Charles Schwab. Isso será uma aventura por nós (principalmente por mim), porque o único investimento que temos feito até agora foi meu 401k (um tipo de conta corporativa para aposentadoria), e meu pai fez a escolha dos ações. Também abrí um IRA (uma conta individual de aposentadoria) para transferir o dinheiro do meu 401k. Infelizmente, Google me informou que o dinheiro que ganhamos no estrangeiro não pode ser investido num IRA se reivindicamos uma exclusão de renda ganhado no estrangeiro, então não podemos contribuir para o IRA com o dinheiro que ganhamos na Coréa - más podemos investir-o na corretagem. Mais uma coisa positiva. (Gente, explicar coisas de imposto e finança é difícil de mais!)

Hoje de noite, minha tarefa é empacotar nossos pratos para que podemos vender a prateleira. A única coisa que eu quero fazer é tirar uma soneca com meu gato, más uma prateleira vazia é uma que pode ser vendida, trazendo dinheiro extra para nossos bolsos.

Bem, para contar os positivos e negativos da semana:
Negativo: Expulsada sem cirimónia do meu cubículo do trabalho.
Positivo: Presença física não pode mais ser justificada e então não é obrigatória. Posso trabalhar de casa!
Negativo: Assinei o contrato de arrendamento de nossa unidade de armazenamento e tive que pagar o aluguel.
Positivo: Empresta de um caminhão de graça para nossas coisas.
Negativo: Dinheiro que ganhamos na Coréa não pode ser investido no meu IRA.
Positivo: Podemos investir-o em nossa nova corretagem!
Negativo: Tenho que empacotar nossos pratos.
Positivo: Vendendo a prateleira vazia trará dinheiro.

Furniture and Weddings/Móveis e Casamentos

Well, the moving is in full swing at this point. Yesterday we reserved a storage unit for our stuff and have sold a good portion of our furniture, including my dresser (I am now getting dressed out of suitcases), our bookshelves, the sofa and loveseat, and our dining room table and six kitchen chairs. It looks like we have a buyer for our two bedside tables as well. Most of the office is in boxes, and we have this kind of cool Zen thing going in our living/dining room: there are sofa cushions on either side of the coffee table, with candles on the table and the windowsill. It's kind of romantic...well, maybe.

On a more positive note, we got to see two of our dear friends get married Friday night! They hosted a fabulous outdoor wedding and reception at Zilker Clubhouse in Austin. We had a fantastic view of the skyline and amazing fajitas, and they even streamed the wedding to the bride's family in New Zealand! How cool is that?

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Gente, a mudança está indo! Ontem nos alugámos uma unidade de armazenamento para guardar nossas coisas. Também temos vendido uma boa parte de nossos móveis, inclusivo meu guardaroupa (agora minhas roupas estão guardados em malas), nossos estantes, os sofás, e nossa mesa com suas seis cadeiras. Parece que alguém quer comprar as mesas de cabeceira também. A maior parte das coises do escritório estão empacotados, e agora temos uma tema "Zen" na sala: só tem a mesa de café com dois almofadas para sentar-se, com velas na mesa e no peitoril da janela. Meio romantico, né? Bem...mais ou menos.

Numa nota um pouco mais positivo, tivemos a oportunidade de ver dois de nossos amigos se casar na seixta-feira! Tiveram um casamento e uma recepção lindissimas no Zilker Clubhouse em Austin. Tivemos uma vista maravilhosa da cidade e fajitas deliciosas, e até fizeram um vídeo ao vivo da cerimônia para a família da noiva em nova Zelândia! Legal, né?