Beginning Our New Adventure

Thank you for being interested in seeing what we're up to. On Saturday, November 1, Rachel and I said the final (of many) goodbyes to family at O'Hare airport and boarded a nonstop flight from Chicago to Seoul. We'd never even been on a plane together before, so we thought we'd just jump right in with a flight to the other side of the world.

After an uneventful flight, we landed at Incheon International Airport, in Seoul. We took a bus to the other Seoul airport, Gimpo, and then a short flight to Busan. Busan is Korea's second largest city and is located on the southeastern coast of the country. There, we were picked up by a driver and brought about an hour to the Changnyeong English Village, our home for the next year. We received a lovely welcome from the other teachers and the administrators of the school.

We spent our first week taking care of administrative tasks, such as going for a medical screening and, when everything from that came back okay, to the immigration office. We also observed the other teachers in English Camp and got to interact with the students some. Also, we started to explore some of this beautiful area on foot, going for several runs. Here are some pictures:

 This is a picture of the school where we teach, taken looking out our apartment's front window.

 A temple in the city of Changnyeong.

Andrew pausing mid-run.

The first weekend that we were here, we spent one day in Daegu and one in Busan. Daegu is about 40 minutes north of us, and is the third largest city in Korea. Busan, as mentioned above, is the second largest city (after Seoul) and is on the coast, about an hour southeast. I thought these buildings in Daegu were interesting:

This week, I spent most of my time training on running the evening "cyber school", where we hold English lessons for Korean students online, using webcams. On Wednesday, I taught the classes on my own, for practice; I'll be taking those duties over full-time, next week.

Rachel had her own class this week, all middle school boys from the nearby town of Namji. I got to help her out with a science project one day. Here are some pictures from school this week:

Today is Rachel's birthday! Our coworkers treated her with some decorations and sweets:

And these were Rachel's students this week:

Tonight we're headed to Daegu to continue celebrating Rachel's birthday. Saturday we'll go to Gyeongju, about an hour east of Daegu. It's an ancient capital, from the Silla dynasty, and is often referred to as "a museum without walls".

Thank you for your interest in our travels! We'll try to keep posting updates as often as we can.