We are still alive in Korea

Hi, don't worry, we are still alive. :D Today was Sunday, and we had a really long Sunday. There was a district welfare meeting with a area seventy after church, and it lasted more than three hours! Well, other than the parts that I fell asleep, it was really good. Korean sisters are really nice, too. During Relief Society, two sisters offered to watch Alden for me. I didn't have to hold him at all during class.

Well, I should probably talk about where we live. My aunt runs a pre-school with about 75 students, ages from 4-7 korean age (2 to 6 American age). It's in a four story building, and the first three floors are used for the pre-school, and my aunt's family lives on the fourth floor. There is an empty classroom on the third floor, and that's where we are staying. It's really big, bigger than any of the rooms my aunt has upstairs, and has a bathroom attached to it. We have a big flat screen tv, lots of shelves, and a pad that we sleep on. The only thing is that since the bathroom is for little kids, the toilets and the sinks in the bathroom are children's size. Ha ha. It's a little awkward taking care of business in there. We mostly just use it for brushing our teeth.

Now I will talk about what our daily lives consist of. Joe works from 8 am to 6 pm everyday. He leaves for work around 7:15 am (It's customary for Koreans to get to work half an hour early and stay an hour to two longer after work), and gets home between 6:30 and 7:00, depending on how fast the bus comes (The buses don't really run on a schedule, mostly because of the traffic). After sending Joe off to work, I would feed Alden breakfast, do the dishes, and hang out in our bedroom for a few hours. This week, I've been busy running errands and unpacking, etc. but now that everything's pretty much been done, I'm not sure what I'm going to do starting this week. There is a lunch lady that comes every week day to cook lunch for the children, and she fixes me lunch, too. Very nice lady... So I eat lunch, play with Alden for a few more hours, and then start preparing for dinner. My aunt and I made a deal that she would take care of breakfast, and I would take care of dinner. Joe comes home around dinner time, and so we eat dinner, hang out, and then Joe has his English session with my aunt. He teaches her English, and she teaches him Korean. I can actually tell that they've both improved a lot in the last week. It's fun to see them communicate. Then we retire to bed. That's pretty much all we do on a week day. lol.

Yesterday, we got to go to Haeundae, my hometown. My technology teacher in middle school, Mr. Ko, told me to come visit and said he'd take us out to lunch. I had kept in contact with him, so I was excited to see him again and also show Joe where I went to school. It was so fun to go back to the place I lived 8 years ago and see how much it's changed and also stayed the same. We went to the pharmacy to get Joe a corn medicine, and I recognized the pharmacist! We also went to the copy center in the area, and it still had the same owner! Yearim always went there to play with their dog, so we went inside to say hello. Surprisingly, she remembered me. :D Our next stop was my school. A lot of the teachers remembered me, and some even remembered my name! It was so fun to see all the middle school girls (I went to a girls' school) stare at Joe and point at him, and also whisper to each other. Joe really enjoyed being the center of attention. Ha ha. When we were about to leave the school with Mr. Ko, my 9th grade homeroom teacher, Mr. Lee, came down running, yelling my name! He was disappointed that I didn't come to visit him. Ha ha. So we ended up going to lunch with him, too. We went to a nice hotpot restaurant, and the food was wonderful. :D

After lunch, Mr. Lee left go to home, and Mr. Ko offered to take us to the aquarium in Haeundae. I guess it's the second biggest aquarium in Korea. We had so much fun. Alden was too young to really enjoy anything (he fell asleep) but I think he liked looking at the jellyfish and the big eels. We were so sad we didn't have our waterproof camera!!! (We left it at Joe's Imo's house in Seoul)

After the aquarium, Mr. Ko left, and we were waiting for my aunt to pick us up at Lotteria (Korean McDonald's). There was a group of middle school students there. We had to call my aunt to see where she was so Joe asked one of the boys if we could use his phone. They were so excited that an American asked for their phone. Ha ha. He even had a spongebob cover on his phone. Afterwards, we striked up a conversation with the girls. They were giggling and laughing. They were wet from head to toe and were standing outside so we asked them why they were wet and standing outside. One of them said, "My friend push, baby. We shy, baby." And she kept saying, "baby" to Joe. Ha ha. And they were all laughing and kept saying, "We're not crazy." Oh, and I should mention that I was pretending to be an American, too, and didn't speak any Korean. lol. One of them seemed shy, and she finally got enough courage to poke me in the arm and say, "Brittney Spears?" Well... Let's just say that Joe and I got a biggest kick out of talking to those girls, and we plan to do it again.

Oh, Joe reminded me to talk about this... Joe's been having trouble everytime we have hotpot. So this morning, he had to run to the bathroom, and also right before church started. The Branch President was introducing us at the beginning of sacrament, and um, he didn't see Joe sitting next to me. He asked me where Joe was, and I had to tell everyone, in sacrament, that Joe was in the bathroom.... lol. It was quite embarassing, probably more so for Joe, except he wasn't really there.

Joe also wants me to tell you all that one of the kids from the pre-school came up to the living quarters on the fourth floor (they're not supposed to come up) to see the little dog. He was so scared by the dog jumping on him and barking at him, he was screaming and running around in the small room. I was in the kitchen at the time, and I thought something really bad happened when I heard the screaming. Joe was having so much fun watching the kid, he didn't help him out at all. My cousin finally got a hold of the dog, and the kid ran out the door and ran downstairs.

I apologize that the recent entries have been really long and without any pictures. I will try to write more often and post pictures as soon as I get the camera from Joe's mom.