Travel Mugs, First Days, and Pink.

Hello everybody!

It’s been about a week and a half now that I’ve been in Korea… and I am loving it so far!

This is one of the many phrases that I’ve loved discovering in Korea. It is on my travel mug. :)

Friday was my first solo teaching day, and it went fabulously. These kids are just so cute that my jaw has been super sore lately due to over-using my smile muscles. I teach six different groups of students, and each and every one of these kids fascinate me. They all have such different personalities and they are so full of life! In Canadian ages they range from about 5 years old to around 10 years old (I think?!), and they are pretty much brilliant. Remember when we were in Kindergarten and learned the Alphabet and how to count and stuff? These kids learn about “blends” and “special titles” and “homophones” and “compound words” and how to tell time and describe nouns and use effective adjectives and properly capitalize all months, seasons, days of the week and holidays. They are spelling words like "minute” (note: the use of this word was intended as a descriptive of something ‘tiny’) and “triceratops” and so forth. They write in full sentences, sound out spellings like pros and are completely capable of describing how the phonetic long vowel sound will affect the spelling of their words. Communication barriers are practically non-existent with my kids as they are pretty crazy good with their English (well, as much as young kids could be)… and did I mention how insanely cute they are?

Yesterday completed my 1.5 week break from reliable internet. I am so thrilled to have access to the web once more. Being in a foreign land is quite complicated when you don’t have internet maps to rely on, or ways to look up information! My now stable source of internet was made available to me upon moving into my official apartment :) That’s right! I’m HOME! This little place is all mine for the next 355 days (ish).

Any of you who know me know that I’ve never been the girl who whole heartedly embraced the color pink. Well, out of necessity, this has now changed. My life has become a vast sea of pink-happiness. I never intended to have pink as my primary life color, but it appears to be fate. This is what I found when I entered my apartment:

Well, to be a bit more honest, it wasn’t quite organized like this… but all of the pink things you see here were left in the apartment for these purposes. Well, except the apron. That was given to me by my Nannie Austin (thanks Nannie!). It just conveniently matched everything. For those of you who are very interested in the apartment, I shall include some more photos (though, Danielle, I confess I did not take one from every possible angle as requested :).

This is my very pink couch… and blanket. It’s pretty cozy, and it seems to match the rest of the decor rather splendidly :)

To the right here is my table and chair set. I’m actually rather fond of them. The lamp and telephone are pretty sweet and leave the room feeling just a little bit Asian retro. Snazzy!



This is the other side of my apartment. It has a wonderful wardrobe, microwave, kitchen and rice-cooker. Please note the pink tiles. Let’s zoom in on these shall we?

This is my pink cooking area. Marvelous isn’t it? The pink dish sponge is a lovely touch don’t you think? Korean kitchens don’t tend to have stoves, so I’m going to be getting used to using a gas-range stove-top for all my cooking needs. The lack of counter space is made up for by the awesome sink nozzle. It’s almost as bendy as a pipe cleaner. Off-screen: pink garbage bags.

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And what apartment would be complete without a pink tiled bathroom, with a pink sink, pink toilet, pink loofa and a pink toothpaste cup? Certainly not mine. Notice the mirror: 360 degrees of pink here people. Be amazed. I sure was.

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The other side of the apartment is a bit less pink. Aside from the pink candle, the desk only hints of its surroundings. Oh, and behind the map there is a room with a washing-machine that plays a full piece of music when it completes its load. Everything here has nifty jingles.

There is really only one place in the room where pink is upstaged. With a lovely hand-me-down comforter and bedset from the former apartment owner, I have created a sort of sanctuary. Here it is folks. My orange and purple haven:

I am actually growing really fond of this place! There is a children’s play park right outside my window and I love being able to hear the children playing while I type :)

Well, there have been a whole ton of other interesting things that happened this weekend, but this blog has already reached epic length. I’ll update again soon! The next instalment will probably be entitled “Humerous English phrases written on greeting cards, Getting lost while trying to find a specific Church, and My experience with Korean Jehovah’s Witnesses.”

~Katie