Yo Yo No SNOW!

Hey Everybody
No snow in the forecast in Busan. Sorry but i am sending my warm thought your way. I started teaching on monday, i have to say so far i really like, i am surprised actually. The kids that i teach are from aged 7 to 10. We play bingo, hangman and flashcards, and then we ready the same book over and over about 3 times. So really i am just a talking head. But puppet routine pays really well.
There a three Foriegn teachers at the school and then about 10 Korean English teachers, you work twice as long as i do and i think get paid less, and have to pay for there own apartment. i have been told not to feel bad because that it is just how Korea is.
The kids are in school all day it seems. I start classes at 2 and teach until 8, but there are classes that go until 10pm. The poor kids also have taekwondo or music lessons some where in there as well. Apparently a good nights rest is about 6 hours! Ick, we North Americans have it so easy.

Mark arrived safely on Tuesday so we went for a little stroll around the neighbourhood. We live in Haeundae which is probably the most prominent area in the city. So we have a lot of foreign people as well as bars and stores that cater to us, for example i have a Starbucks right outside my door!! So while we were walking around looking high in the sky, and looking at all the lights, and then we come across a man, who happens to be leaving against the fence, in a really nice suit, pissing through the fence and directly into our path! Luckily we noticed early and was able to avoid disaster!! We have been prepared for all the spitting and gobbing that goes on, but i can't say i was into the public urination thing.

In Busan the streets have no names. As far as i can tell the street signs direct you to the subway stations or major attractions. At least there are many landmarks to guide a person on there way, however there seems to be a family mart and a PC land (pc land is a 24 hour computer room, where all of the computers are hooked up to online games, or you can check your email at 3am if you like). There also seems to be an abundance of giant crosses on the many churches, some of them are even florescent!

We walked to the beach yesterday, and i could have jumped in. The beach is nice and white with no big rocks (like at home). This beach is called Haeundae beach. It is fed by the Korean straight, which leads into the Sea of Japan and then the Pacific. In the summer this beach is filled with so many people with umbrellas it is like a can of oysters! i will post pictures once i experience that.

Koreans also happen to be good/ bad drivers. There is a lot of honking, but it is not aggressive, it is more like i am going to pull a uturn in the middle of this intersection, please let me through. Or i am going to run this red... or i am going to go into the other lane because i want to make a right hand turn and i am not going to wait for the four cars ahead of me to make the turn left. It is really quite funny. They drive on the same side of the road and they have very large cross walks. This makes travelling easy, unlike China where you were playing Russian roulet to get across the street. I also noticed that sleeping babies on a parents lap is no big thing, especially when they are driving. It reminded me of us Americans who allow our pets on our laps while driving.

So i think that i have given you a better desciption of what it is like so far. Take care and miss you.