Gepik Workshop

We are now around two hours away from our home in Bucheon at a week-long Gepik conference for Native English teachers. We arrived yesterday at around 10:30 AM and will be here until Friday night. And, huzzah, we get paid for this! We’re attending the Gyeonggi English Program in Korea (GEPIK) Foreign Assistant English Teacher’s Training Weekend (AKA - Longest Title Ever!)

6:45 am- Simon and Martina get up and eat chocolate covered wheat squares covered in milk. We’re off to our 5 day English Teacher training session which is about an hour and a half away. We walk to the bus terminal to take a 50 minute bus ride, 15 minute subway ride, and 20 minute shuttle bus to our “hotel”. We arrived at the “hotel” which is actually a really nice conference centre. It’s three to a room, and Simon and I were on different floors with different roommates. We went to talk to the conference organizer and ran into another young married couple from South Africa. They also want their own room, but apparently it was a full house, so we had to wait until later that evening to find out if we could get our own room. Poor Simon, the beds are really, really small (as in, single beds, not even twins) and he is dangling off the end of the bed. Luckily for us, both the South African couple and Simon and I were able to get our own rooms after much whining.

More good news: we’ve already met some people from Bucheon who seem really cool, including Mark who is from New Zealand, around our age, and also married! YEA! Married friends! His wife couldn’t make it to the conference because she has a wedding to go to in New Zealand. They also have a website about Korea! Exclamation point! Afterwards we sat through a long introduction, and a sad conference about the school curriculum. This poor woman - we felt so bad for her - was trying to explain the curriculum to everyone, but people kept on interrupting her and yelling about how there is no curriculum, how the students can’t learn anything, and such. She was completely flustered, and we were hiding our faces in shame. North Americans get a bad name for being a bunch of rude a-holes and people like this are only perpetuating the stereotype.

After dinner Simon played basketball, while Martina read a novel. Then we talked to another couple from Canada (hooray!) for a couple of hours until we finally went to sleep. We’re on day 2 of the conference right now, watching a lady struggle with a whiteboard. She just broke it. It’s on the ground as we speak. More to come in tomorrow’s update.

Our Sun and Clouds

Here’s a movie of the view from our window. Fifteen hours of it, actually. We made a stop animation movie of the view from our apartment, and compressed it all to under 90 seconds. It’s pretty cool, the way shadows and clouds move, and stuff. Yes, this is another artsy fartsy movie, but we like making artsy fartsy movies. Click here for the video or click the picture above.

Goodie Bag

We were gathering the forces of darkness to bring you a giant entry of goodies! Food, Engrish, and Fun await you, so read on!

McDonalds


We have been quite adventurous with trying new foods, so we decided to try the weirdest looking place we had every seen before. It was called “McDonalds” and it’s bright neon menus beckoned to us. Martina tried a “Big Mac” and it looked picture perfect. However, she found it to be lacking. Perhaps because it was missing it’s Big Mac Secret Sauce. Simon tried the “Bulgogi Burger”. For an update on what Bulgogi is, check out our “Seng Bulgogi” blog entry. Anyways, it was okay, but a little too sweet. All in all, it was our most disappointing and meal so far.

Martina’s School & Her Coffee Adventures

There is something that no one in North America will ever experience. Everyday at 4:10pm the chimes ring and the students clean the school top to bottom. Some sweep, some mop, and some vaccum. Others will gather the teachers’ mugs and clean them, and afterwards they place them in a weird UV cleaning/drying/sterilizing cupboard. In the morning the teachers find their mugs squeaky clean and ready to go, as if placed by secret cleaning fairies. Gathering their clean mugs they fill them with strange tubes of coffee or iced tea. We have a hot & cold water cooler in our English office that is heated to the perfect temperature. I’ll post pictures another time.

I’m going to explain the coffee tube phenonmenom which is Korea. It is very hard for me to find a normal cup of coffee. Instead, there are aisles of boxed freeze dried coffee tubes, equipped with sugar and cream. The weird part is, even if it says “black” the coffee still has sugar. YUCK! I hate sugar in my coffee! At my school there is a cupboard stacked with these tubes of “black” coffee, coffee with sugar and cream, coffee with just sugar, hazelnut coffee, and iced coffee. I’ve tried all of them, and while it is very tempting to drink from the conveniene of a little tear tube, I can’t stomach the sugar.

In turn, Simon and went on a mini-adventure to find brewed coffee, and we landed in a posh little coffee shop that looked more like a little rainforest/tea garden. I ordered the “hand dripped” coffee. I had to choose my beans from a list of 15 types, and it took 10 minutes to make. It was the most expensive cup of coffee EVER at $5.00! Wow! It was good, but not that good. It came with little dutch butter cookies, a tiny glass pitcher of liquid sugar, and some warm, steamed milk. Check out the pictures here or click the picture above.

Engrish Goodness

For those of you new to the word Engrish, it is when any Asian language attempts to translate something into English. We gathered a few of these pictures into one place, so click here for the pictures or click the picture above.

Three More Movies

Here's a hodgepodge of unrelated movies. The first is of our experience with take home pizza. Yes, we are obsessed with pizza, as you all know, so it's only befitting that we make many movies and take many pictures of Korean pizza. We're just amazed at how things are done differently here. The second is of a crazy crosswalk we have to take to get to school. When the pedestrian light turns green it means everyone can walk across, even on diagonals.

The best part of the second video is you hear Martina say "illegal manouevers" when a scooted flies by. Why does she say that? Because scooters and motorcycles don't seem to have any laws to abide by here in Korea. They ride on the road, and when the road is full they ride on the sidewalk, and weave through all pedestrians. They go through red lights whenever they want, weave in and out of traffic, and, if they feel like it, drive in the oncoming traffic lanes. Nothing can stop them. Mr. Stawski would love it here...

The last video is of Martina's new visor. It's so geeky and dorky that there's nothing more to write about it. Just watch the video and groan...

We Lost the Internets

Our cover was blown. We have been leeching the internet off of someone for our entire stay here in Korea. Yesterday, they finally clued in, put a security code on their network, and locked us out. Now, we are at home and without the internet. This means that, first of all, we won’t be able to make as many Skype calls as before. We can only use the internet off the unlocked networks at coffee shops. Also, we will have difficulty updating the site as often as we usually would, unless we go to coffee shops every day.

This won’t go on forever. We’re getting our Alien Registration cards on Tuesday, which means that we could then set up the internet at our apartment.

VolleySock

Many of you may have heard Simon talk of this awesome game. It’s volleyball meets soccer, hence the name VolleySock (we thought for a long time to come up with that name). Whenever Simon’s bored he watches it from his window, and wishes he could play it as well. It’s about time a video of it went up on the site, so click the picture above for the video or click here for the video on Volleysock instead. Be warned, though, that this isn’t the best rally ever. Some people seem to be camera shy, so they flub up a bit, but you’ll get the point of the game from watching the video anyway.

Lots of Movies

We made a few movies over the weekend. The first is of Soju, the Korean liquor of choice. You’ll be shocked to find out what we found about it, so click here for the video or click the picture above to find out what we’re talking about. The next is of our weird experience with weird Korean pizza, in Pizza Hut of all places. Pizza here is really different than it is in Canada, so click either the picture above or here for the video. Finally, we’ve been planning for a long time to make a video of us riding our bikes through the park by our house. Martina strapped the camera to the basket on the front of her bike, and, voila, a new video. It might be a bit shakey, so forgive us if you can. Either click on the picture above for the video, or click here to see check it out.

Problems With Our Email

We realize that many people have not been getting our emails. We have been sending our emails three times per message in hopes that one of the three will make it through. This could be because we don’t have our own internet connection yet; we’re leaching internet from god knows where, and it peters out every once in a while, so it’s not all too reliable. We just resent our mailing address, because it seems that many people don’t have it, even though we sent it out a while ago. Let us know with an email or comment if you didn’t get it yet, and we’ll try sending it out again.

Our First Mail!

Today we finally got our first letters in the mail. The mail system here, in case we didn’t tell you before, is very weird. In Canada, our mail is locked up and hidden behind metal doors, or metal boxes, not open to the public. Here, in our apartment, we have tiny slots in which our mail is jammed. These tiny slots are too small to fit the letters, so our envelopes stick out of these slots. This means that anyone walking by the mail wall on the first floor can snag anyone’s mail easily.

Anyhow, in spite of our fears that people were stealing our mail to see what foreigner mail was like, we actually got mail today! Thanks to the Petkos for giving us a Happy Anniversary Card, and thanks to Simon’s old boss, Jason, for mailing Simon a reference letter in Korean. If anyone else feels like mailing us stuff we’d be super happy to give you our weird mailing address. We can be pen pals! Yeaaah!

Simon's New Office

Today started off pretty poorly for me. To begin with, I forgot my Starbucks Double Shots at home. I usually pack two in my bag to make through the day. Without them, it’s a wonder how I survived (actually, as I write this now after lunch, I feel like I am going to collapse). Secondly, I forgot my keys at home. These were the keys to the English Room, my classroom, and my desk. I borrowed a set of keys off someone else (the lady who took us out on Sunday) so I was able to get into his class. Unfortunately, this set of keys could not unlock my desk, where I had all of my handouts for the day and cables for my computer. So, there was only one thing left for me to do: rip open the bloody desk. It turns out that the desk offered little resistance. A good, solid tug at the drawer popped its plastic lock off, shown above.

Anyhow, the rest of the day worked out perfectly well. I had a pretty rough day on Monday, and Tuesday was pretty bad as well. Today I tried something new, and the students loved it, and every class went by swimmingly. Good for me! Now if I could just not fall asleep, everything would be ok. Anyhow, I also made a new video of my new office. I have a room all to my own, and this is where I teach. I even have my own desk. They just bought it for me this week, and I just broke the lock on it today! Click here for the video to see what all the fun is about.

Our Sunday Adventure

On Sunday, we went with my (Simon’s) co-teacher to Ganghwa-Do, a mountain with many Buddhist Temples, and Aegisbon, which is a mountain in South Korea that overlooks North Korea. It was a great follow up to our highly disappointing Saturday, in which we were supposed to meet our friend Jen in Seoul but didn’t. We were picked up at around 9AM and then were driven north for about an hour. When we finally arrived at our destination, we had to climb up many stairs on a steep hill until we finally reached the temples. They were impressive. They didn’t have the breathtaking splendor that I expected, but after I rid myself of my romanticized and unrealistic idea of Buddhist temples I was really able to appreciate what I saw. We would have liked to stay longer, but my co-teacher and family were pushing ahead. They’ve been here a few times already, and have seen this all before.

Afterwards we drove around for nearly an hour trying to find a place to eat. We settled for a place that served a new kind of Soon-doo-boo (or, at least, new to us). It was a big communal pot of soup, as opposed to the personal sized bowls we usually get, and it was really, really delicious. Martina liked it more than the usual soon-doo-boo, while I still preferred the original.

Finally, we went to a place called Aegisbon (or something very similar to that spelling). Before we went there, we were stopped by army men with big rifles in their arms and huge knives on their chests. They directed us to a place (just by pointing, rather than personally escorting us) where we had to fill out forms. We personally didn’t fill them out - my co-teacher’s husband did. The sheets were all in Korean, so we couldn’t fill them out anyway. Once these sheets were filled out we handed them back to the knife- and gun-wielding soldiers who let us pass. We parked our car shortly up ahead, then walked up the longest and steepest hill we have ever been on to make it to the top of a mountain. This mountain was the northernmost point of South Korea. From it, we could see North Korea. We put a coin in those coin-operated bincoculars to see what it was like. The picture you see above is what we saw. Looks like a quaint little village, right? WRONG! It’s a deserted village, built by the government to trick South Koreans into believing that life in North Korea is good. How shady!

You’ll see all of this and more if you check out our pictures and videos. Click here for the Buddhist Temples video, or click here for the North Korean video or click here for the pictures.

Happy Anniversary to Us!

Today is our one-year anniversary! We’re spending it far from home, and with the time-zone shift we think we might have started celebrating our anniversary a bit too soon. We went to an American Restaurant today and had fancy pasta and fancy ribs. As well, we heard “All You Need is Love” by the Beatles when we were walking around after our dinner, and that’s the song we played when we walked into the dessert room for our reception. It was nice. HAPPY ANNIVERSARY TO US! One year down, a million more to go

Our Saturday Flop

This Saturday we were supposed to meet our friend Jen in Seoul. We stayed up late at night trying to figure out the subway system, the fare, and our itinerary. We were supposed to meet Jen at 2. We waited for her from 1:50 - 2:45. It turned out that she didn’t reply to us in time with the meeting place, so we waited for nearly an hour around the street when she was waiting for us at the Hard Rock Café instead.

Anyhow, while we were there, we walked around Itaewon, which was where we were supposed to meet. We heard from our co-teachers that Itaewon is a great place to go. It’s very trendy and has cool shopping and whatnot, so we decided that would be where we met Jen. Little did we know how uncomfortable Itaewon would be for us. It was multicultural to the extreme; there were more foreigners there than natives. It felt almost like, well, Toronto. It was really freaky. See, we came to Korea because we wanted to experience Korea, not Toronto. Long story short, we didn’t enjoy ourselves one bit, and left Itaewon as soon as we clued in that we weren’t going to find Jen. We made a really boring video about the trip, so check that out. Yeah

Korean Bars

After a long days work on Friday, Simon and I decided it was time to go to a bar. That's right, we broke our normal, "hey, let's read in a coffee shop!" routine and went to a bar. Luckily for us we have a bar in the basement of our building, called the Liquor Cabin. Although the staff did not speak english, there were pictures on the menu.

We ordered fried chicken and a bottle of Soju each. Soju is the vodka of Korea, except it is dirt cheap. As in, 3,000 won for a beer sized bottle ($3) and it has 20% alcohol. It has a very sweet taste at first and then has kind of a black licorice aftertaste and then a gross vodka like flavour that makes you twitch. I can't believe how easily everyone was downing these bottles, because Simon was drunk off one, and I couldn't finish my bottle (it tasted too gross for me...). Our free appetizers showed up, and it was nacho chips with salsa and cheese, and peanuts. Oh, we were wrong, because it was really pizza sauce and mustard. Yup. You heard me. Despite the weird starters our fried chicken was awesome, we got a whole chicken and a half. We got legs, wings, breast, neck, everything for $12 bucks. It was too much for 2 people, but we finished it off.

Afterwards we went for a walk and tried to win weird toys from those weird claw vending machines. Tried and failed. And so ends our exciting night out. Click here for the video tour of our Korean bar, or click here for the pictures of it.

We're Going to Seoul! (Plus Bonus Picture)

We’re going to Seoul today to visit our friend Jen Kreisz, who we met in teacher’s college. She’s in Sinchon, which is a very hipster kind of area, and loaded with foreigners. We’re going to meet her in Itaewon, which is another big foreigners’ hub, and then hanging out for a bit. We’ll post pictures and videos when we get back. Then, on Sunday, we’re going with Simon’s co-teacher to a historic Buddhist temple far away from here. Again, pictures and movies to come.

But for now, we thought we’d share this picture. It’s of a chocolate bar Martina had on Friday night. For those in the know, “Crunk” means something completely different in English than it seems to mean here. Ha!

Non-Gu (Basketball)

Today I played basketball. I have been playing for a week now or so, but today is a special day. I finally played against somebody! Woohoo! Before, I would walk around the courts, dribble my basketball longingly, and wish I knew enough Korean to say “Can I play?” As well, I doubt that the people there knew enough English to invite me to play.

Today, though, as I was playing by myself on one half of the court, somebody playing on the other half walked up to me, and, in remarkably solid English, asked me to play one-on-one. He asked me my name, where I lived, how long I’ve lived in Korea, and how long I would be here. We then played, first to eleven points, everything worth one point. It was fun. I beat him 11-2 but it was still fun. He was amazed by my moves (but, hey, so is the rest of the world), and asked me what time I come to the courts to play, because he wants to play more. Great! I have my first Korean friend!

Korean Street Food

So here’s the deal with Korean Street Meat: It’s delicious, dirt cheap, and loaded with variety. In toronto, you have two choices: hot dog or sausage, and will cost you between $3-$5. Here, you can get a plate full of meat-filled dumplings, spicy sauce over it all, and a glass full of water for anywhere between one and two bucks. Deep fried shrimp tempura will cost you the same. A plate full of dok-boki, which is a rice cake dish smothered in the most uncomfortably spicy sauce, will cost you two bucks. Corn dogs will set you back one to two bucks as well. It’s all great, all delicious, and makes living in Korea so much easier for the two of us. To see our movie on street meat, either click on the picture above, or click here for our video on Korean Street Food.

Korean Washrooms

One of the things I’m always interested in when travelling to other countries (because, after all, I travel so much), is what the washrooms are like. Are Asian toilets different than Canadian toilets? Are there different rules, different techniques, different traditions? The answer, ladies and gentlemen, is a resounding YES! Click the picture above, or this link here to see a video of what the washrooms are like in this strange, strange land.

The School System

Today is the first of three days that I (Simon) have to spend in an empty school. The entire school is away on a three-day field trip. Each of the three grades have gone to different places. For some reason, even though I don’t have any students, I still have to come to school. I am in an empty office. My co-teacher is in it for maybe five minutes at a time, then goes away for an hour or two. This is not fun.

In my excessive spare time, I am lesson planning. I was able to grab my co-teacher in her brief stint here, and asked her about how to plan lessons. Here’s something absolutely shocking that I learned: My class will be split up into two halves, like I mentioned before. One week I will get one half of the class and the next week I will get the other half. This means I have to make one lesson plan per level for two weeks of class. Technically, since I teach two grades, I will be teaching two different lesson plans for two weeks. That is absolutely shocking. In Canada, I had to make a new lesson plan for every class, three classes a day, every day, which means 30 lessons for two weeks, worst case scenario. Here, I have 2 lessons for two weeks.

What’s even more shocking - and this is where I get a little bit upset - is that I am not supposed to give the students any homework. Majority of students go to an after school academy, which means they are swamped with homework there. And so, I don’t have to mark anything, ever. I’m surprised that their after-school academies have an impact on their regular schools, and makes me question which one takes precedence. The reason why I am upset is not because I am stupid and want more work. I’m upset because I would like to have a bigger impact on these students. Really, I teach them for 45 minutes every two weeks. I can’t monitor or evaluate their progress. I don’t do enough to have an impact on them, compared to the many times I would see my students in Canada.

I’ll say more about this when I learn more about it. For now, I’m just very, very surprised.

Simon's School

So Simon finally has made a video of his school. In it you’ll see screaming kids and lavish basketball courts. The kids never seem to shut up, and shout at me every chance they get. Hi Simon! Nice to meet you! They’ve said that many times after meeting me, fyi. As well, you’ll be stunned when you check out the basketball courts. They’re completely awesome, and unlike anything we’ve ever seen in outdoor Canadian basketball courts. Altogether, the Korean schools seem to have a much bigger budget than any of the schools we've seen in Canada. Click on either the picture above to see the video, or click here for the Video Tour of Simon's School.

Korean Claw Machines!

Have you ever seen those coin-operated machines, in which you stick in a dollar, move a claw around via joystick, drop it down, and hope that the claw will pick up and bring you back the stuffed teddy bear? In Korea they’ve perfected these machines, and put Canadian claw machines to shame. What makes these machines so seductive is not the prizes that are nearly impossible to win, but the way the currency works around here. Cash is king around here, so people mostly pay in cash. unfortunately, this leads to copious amounts of change dangling in your pockets. Instead of gathering all this change, it's best to disburden yourself on these machines. Anyhow, we made a video of just what you can win in these awesome machines, so click on either the picture above for the video, or click here for our video on Korean Claw Machines.

Martina's School

The following videos are a tour of my school. Click here for Part 1 and here for Part 2. I’m at an all girls school which is about 15 - 20 minutes away by foot, 7 minutes by bike, 5 minutes by taxi, 2 seconds by Startrek transporter. My school is surrounded by gates and fences of red roses (apparently that is the school’s symbol). The school is in two different buildings. My office is in the main building and my classroom is in the second building. When you walk into the main building you have to remove your outside shoes and so there are little cupboards with all the teacher’s shoes in it. You switch into “comfy shoes” (as they call it) but really they mean slippers or plastic slip on shoes. What I find strange is that you walk from building to building with your comfy shoes on, thus defeating the purpose of keeping the school clean from mud and dirt...or maybe it’s just me that thinks that’s weird.

My office is a big open room with desks and little mini-cubicle like dividers for all the English teachers. My desk is beside my co-teacher (who speaks English) and she is very sweet and very helpful. The office has a hot and cold water machine and above it is bags of green tea and coffee sticks. These coffee sticks are awesome, you can get all flavours (including with or without cream/sugar) and you just rip the top and dump it into a mug of hot water. If you want cold coffee they have special ones for ice coffee and iced tea. Everyone has their own mug, and at the end of the day around 4:10pm all the girls clean the whole school. Sweep the floor, mop the floor, pick up garbage, everything. When they clean the office they take your mug, clean it, and put it back into the UV ray sterilization box located in the office. Crazy huh?

The Vice Principal is also in our office and he has a little rug and leather chairs in his giant cubicle. The Principal has his own office downstairs and it is the biggest Principal’s office I have ever seen in my whole life. It has a small forest worth of plants and about 16 big leather chairs all facing each other. His desk is huge and has a big beautiful rug underneath it. Pretty different than North American school offices.

My classroom is in the building which houses art, dance, music, science labs, and singing. I have quite a colourful atmosphere around me! If I leave the door open I often get swarmed with 1st year students coming in to say “hi” or ask if I am teaching them next year. I’m hoping to get a video of this swarming one day. My classroom is big because I have classes of 35 - 40 students. My students are very easily excited, but otherwise they are well behaved... besides chatter. Lots and lots of girly chatter and giggling. I will also try and video tape the chatter and giggling.

A few strange things Simon and I have both noticed is that the schools tend to keep the lights off. You’ll notice in the video the hallways are very dark. I’m not sure if it is an energy saving thing or a way to keep the heat down. It isn’t hot here yet, but we have been forewarned that it will be very humid eventually. That’s it for now, pictures of coffee sticks soon to come!

Downtown Bucheon

We made a brief video of what Downtown Bucheon looks like during the day. This video was taken a little bit west of Home Plus, so it’s pretty close to us. Anyhow, this place is huge, especially when compared to Etobicoke and Pickering and such. Walk a little North of this intersection and you'll find yourself at Simon's School. At the SouthWest corner is the SaveZone, which is another multi-level shopping area - though it's not one that we're particularly fond of. As well, you’ll see our new bikes and how freaking cool they are, and some other little kid's awesome bike as well. Click the picture above to see the video, or just click here for our Panorama of Downtown Bucheon.

A Closer Look at Home Plus

We told you last week a little bit about the Shopping Malls here in Bucheon, and made a short video of it. We didn’t go into a lot of detail with Home Plus, even though it was really amazing. Yesterday we made a longer video on Home Plus, just so you could get a better idea of how weird it is. In the video you’ll see how difficult it is to read stuff, their motion-sensored advertisements, their super awesome packaging, and their sampling that puts Sam’s Club to shame. Check it out at the Movies Page, or just click here to see it.

EngRish is Wonderful

If you can’t read this, it says: “I love you more than evermaking. Me know lots of things. I will wait for you...” Somebody please translate this for me.

Our First Day

So here’s the update from the first day of school. To begin with, we are very tired right now, and we want to go to sleep, so this will have to be short. Korean schools are very odd compared to Canadian schools. What you see in this picture is Simon’s schedule. Every blue box is a class I have to teach. I have 23 classes to teach per week. I teach 40 students per class. I see each class only once a week. That means that every week I teach 23 x 40 = 920 students...EVERY WEEK. I thought I might be able to memorize their names if I tried really hard, since Korean names are so odd to me. Now I know there’s no chance in hell of memorizing nearly 1000 of them.

Here’s the plus side, and it’s a great, great plus. I have to make only two lesson plans per week, one for each level I teach, but I have to teach it 11-12 times. As well, classes are only 45 minutes long, so if I run out of material in class the wait won’t be as excruciating.

There’s a lot more to write about, but we’ll have to save it for tomorrow.

Jet Lag

Right now it’s 5:45 AM, and I’m completely awake. That might be because I went to sleep at 8PM last night. So, yeah, we’re not fully adjusted to the time-shift yet. I feel as if I’m adjusted, but the problem is that Martina isn’t anywhere close to being in Korea Time, so she’s sleeping all the time, and making me go to sleep as well. We start teaching our very first Koren class in three hours. Wish us luck.

Seng Bulgogi

We tried something for the second time today called Seng Bulgogi. We tried it for the first time yesterday and it was so awesome that we had to come back today to try it again, only this time with a video camera taping the whole thing. You should check out the video or just view the korean food pictures if you want to see more of Martina’s awesome food photography.

Cause for Alarm

We just had a scary experience. Martina was napping and I was trying to figure out how to unlock the number pad for our front door. The doors here are different, in that we don't have the traditional jagged metal to unlock our door. Here we have a magnet, as in the picture above, that we fit into a slot on the outside of our door. Blue lights flash if this is the right key (I'm not joking about this) and the door unlocks itself. Once you close the door, it automatically locks itself after three seconds.

Back to the story - I was trying to get to the number pad on this door (I don't know what the pad is for. I was just told to change my code by Martina's co-teacher) when I pushed a button that I thought would do the job. Instead, it set off a high pitch siren, like a car alarm. We fiddled around with it for a few minutes before Martina, rudely awoken by the siren, knocked on our neighbor's door to ask for help. He told us we need the key to stop the wailing of the alarm. Once we did that, we chatted for a few minutes outside our apartment doors, though the chatting consisted of no more than two ideas: where do you teach? My daughter goes to this school. We couldn't understand each other, and the man's daughter, who took English at her school, was too shy to help. She just stood at the front door and awkwardly stared.

Anyhow, we plan on showing you our place in video soon. We just need to charge the battery for the camera. It's dead, and we have only one plug adapter, which is charging too many other things instead.

Bucheon at Night

We took a few pictures of what Bucheon looks like at night. Here you’ll see our apartment at night, along with the flashing pretty lights of the streets of Bucheon. It’s not as small and quaint as we expected it to be. The pylons are there to block off all cars; on the weekends this street has nothing but bikes and roller blades and small dirt bikes running around on it, and families get together and relax at Jung-Ang park. We've compiled our pictures of Bucheon together, and plan on constantly updating the collection with new pictures whenever we can. To see the pictures of Bucheon at night, though, click here for our City of Bucheon Gallery. To see a movie of what Bucheon's like at night (very bright with many, many lights), click here to see Bucheon's Night Lights. We expect to be updating our Bucheon pictures regularly, so make sure to check our Korea photos page to see more pictures of our journey here in Korea and Bucheon.

Lubber Gruvs (I mean, Rubber Gloves)

It’d be great if we knew how to read Korean: Martina wanted rubber gloves for cleaning around the house. We went to Home Plus to buy some rubber gloves. When we got home, we realized that the package was just for a single-serving of rubber glove. So we went back to buy another package. Then we got two rubber gloves, but both for the right hand. Fantastic.

Rainy Days

Today Martina bought a new umbrella, and just in time. She’s been looking around for one for as long as we’ve been here, touching and testing many of them out. Korea has a big umbrella culture, since it rains throughout most of the year. In Canada we can get away with bad umbrellas - we get caught in the rain maybe once or twice a year, and if our umbrella sucks we gripe and grumble about it and promise ourselves to buy a new one next time. Then it doesn’t rain for a long time so we forget about buying a new umbrella until the next rainstorm hits.

Anyhow, we got caught in the rain, but right (and I mean RIGHT) after Martina bought the umbrella. Perfect timing. What she drew is a fairly accurate depiction. More pictures of it once we’re outside (it’s bad luck to open umbrellas indoors, after all).

Foreigners Interview

Yesterday we went to a coffee shop to work on the website. We got lost trying to find the place, and made a video of it, but after 20 minutes or so we found the place. The drinks at this coffee shop were weird, and we had to try them. Martina got a regular latte, because she’s too chicken to try something weird, and Simon got a black bean frappucino. It sounded gross, and it taste gross.

A few minutes into sitting down the guy who served us came up to our table with a heavily creased sheet of paper, full of questions. He told us he was in university, and for his project he needs to interview foreigners in English. He was very meek and timid, and asked us standard questions, like where we came from, what are we doing here, how long do we plan on staying, etc. By the end of it he walked away and came back with a bag full of cookies and a sticker on the back of them saying “for you.” What a deal! Talk for a few minutes and get free cookies! This is how life is supposed to be...

We Are Not Alone

A few days before we left for Korea, I (Simon) visited my old Korean boss to ask him about Bucheon. He told me, among other things, that Bucheon barely has any foreigners, as opposed to Seoul which is rife with ex-pats. For the first eight hours we were here in Bucheon, we thought he was right. Last night we changed our minds, though, as we saw maybe 10 or so foreigners walking around at night. I guess that makes sense, since we wouldn’t see them walking around during the day - - they probably have jobs, and aren’t freeloading like we are.

Shopping Malls

We’ve been shopping for the past five hours or so. We only went to four places: The Hyundai Mall, The Mall, The Sooooping (or something like that) Mall, and Home Plus. Click here to see the video of grocery shopping Home Plus.

The Hyundai Mall is ten stories tall and mirrors The Mall via a glass walkway. The tenth floor of both buildings has no shopping; it’s called a Sky Park, exposed to the sun and clouds, where you can sit and eat in a green grassy park. The top two floors of one of The Mall is a movie theatre. We’re not sure if the movies are in English and subtitled or wholly dubbed, and we don’t know enough Korean to ask anyone to clarify. We also made a video of the mall when we were walking home one day, so check it out as well.

The Sooooping mall has something called "Water Fun" on the seventh and eighth floors, but we never checked out what this was all about. The fifth floor is nothing but cellphones. Each giant floor is about the length and width of half of Sherway.

Home Plus was the best of them all. It’s a huge 24 hour grocery store, only one floor altogether, but it’s chaotic. It's chaotic for several reasons: first of all, the grocery carts have wheels that move 360 degrees, so you can move every direction smoothly and quickly, so you never know what way people are heading. Secondly, they have people giving out free samples at the end and beginning of every single aisle. So people are stopping/gathering at all the aisle ends. Thirdly, everywhere you go customer service reps are trying to sell you stuff. They wear these huge white knee-high boot covers that look like giant white leg warmers. They give out samples and try to get you to buy the deal of the week. We just don’t look them in the eye, and Simon is afraid that they’re swearing at us in Korean.