First Impressions

School

We arrived in Changwon around 11:00pm and were informed that our director would be picking us up at 8:45am the next morning for what we thought would be just a tour of the city. It turned out to be a full on, all day first day of training. These Koreans don’t mess around when it comes to work! The school is a highly respected school on many cities in Korea, but I think both Traylor and I thought the kids would be a little more mundane and robotic. It turns out that they are just normal kids who happen to have parents who send them to school all day in hopes of getting the best jobs one day. They mess around, laugh, giggle in class just like any other kid their age. I was immediately smitten by the littlest kids (4 year olds) and was excited to know that I’d be teaching these little munchkins in March. They are HILARIOUS! I can’t wait to post pictures of how cute and funny they are. Every teacher is called by their first name and then “teacher” {teacha} after it.  So, we are Hannah Teacher and Traylor Teacher.  They are also so stinking smart! 4 year olds can read full English sentences by the end of the year. Crazy! They all have English names like “Kevin, Andy, Becky…” It’s like, yeah…I know that’s not your real name, George- Ha! I think their names are assigned by their parents when they come to school.  We will get our first batch of kids the first of March, so we’ll update more once we get our classes.

Our apartment

What a blessing our apartment is! THANK YOU for praying for a big place for us. We shared a little about our apartment in our previous post, but here are a few pics:

This guy is the first thing we see looking out of the window of our apartment. Every time I get scared about living here, I look out the window to be reminded by Mr. Thumbs Up, that everything will be ok : )

Changwon the city

The city is A LOT bigger than we thought it would be. Tons of shopping and food places around our school and our apartment.  I’m actually in a Duncan Donuts right now! for the free internet since we don’t have it at our apartment yet) At night the city really comes to life with bright neon lights everywhere and the hustle and bustle of Koreans getting off work and trying to get into the night life. These pictures are daytime/night views from our apartment: 

Here is the same view at night (as the pic above): 

Mountains surround our city, so it’s awesome to have the best of both worlds.  We’ve been able to find 3-4 running trails/parks within walking distance of our apartment. The funniest thing about these parks is that they literally have gym equipment outside on the trails. You’ll be running along and up next to the tree will be a legit workout machine that you would find at any gym. Bench press, ab machines, 3-4 arms work outs, leg press…ect. I’ve even seen a stationary bike and elliptical machine on my running trail! Absolutely hilarious. Traylor and I will be ripped when we get done with this year ; )

Man, there is so much we want to share, but since our apartment doesn’t have internet, we are really limited for now. Thank you for being patient with us! Once we have internet  we’ll update more often and be in contact. (Probably in 1-2 weeks) We love you guys!