In this photo you can see part of my bedroom, my living room and part of my dining room. Yep. It’s a pretty small apartment, but it’s actually one of the bigger apartments in my building. I was pretty lucky to get the apartment I did.
This is my kitchen. I only have one burner, but I am really lucky because my apartment came with an oven (it’s a toaster oven). I used it a lot and I’m so thankful for it. Not having an oven is actually one of the biggest complaints among teachers, I think.
I realize that in a year and a half I’ve never shared pictures of my apartment. The next few blog posts will be a little tour of my place.
This is my bathroom. It may not seem like much, but I’m actually really fortunate to have my bathroom set up like this. A lot of teacher apartments just have shower heads attached to the wall over their bathroom sink. My shower is somewhat separate.
About 9 months ago, my two best friends in Korea came by my apartment to see me, but I wasn’t home. Dave and I were actually out on one of our first dates. They probably came by to get the gossip because that’s just what girls do. When I didn’t answer the door, they left me a note. It says “Y u no here”. I never washed it off… until now. It made me a little bit sad. I feel so lucky to have met Jamie and Shanna. We have had so much fun together.
It’s my last week of school and this week I will be saying goodbye to all of my students. Actually, all of them except 3rd and 1st grades. I don’t teach them this week. Today I had 6th grade, tomorrow is 5th grade, Thursday is 4th grade and Friday is 2nd grade. After that, I’m completely done. It feels so weird. I’m excited and sad at the same time.
Because I’m still not prepared to post any Picture of the Day posts that I missed, I’m going to leave you with another edition of Gangnam Style. This time, it’s PSY (the male singer) and Hyuna (the woman from the music video). I promise to catch up on posts as soon as possible AND next week I will post a video of my apartment to make up for making you all wait. Thanks for being so patient!
Sorry I’m behind on my blog. I have been really busy packing and cleaning. I will update soon.
I wanted to post something to keep you entertained so I thought I’d leave you with a music video. This song is Korea’s big hit of the summer. I have been hearing lots of buzz about it, but today I finally watched the music video. It’s odd and funny and very Korean… enjoy.
I have been trying to give my apartment a good cleaning before move so I decided to move the furniture around. Rearranging my apartment feels like playing tetris. I think I have finally settled on a way to arrange everything (this isn’t it, if you were worried about that).
Dave left for Australia on Monday night so I have custody of our plants. I haven’t killed them yet, so that’s good.
Many of you don’t know this… I have turned in my resignation letter to my school. I have decided to quit teaching 6 months early. My last day of my contract is now August 25, instead of February 25.
I requested to take a week of unpaid leave so that I could go home for my brother’s wedding in October. My school declined my request and said that even Korean teachers can’t take a week off during the school year. I understand their point, but I’m only a co-teacher so my classes would be covered.
I am under contract, but my contract states that it can be cancelled if I give two months notice. I turned in my resignation letter at the end of June and my co-teacher seemed surprised. Did they really think I was going to miss my brother’s wedding?
There’s no penalty for leaving if you stay 6 months into your contract, but I will miss out on some of my completion bonuses. The pension system here has helped me a lot because in late September I will get back what I contributed and the school matches it.
I am not going back to the States until the wedding and I’ll be there for a few weeks. After that, I’m coming back to Korea until Dave finishes his job here. This time I’ll be living in Ulsan.
I’ll still be posting photos of all of my adventures and they should be more frequent since I’ll have a bit more free time.
Some of the big grocery store chains in Korea have coin operated grocery carts. You put 100 won (about 10 cents) into the cart and that releases the chain connecting it to the cart in front of it. When you’re done shopping, just return the cart, connect the chain once again and your 100 won will pop out.
Life Outside of Texas 