Hey everybody! We’re writing from Seoul for the second time. Get used to it because we’ll be here for awhile. I’ve started teaching little kids to say naughty things and confusing older kids with the theory of gravity.

Before I go on to more about Seoul, I wanted to tell everybody about our time in San Francisco. I’m sorry we didn’t get any pictures, but it was cloudy, or rainy, or night-time while we were there, so no luck. But we did have a great time hanging out with the Mylett’s, some of Tara’s extended family. Everybody was really nice and I was more Irish for at least a few nights. So…we flew out on the 5th and thanks to a 15 hour flight and time changes, managed to miss almost all of Tara’s birthday on the 6th. But we had celebrated with her parents and then more family before we left, so she wasn’t too sad. Plus she already thinks she’s old at 23 so doesn’t want to think about it.

When we arrived, a taxi driver was waiting for us. He took us from Incheon to Seoul, and after 24hrs awake and most of those on a flight, we didn’t care that he couldn’t speak English to us. Our hotel was nice and oddly similar to a love-suite. Later, we learned that’s basically what it was, but the classy kind for business men. Whatever, it had a big room with a nice bed, a giant wall-mounted HDTV, a fridge, a computer, and a large bathroom with the last tub we’re likely to use for the next year. We spent three nights there and were happy.

I was met the next morning by Mihay, my foreign manager (or “whitey wrangler” as some people put it here), and the president from my school, whom I call “President”. I don’t know her name and she doesn’t speak English. They took us both to the school, ECC Kumho-Jungu Sisa, which is very nice. ECC is a chain of school, all for kids. My school is on the third and fourth floor of a building complex, with about 14 classrooms, a cafeteria, and a faculty room. It was very strange for me to show up and walk into the FACULTY room. I felt like a kid pretending to be a teacher. Anyways, I observed two days of classes taught by Simon, whom I replaced. On the third day, Tara and I moved into his apartment (see pictures for more info) and I taught my first classes. So far the classes have gone well, though some kids deserve to be hit with hot rocks or bitten by mildly poisonous beasts. Of course it’s like that everywhere. In all seriousness, they are all pretty good and though teaching is a lot of work, I’m happy I’m doing it.

Tara is already a bit restless and is looking into taking Korean courses, volunteering at an orphanage, and fighting crime. I, of course, would love the idea of having a year where my only job was to have fun, sleep in, and play video games in my house. But she actually wants to do stuff. We’ll keep you posted on things that happen and probably write shorter updates later, but please feel free to write us at our emails, listed under contacts, or leave a message at our forum. It’s nice to hear from people. FIN