First month in Korea!

I've been in Korea for about a month now!  I am starting to get the hang of teaching here, the students and other teachers are a pleasure to be around.  Everyone seems to go out of their way to make sure I feel comfortable and welcome, that is unless we are playing volleyball, they really don't take it easy on me there.  I did get recruited to play with the teachers on the Cheongwon Elementary volleyball team, so maybe they are trying to toughen me up for our upcoming  tournament (if any of the teachers are reading this...seriously, maybe you could just bring it down a notch until I get a little more practice under my belt?).
We had a birthday celebration for one of the other EPIK teachers last weekend in Cheoungju, chicken and beer of course.  There were about 20 of us celebrating, when we started singing happy birthday the whole bar joined in (in perfect English...ok, close to perfect English).  They were all very excited and clapping along as they sang.  After we finished singing the table next to us made the girl sitting at their table stand up so we could all sing to her as well!  The whole place was really getting into it.  One of the guys even stood up and gave me a hug after singing, not sure if it was because I was such a good singer or he was just really excited about the birthdays going on.

I started taking Korean classes every Saturday at the YMCA, I'm hoping my next blog will be written in Hangul.  Next week we are taking a field trip to a peach farm and grape vineyard.  I've loved going on field trips since the first grade...some things just don't change. Other things that haven't seemed to change: Korea, you have two trouble makers from Chicago...good luck.

I miss all my friends and family back home!  I imagine this is how you all cope with me being gone.

I've been eating at all the local restaurants, but did succumb to a guilty pleasure.  Here's how I validated:  I've only ever had Papa Johns delivery, not even sure you can eat inside in the U.S.  This place was a proper restaurant so we sat at a table while enjoying our pizza and garlic dipping sauce, Korean culture...bam!