What a day! We met our director, Mr. Yuri Kim and one of our supervisors, Sally, for lunch today. They took us to a Chinese Seafood restaurant but told us that while the food is traditional Chinese recipes the restaurant also gives us the customary Korean side dishes so it was a good mix of the two cultures. We had sweet and sour pork with loads of vegetables and pineapple. Then there were deep fried jumbo shrimp in a spicy chili sauce on a bed of cabbage. Then we had egg drop soup and shrimp fried rice with a sweet black sauce that had sauteed onions. We were stuffed when we were done! It was all quite delicious, we are so loving the food here.
After lunch we went to the school (which is right across the street from our apartment) and I was given the grand tour. There are maybe ten classrooms that are named after different types of trees. Maple, Poplar, Birch, etc...represent different levels of students. They have a nice library, a play room/jungle gym area, a teachers' lounge and several other amenities. The school takes up the entire 7th floor of the building it is in. We watched videos of past classes to see how the kids typically behave and we met Nathalie, the head teacher for the school. She is from San Diego and was really sweet and gave us a great impression about what to expect. She answered all of our questions and then even helped us by explaining how to use our washing machine (which has a ton of Korean buttons but no English haha).
After spending several hours at the school Mr. Kim was kind enough to give Nick and me a ride into Seoul. He dropped us off at Seoul Station (the brick and stone building above) and we walked around until we found the shopping district. It was amazing. A million people bustling around on tiny streets with the random car trying to get through and each shop spilled out onto the sidewalks. Women and men dressed in varying costumes with microphones yelling out trying to grab patrons' attention. We saw t-shirts, make up, cell phones, watches, jewelry, restaurant after restaurant after restaurant, lots of fur jackets, knock off EVERYTHING (most of the time only 100 feet or so from the actual designer store haha) donuts, waffles, street food (fried octopus legs anyone? how about some cooked silk worms? deep fried corn wrapped in bacon? pineapple on a stick? they had so many insane options everywhere)...the list of things we saw goes on and on. We truly enjoyed just meandering about and alternating between being amazed at the architecture and buildings around us and being amazed at what was going on street level with the shops and people.
We ate at Omatu Tomato (mostly because the name was funny) but when we saw the pictures of the food we were most excited to try what they had to offer. Nick had pork donkatsu with a cabbage salad in a tasty sauce and also what seemed to be like gnocchi. I had "chili shrimp over omarice in cream sauce" which turned out to be like a burrito...it was white rice with onion that was wrapped in a thin layer of egg omelet, smothered in a lemony cream sauce with chili shrimp and broccoli on top THEN they drizzled honey mustard in zig zags over the whole plate. I never would have thought that so many different flavors would combine to be so absolutely delicious! We also were given chilled green tea (all you could drink) and green onion soup. Oh and kimchi of course. All for 19,800 won...which is $16.12. Fantastic.
After dinner, despite being so stuffed, we had to try the 32 cm tall soft serve ice cream cones that we kept seeing everywhere. And for 1000 won (or around 80 cents) we couldn't really go wrong.
Then we took the subway back to Hwajeong and we have been looking at the power points, lesson plans, worksheets and textbooks in preparation for tomorrow's classes. It will be Nick's first day and I will maybe start Tuesday? They were not sure if I will be teaching a Tuesday morning class or if I will just be starting on Thursday. Either way will be fine for me, I am excited to meet my new students and start teaching! Wish us luck!!
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