A Few Pics Of Some Korean Places.

This first pic is of a newspaper stand at the subway. As you can see, there are a large variety of newspapers here in Korea. There is actually an English one, well two really, but I don't read them much. I generally use the internet or the t.v. to get my information.

I actually read the news on the websites of the two English papers here in Korea. One is called the 'Korean Times' and the other is the 'Korean Herald.' They are actually not bad papers and have some interesting articles in them sometimes. I would rate it about a 7 though compared to other good newspapers.




This pic was taken a while back, while Dave and I were going into Insadong, which is in Seoul. It shows some of the fashions of shoes for men here in Korea. You can see that they are very pointy and long. These kinds of shoes are worn by almost every age.

They are worn a lot by businessmen and young men wearing suits and dress clothes. The Korean men are very particular about their shoes and it is very rare to see a pair that are not polished or well looked after.

They have shoeshine service at the public bath that only costs about 2.50.

This pic is of the traditional drums or instruments that are played at Korean traditional festivals or celebrations. They are pretty cool looking and you can see in teh background that this is a traditional Korean shop. I don't know what the stuff in the buckets beside the instruments is, but it looks like either wood or branches or maybe even herbs.

The week is going by quite quickly. I found out today that we now have 820 students at our school. Every class that I have has 14 or 15 students except for one that has 7. The workload has increased and it is a task just to get through the work for the class. It is difficult to get everyone of them to speak in the allotted time.

Yesterday we were told that the first essay had to be assigned. That means that starting next week, I will have over 90 essays, 400 words each, to mark. I will not be in a rush to return them, that is for sure.

Since I have been here, Sunae has gone from 400 to 600 to 800 students. It means that Avalon now have close to 8000 students overall. Is that insane or what? We don't get anything extra out of it either. They usually reward the Korean teachers for getting students to sign up for the next semester. I mean it has nothing to do with us, does it...... haha.

I am going to meet a girl tonight at a coffee shop. I met her next to my school while I was going for a drink of juice. She is a Spanish major and speaks Chinese and Japanese. She loves languages, so we hit it off right away. Her name is Caroline. I have no idea how old she is, but I figure she is about 22 or so.

I am going to play it cool and just hang out and have a coffee and keep it nice and friendly and try to be friends with her. I think we should have a lot to talk about as we share a mutual love for languages. Let's see what happens and wish me luck.

We are meeting at 'Coffeebean' in Samsung Plaza tonight about 10.20pm, after I get off work. She is good looking by the way. Did I mention that.... haha.

Off for now, to teach my classes and be a clown for the next 3 and a half hours.