First Sighting! DH Loves Coffee! ME TOO!

Greetings from across the Pacific! The past 4 days have been hectic. We arrived at Incheon airport on Sunday where health officials immediately stuck thermometers in our ears. Swine-flu free (yesssss), we made our way to baggage claim where we met Sangtae and Leo, our awkward but friendly co-workers. Nami asked them what they liked to do in their free time - "hiking? shopping?" - but we learned they only like drinking. In fact, Leo was nursing a hangover. They showed us our apartment, our school, and took us out to dinner as we watched them smoke through a whole pack of cigarettes. We concluded that they're sort of like our big brothers. Nami and I hope to persuade them into taking us to baseball game this summer. We will see.

Around 10pm that first night, I was given the princeton review's "cracking the AP Physics B exam" and told that I was to teach a 2 hour class at 9am. Yeah, I didn't take that AP...and physics is pretty much my least favorite subject ever so it looked like this job thing was off to a good start. But it got even better when the principal informed me that I would be teaching another AP course I had never taken - statistics! Hooray for simultaneous learning and teaching! The underqualification is rampant: Nami's teaching AP Lit, which she never took, and admits that she has no idea how to analyze poetry. She talks to her student about internships, shopping, and college essays instead.

Sidenote: our faces are plastered on a large poster in the lobby of the academy for all to see. There are hundreds of pamphlets with the same photos.

There is also a Harvard banner displayed prominently in the CEO's glass-walled office. Our principal has a Yale banner hanging in hers...but I don't think she went there -- she doesn't even speak American. All the Ivy League decoration is sort of hilarious.

We recently went to a grocery store to get some basics such as bananas and toilet paper. Koreans apparently don't stockpile candy and oreos like Americans do as evidenced by their incredibly small shopping carts.

Also, I found Daniel Henney in aisle 4! He whispered sweet nothings in my ear about the smooth taste of Maxwell instant coffee. I took him and his coffee powder home and now he's in our kitchen cabinet. So that's good.

Nami and I climbed a mountain - and by climb I mean drove up 3/4 the way and trekked the last part with her mom and uncle. It's been good family-bonding. We ate some sweet bread (bbang, it's called bbang but it sounds like bong, haha) at the top because it's what you're supposed to do.

I would say that Nami's mom and her aunt and uncle are in our top 3 best friends here. The average of our ages is probably 40. Nami thinks it's more but I can't do statistics so whatever. We all enjoy eating. On the topic of eating, some men were cooking up delicious pots of snails and silkworms on the mountain path. One of the men told Nami she wasn't really Korean if she didn't eat one. I was really happy to not be Korean. However, i thought it would be a shame for Nami to lose her heritage so I paid her $10 to eat the awful buggers. I gagged and lost money but it was worth it. Look at that bug-eating monster!

Okay, well that's enough for now. Also, i should mention that I don't have to teach AP stats anymore which is a good thing because I didn't even understand the Barrons study book's first chapter on graphs. Nami still has to teach lit. ha.