Hmm... just sitting

Hello there!

Right now I'm sitting in my new office killing time!! My classes don't start for another week, but they want me to come in anyway to meet people.

My English Town (ET) is pretty sweet! It's a newly constructed building near the childrens playground at Naju Elementary School. I have an office which I share with three Korean english teachers, all of whom speak english pretty well. The rest of the building is kind of a mini "America town"; there's a pharmacy, clinic, department store (Macy's), post office, immigration, and an "American Airline" waiting room. It's really cute! All of the kids get to go from one room to another, practicing english. There is text in english all over the walls (most of it not making a lot of sense), and in the main foyer an actual car for the kids to play in! It's kind of surreal.

Alright... where did I leave off last time... During orientation we went to Boesong Temple, which was beautiful. It was surrounded by mountains, and a stream ran through it. It was a running Buddhist Temple, but I only saw one monk. I really wanted to take a picture of him, but I figured it might be kind of rude! There were a bunch of temples, thousands of little Buddha sculptures, and a couple of huge ones as well! After seeing the temple, we all went for a hike on a huge mountain nearby. Everything is so humid and moist that as you step into the forest, you feel like you could be in an African rainforest. At one point I was walking alongside a river and saw about ten snakes, just hanging out, going for a swim. I tried taking pictures, but I'm not sure how well they came out.

Alex and I went for a walk on a mountain near Gwang-ju Prince Hotel. At one point we came across a man walking alone and said hello with our bad foreign accents. After that, he kept on trying to tell us which way we had to go along the path (although he obviously couldn't have known where we were going!). So we just followed him around for a while until he sort of waved us off. Eventually we found a huge ampitheatre, and decided to do a little performing. There were only a couple of people walking around, so I'm sure they didn't mind us singing songs from "The Sound Of Music". These are a few of my favourite things....

So here I am in Naju right now. My Apartment is called Sangwol Joo-Gong. I have a really nice view of nearby mountains and the entire city below. One of my supervisors cleaned my house and bought all new things for the apartment before I got there, which was really nice!

Alright, I'll be writing again soon I'm sure!