Brunch and Baseball

Well, it's been almost two months in Korea without a cell phone. Today that finally changed! We activated the cell phone our predecessors left us, so now Bob and I are officially mobile. It wasn't as hard as you might think to go without a cell phone. We see everyone we know at school everyday and email and Facebook work fine for making plans with friends on the weekend. Still, it's nice to have another option.

Setting up the phone was quite an adventure. We don't speak Korean and the employees at the phone store didn't speak English. We tried our best to explain that we wanted to activate our phone and put minutes on it, but we were getting nowhere. Luckily I had Will's number written down on a piece of paper in my wallet, so we borrowed the phone at the store and called Will and Anastasia so she could translate. She told them what we wanted to do and then it was smooth sailing. Thanks Anastasia - we'd still be phoneless without you!

After our adventure at the phone store we went out for brunch at Breezeburns, a local burger restaurant. They serve a special brunch entree in the mornings so we thought we'd give it a try. The deal included eggs, toast and butter, a small waffle with maple syrup, green beans, sausage, bacon, salad, hash browns and a drink. It was definite comfort food and it tasted great!

This evening I went with the other teachers to a Lotte Giants baseball game (Lotte is the local home team here in Busan). I was sans Bob because he doesn't like baseball or the heat.

The game was a lot of fun! The fans are really enthusiastic. There was a man with a microphone on a platform leading a cheer for each player that came up to bat. The fans make pom poms out of newspapers and they love to do "the wave." The other neat thing about baseball in South Korea is that you can bring as much of your own food and alcohol into the stadium as you want! We brought a cooler with lots of snacks and drinks.

Of course just like sporting events at home, you can buys snacks from vendors who walk up and down the stairs. If you forgot your own snacks a bag of squid jerky is only about $2.

***Bob and Lindsey***

New Photos

Here's the next round of photos! There are four new sets of pictures:

Shinsegae and Centum City
This is the World's Largest Department Store. I wrote a post about it a few weeks ago.

Gyeong-ju
This city was the capital of an ancient Korean dynasty many years ago. We took an overnight trip there during our school vacation last week.

Gwangali Beach
What can I say, it's a beautiful beach and only a half hour from our apartment!

Apartment
Finally, some pictures of where we live.

***Bob and Lindsey***

Two New Wills (and an Anastasia)

It's been a busy week at Corem! We just got back from our summer vacation so we are all trying to get back into the swing of things after our week off. We are also getting to know our two newest English teachers, Will and Will.

No, that's not a typo. Both teachers are named Will (although for the kids' sake, one goes by Will and the other goes by William). What's strange is that both Wills are from Colorado. The other day they also discovered that they share the same middle name. Quite the coincidence. Luckily, they don't really look anything alike so it's not too confusing.

One of the new Wills also has a girlfriend named Anastasia. She is originally from Russia but has been living and working in Busan for the past few years. Anastasia exports used cars to Russia. They met while he was here teaching last year. What's really great is that she is completely fluent in Korean (as well as English, of course). We've gone out to dinner as a group twice, and it is great to have someone around who can speak the language - I think our waiters and waitresses appreciate her too.

Her home in Russia is straight north of North Korea, and she said that a lot of North Koreans escape from their country and sneak to Russia to live. It was an interesting fact to learn.

***Bob and Lindsey***