I love it here...

Today we met up with Australian Ricky to walk to the Chuncheon National Museum. It was a hell of a walk, but it didn't seem like it took forever because there's just so much to look at at. Every building has at least three stories--lots of pc places where you can go play games, little markets and restaurants restaurants restaurants. We walked past another university, too, with pictures of female basketball players on these big banners. We walked to this mart to meet Ricky's friend Wendy, another ESL lady from Atlanta. She had been to the museum before, but she met us anyway and read a book while we walked around. She was a sweetheart! The museum was cool enough, it was hard to get really good descriptions of things, but looking at this old, old jewelry was pretty interesting--how vintage would that be--some freaking kickass necklaces from paleolithic times... Afterwards we went to the gift shop area, where we bought a lot of postcards (don't worry--you all still get postcards, too) and we got to do these "rubbings" (for lack of a better word) with ink and engraving thingies. We put this paper on a stone thing with traditional carvings in it (imagine the underside of a stamper, except much bigger), wet the paper with a spray bottle, put a towel over it, beat it with a brush to make the wet paper conform to the shapes and outlines and then went over it with ink and let it dry. We were taking these little nubby brush things covered in ink and beating the holy hell out of this paper. We had just been lamenting the fact that we don't have anything to put on our walls, and now we do. It'll look pretty sweet. And authentic.

We just got back from going to yet another BBQ restaurant--this was our first experience with chicken, though. We wandered around for 45 minutes-ish, just exploring this area that is maybe fifteen minutes from our apt. We found an Olive Garden, but it looked a little too swank for our budget. But this freaking BBQ place was great. Great flavor and just a ton of food for so cheap! They brought us this plate of carrots and cucumbers, quail eggs (which turned out to be great--hardboiled and just delicious!), these little crab cake thingies, and then (what we've come to know as) obligatory BBQ fare, with lettuce and sauce and garlic and peppers and MEAT!!!!! Damn, it was good. We ate pretty much everything, so our waitress asked us if we wanted more food. We said no, but she brought us this fried egg-covered spam anyway--I guess spam is like gold over here. Fair enough. We put it on the grill and ate it up. Delicious. Seems like we get the royal treatment (the dude at the family mart today gave us some free chocolates, too. Rory is convinced it's because I have boobs, but hey, whatever works. I like chocolate...).

It's cool, too, because now when we go out, if we go out anywhere alone around our neighborhood, people who recognize us ask where the other one is. It's really funny. It's weird to think that our sheer presence makes someone's day. And I'm not trying to sound like a jerk or we think we're so cool, but it's nice to go somewhere and have people like us immediately just because. It makes it very easy to exist here.

We all start our new schedules on March 2nd. Jamie and I will be teaching 5 hours a day (i get the little little preschoolers and the other dudes who can't read at all really. I'm excited about that...). It's going to be so great. We are all so excited. The students are my favorite people here so far. Damn, they have some energy. I'll take it!