This week has been incredibly busy. Lets see... Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday of this week I worked at the Elementary school on the base. I am working full time at the school now from 7:40am to 3:30pm. I am co-teaching a K-2nd grade class with 15 students. I am currently teaching all of the K-8 students at the school "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" in the morning before classes begin and am teaching an additional music class to any students wishing to attend, on Monday and Wednesday afternoons right after school.
After my school day on Monday and Wednesday, from 4:00pm to 5:00pm Dave and I are taking a Korean language class on base. The course is only an hour long and will only go for 8 weeks, but the class is free, so anything we learn will be good.
After much ado about money (we had to figure out how to get enough Korean Won to buy a car, without being able to go to our own bank) on Tuesday, Dave and I went to Masan and bought a car!!!! We had to pay cash for the car because Korean banks won't accept an American check... and they do not extend credit to non Koreans, which is understandable. I took the picture above of Dave holding 4,200,000 Korean Won (about $3,700). We figured this might be the only time we would get to hold 4,200,000 bucks!
The Catholic priest where we attend Mass has a friend who belonged to his old parish in Masan, and who owns a new and used car dealership. Our priest and the Doctor on base (who is also Catholic and we see regularly at church) both kindly agreed to go with us to the car dealership (on the Sunday before) to help us look at a car and decide on a price. The people at the car dealership did not speak any English, so we were incredibly appreciative. After looking at a few cars, we decided on a 2005 Hyundai Click, also known as the Hyundai Getz, in India. It's a tiny little car but it is clean and we like it.
I have named it "The Rice Cooker" because in contrast to the super speedy, supped up (Rice Rockets) Japanese and Korean cars, usually driven by young Asian males, our car is really practical. It's small, silver, gets good gas mileage and was quite affordable. In other words, it get's the job done. And besides that... it kind of resembles a fancy rice cooker!
In all seriousness, we are very happy with our purchase. It was a good price and it runs well. Thus far we have only had to replace the windshield wiper blades and put gas in it, which is a good sign. It is really nice to finally be able to DRIVE the groceries up the hill instead of feeling like a pack mule.
On another completely unrelated note, our Household Goods shipment arrived on Thursday of this week (that is why I was not working at the school on Thursday). Almost everything arrived in good shape. The only casualty was our bed frame which sadly wasn't a shipping issue at all but the result of a tired moving company employee, in a rush to leave. 6 screws, instead of being unscrewed at disassembly were torn from their snug resting places taking chunks of wood with them, and leaving huge holes where the screws were supposed to go. We have been working on the house since the movers arrived, early Thursday morning, and we have accomplished a tremendous amount! I can officially announce that the Kitchen is completely done. The cupboards are neatly arranged, everything has a place and it is clean.
The bunny room / office is mostly finished. We wanted to get this set up so that Julia Child could enjoy her new play house.
Today Dave and I went up to Camp Walker in Daegu where we bought some things we needed including a new area rug! (Once the house is finished, we will shoot a new video and take more pictures so that you can see what our place looks like with stuff in it.) We also bought a microwave... but when we unpacked it it was dented, so we have to return it...
Any way, that was our week! I hope you enjoyed reading my blog. An-yung-he Kay-say-yo! (Goodbye!)
