the first few days

So. This is my first experience blogging. For the past couple days I've been attending a teacher training program at the Sogang University, and I've had a chance to meet some of the other foreign (and domestic) teachers here in Seoul. One of them told me about how convenient blogging is, especially if you want to write little messages about stuff right away. This probably means that you'll be hearing my thoughts on all sorts of insignificant details about Korea and Koreans that strike me as interesting.

First Impressions:

• the food is delicious-but spicy, extremely filling, often involves eggs and always involves kimchi (more on that later)
• Koreans are extremely nice people when you interact with them, but for the most part just stare at us Westerners like we're diseased
• the metro is like a dream come true (sorry, Anna, it is, in fact, way nicer than the NY subway), especially given the fact that you can buy cell phones in the station
• Seoul is lovely: beautiful city with lots of trees and parks, very tall buildings, and a gorgeous river running through it.
• children are children everywhere (again, more on that later, too=)
• sparkles and giant flowers on shoes for women and metallic silver suits for men are definitely "in"
• cars seem to get points for hitting pedestrians
• the language....gonna be a challenge, particularly pronunciation.....

I'll write more in a bit, but for now thanks for reading. I miss you all tons. Think about you all the time. Good luck with everything! Lots of love till next time,

Maria