Fuzz!

I have a washing machine in my apartment, but not a dryer, and as a result, have realized just how much lint/fuzz is produced when you don't have a dryer to take it all away! I've finally decided to never wash a towel with my clothes, but some of my clothes are absolutely covered with towel fuzz now!

I got through my first week of school with no problems. I still want to wait a little bit before I start talking about my kids, but I've been pretty impressed so far! One thing that's really nice is that I don't have to get up until 6:00 now, as opposed to the 5:00-5:20 I was getting up back in Washington! There is something to be said for an 8:00 start time! Plus, we have 4 80-minute periods a day, with all teachers getting a prep each day, and a 65-minute lunch/activity period, so I have a lot of time right now for planning, grading, etc. At Kamiak we had a 55 minute prep and a 30 minute lunch.

Last night I went out with some of the teachers for a girls night out and some of the teachers who had taught at other international schools were telling stories, which were really interesting. One teacher, who just got done teaching for 3 years at a school in Alexandria, Egypt, was saying that one of her friends who was a social studies teacher there, brought a globe and a couple of world maps with her and customs literally cut out Israel from the globe and maps, which is pretty crazy. And then, another friend of her's was teaching in Kuwait and went to visit Israel. I guess if you tell the Israeli customs folks to not stamp your passport, they won't, because most other Middle Eastern countries won't let you in if you have an Israeli stamp. So she asked them not to and they said OK, but it accidently got stamped anyway, so she called her school to ask them what to do and they said to throw her passport away and get another one from the embassy because the Kuwaiti customs folks wouldn't let her back in, even though she had a job there. Crazy stuff.

The 1st picture is of the walking trail that's near my apartment that literally goes the whole way through Seoul. Since I'm on the edge of the city, it's not too long before you're out in the semi-country. The other one is of the "main street" (it probably has an actual name, but I don't know what it is!) that's about 2 blocks away from my apartment building.