New job! New home!

After intense training work began a few days ago, both of us are teaching middle school students. Schools is crazy right now with the new school year just beginning, and everyone is trying to plan the whole year. Josh starts teaching first thing tomorrow morning, Nicole starts in a few days. Our apartment is about 20 minutes from our schools, on the third floor of a walk up building, very clean and spacious studio with a small balcony and a washer and dryer (yessss!!). Our neighborhood is one of the richest areas in Seoul, so we hear. It is very busy here, but things are beginning to fall into place. It was good to unpack after a month living out of our suitcases....

Here are some pictures of the neighborhood! 

There are 7 Elevens everywhere

Some neighboring apartments

Construction in our neighborhood

Giant crabs on the side of the street

Our apartment entrance! (Indoor photos to come)

Fire hydrant

More curbside exotic seafood

Gangnam (our district) main street

Marilyn Monroe.... kind of silly

Our street

Our street

Empty spaces are very rarely seen in this city 

Our building is the one on the left with the white car below

We have an apartment on the top floor

The view from inside our place

More neighborhood businesses and restaurants

Corner

Japanese fusion restaurant down the street

Wires

Neighborhood stuff

Street sign

Stumbled upon vol. I

sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. when entering unknown places in unknown cities you don't know what you will fall into, and this time is was a thumbs up. We found a little jazz club off the beaten path with wine and peanuts and expensive beer, but best of all a 7 piece band playing good music. The space was so avant garde it made the pearl district look out dated. forget exposed beams, this place had exposed rebar in broken concrete columns, and an antique tricycle welded to exposed cables for aesthetics!  Perhaps a million records filled bookcases lining the walls, more beautiful than any wallpaper you could buy! this is exactly the unexpected environment you hope for when you open a door not knowing what is behind....

we have arrived

After almost two weeks in Seoul we are getting acclimated and learning our way around this massive, intense city. The jet lag has fully worn off and we are feeling good now. The weather has turned from bitter cold to somewhat springlike, and this is a major plus! We didn't have to look too hard before finding the jobs we were hoping for, and that is teaching in the public school system. We start our training in a few days and school starts on the 2nd of March. Things are really falling into place, our adventure has begun!

Habongchon, Iteawon. Up the hill from Nate and Ira's house.

An electricians nightmare! This is standard here....

Statue of ancient Korean warrior

we walked along this stream, surrounded by street vendors and high rises.

Irina, Nathan, and Katya

Koreans treat Nathan like a celebrity, always wanting to take photos with him.

Namdeamun market--total chaos! This depicts only about 1/1000 of it!!

Nathan, Ira, Katya, Denis

Josh and Ira grabbing some coffee, the coffee here is about 3 times what it is in the states

A gas station, we almost passed right by without noticing what it was. Being such a densely populated city, the gas lines come from the hoses hanging down to save space.

More of Namdeamun market area

A typical side street

Subway

Sunset from Namsam, this is maybe 1/10 of the skyline!

Ira and Nicole buying scarves in Namdaemun market

Stained glass art in a subway station.