School!

Hello everyone!

Yesterday Jin and Lili started attending Korean school. Here is what Jin wrote to her teacher and classmates about their new school:

Lili and I started at our new school here in Korea today! Lili is in one class and I am in another. Our teachers are very nice. They speak Korean and a little bit of English. We wear uniforms at our new school. Today we wore our yellow PE uniforms because we went on a field trip to a park. Tomorrow we will wear our new skirts and sweaters. My daddy attached picture of us in our PE uniforms in front of our shuttle bus. The bus picks us up at home in the morning and brings us home after school.

And we have new backpacks too, with special lunch trays. Today we had gimbap (Korean sushi) for lunch.

We really like our new school, but we miss all of you at R.L.Beattie School.

LOVE JIN XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOX

The second photo, taken today, shows them in their regular school uniforms.

We found the school, a kindergarten, through our building manager. Her youngest son is 7 years old (in Korean age, but 5 or 6 in calander years) and attends this school. When we were viewing the apartment we mentioned our interest in having the girls attend a Korean school during our stay. The manager said she would enquire at her son's school to see if there was space and interest in taking on 2 non-Korean speakers. We set up an appointment at the school this past Tuesday to check the place out and meet the principal. She was very nice (could speak some English as she had lived in Canada and the US for a couple years) and they were very accommodating to us. Kindergartens are not part of the public school system here, although most children attend them. They are privately run and for childern ranging from 2 or 3 years old up to 7 or 8 years old, so they are kind of like a combination day care-kindergarten. Being private the costs can vary, but the fees for this school (which includes uniforms, backpacks, lunch trays, lunches, shuttle bus, and all other supplies) were considerably less than day care back home. They also gave us a large discount in consideration of the purpose of our trip to Korea. The school is located in Oksu-dong, the neighbourhood "next door" and only 10 minutes away by shuttle bus when there is no traffic (which is alomst never!). Will take and send some photos of the school itself for a future post.

Today was their first real day of school, as they went on a field trip to Yongsan Park yesterday. So far they seem to love it. Hope the interest and fun continues for them. Deb and I are enjoying being able to travel around the city on our own. Still have some shopping to tell you about (there is a Costco here!) and hope to do some serious touristing as well. We are also going to look into language classes for ourselves. More about these adventures in upcoming posts - we've got some great shopping/food stories to tell you about.

I'll end off with a couple photos of the girls enjoying our local inner-city playground.

Bye for now,

Derek, Deb, Jin and Lili

p.s. I've added a few links and photos to the sidebar. More photos to come. If you have any questions or requests or suggestions for the blog, just post a comment or send us an email at: deb.derek@yahoo.ca. Thanks.