Sarah decorated our apartment for Christmas!
Our Daegu friends (L-R: Fraser, Tom, Ann, Sarah, Jen, me, Soo Yean, Chris, Sydney, Kat, & Tyler)
Sarah and I were able to host a group of our friends on Christmas Eve for a very fun and festive Christmas party extravaganza.
Tom & Chris decorating Christmas cookies
The afternoon and evening were filled with plenty of fun things, not to mention some delicious food (honey baked ham, pesto pasta, 7-bean chilli with pineapple, mashed potatoes, buffalo chicken dip, etc.). We had a lot of fun things we did, including a white elephant gift exchange, baking and decorating Christmas cookies, doing a Secret Santa gift-giving time, and watching "A Muppet Christmas Carol".
Christmas cookies from our Christmas Eve party
On Christmas Day, I woke up early and cooked Sarah a traditional American Christmas breakfast- A broccoli and cheese omelette with crispy fried bacon and orange juice. We then got our day started by reading the Christmas story from Luke 2:1-20 and taking time to pray and remember why we celebrate this season.
Next we got to have a special Christmas just the two of us, taking time to give each other gifts and celebrate the blessings we have as a married couple. You can see several photos below for some of our "highlight" gifts.
I got Sarah the book "Pyongyang: A Journey In North Korea" by Guy Delisle
Sarah bought me some nice-smelling cologne
I bought Sarah a matching hoodie and sweatpants "Chick Chick" outfit...haha!
Sarah bought me a Cleveland Indians hat to represent my hometown team in the U.S.!
We hope that everyone back home had an equally relaxing and blessed Christmas weekend, and we truly wish you all the best as we look forward to the start of 2012.
Brad & Sarah
This is great! Thank you for keeping all of this in writing. I will treasure it forever :)
ReplyDeleteHi! I found your youtube channel and I love your videos. I am really interested in teaching in Korea in the summer and I was just wondering what agency/website you went through in the states. How would you rate them? Also, around what time (like which month) did you apply and how soon did you hear back. Sorry for all the questions but I'm hoping to get some first person answers and there isn't a lot of that on the internet.
ReplyDeleteThank you and keep up the blog posts and videos! They are entertaining and they make me want to go to Korea even more!
Hi #trainofthought!
ReplyDeleteThanks for looking us up and following along with our blogs. So excited to hear you are interested in teaching English in Korea!!
We went through an organization called Gone2Korea (www.gone2korea.com). They were really good on the front end of the process and walked us through the application and interview portion extremely well. Once we got accepted into the program though, they sort of left us to fend for a lot of things on our own. All in all, I'd give them somewhere around a 6 or 7 out of 10.
The biggest issue we had with them was they were not clear on a few important documents, and we wound up having to pay Korean taxes (which U.S. sentences are exempt from with the proper form) and also my wife Sarah brought the wrong diploma with us to Korea based on miscommunication, and she was not allowed to move up in her salary even though she is qualified and has the credentials.
I'd recommend you check out some other organizations that go through EPIK, or maybe just go through EPIK directly and cut out the middle man.
Good luck and if you have any more questions, PLEASE ask!
Cheers,
Brad
Hey Brad.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for replying so quickly! I think I may go directly through the EPIK website. I have one more question...I read that the Korean summer vacation starts in late July and classes restart in late August so I was wondering what the teachers do during that gap time? I know the contracts expire in September so I'm curious about what a teacher's responsibilities are then.I really want to do the EPIK program for 2012 but I am starting law school mid-august(2013) and I'm hoping that I can some how find a way to make this happen!
Thank you for answering all my questions! You've been a really helpful!
Hey!
ReplyDeleteYea, if you come to Korea in August, the teaching contract ends the following mid-August, so you'd totally be able to start law school after your year in Korea. :)
From late July until the end of your contract, you will probably do some winter camps and maybe some desk-warming (sitting at your desk looking "busy"...LOL!). This also happens in January and part of February too for their winter break. These are also the 2 times in the school year where you can use your vacation time to travel or just NOT be at school. It's a really nice deal!
Hope this helps...PEACE!