Mid West to Far East: Archive

My Birthday: Now Available in Korean!

Had a great 26th birthday here in Korea! This year fell on a Tuesday, so not much partying going on but still very eventful. Around 11:30am, Chels told me we were going somewhere special for lunch. We went downstairs and the whole English department from school was waiting for us. We hooped into two cars and drove 30 minutes south to Bondang to the Daily King’s Diner “The Original...

Feb 14th

Watch

A brief recap of some of the things we have been able to catch on video over the past month or so.

Feb 5th

Puffin

We had a great dinner the other night with some coworkers at a restaurant called Puffin down in Osan. The food was great, I got some nachos while Chels got some fajitas. It was nice spending some time with our Korean coworkers outside of work and we hope we can do it again soon. Here are some photos from the night. Isaac, Me, Chelsea, Ranhee, Christina, Mrs. Lee and Rachel Ray, Isaac and...

Jan 31st

January in Recap

Okay, January has been a long month with lots of work and some fun along the way. We had NYE in Seoul, which I covered earlier as well as our trip to the Andy Warhol exhibit, both with Bryan and Selina. I’ll post some cool videos after this post as well of some fun things we have seen. We also got to watch Iowa win the Orange Bowl here in Korea. Wasn’t the same watching it on my work...

Jan 31st

The Streets of Dongtan

Hello everyone! Are you dying to see the city of Dongtan?!? To see it from the streets just like we do?!? We’ll you’re in luck!! This week I finally found a site that is the equivalent to Google Maps Streetview for South Korea. Streetview. The map is centered directly over our building with an arrow on it. To get to to Streetview, look right above the navigation buttons for the map,...

Jan 9th

We Now Have Internet!

That’s really all I’ve got for today…So go check my past couple posts, I’ve added some more photos. ~Ian

Jan 6th

New Years Weekend In Seoul

What an excellent weekend. First off it was a whole THREE DAY weekend! We typically have a one day weekend so this was huge. We got off work around 6:00pm on Thursday, New Year’s Eve, and met up with Bryan and Selina around 8:30pm to take the express bus to Seoul. We did some pre-partying on the bus and 30 minutes later were dropped off in the district of Gangnam in Seoul and jumped onto the...

Jan 4th

YES Dongtan Christmas Party

On Monday our director took us out to eat at the chicken restaurant downstairs along with the whole staff to celebrate the end of the year and the one year anniversary of the school’s opening. It was the first time the whole staff had gotten together outside of work and ended up being so much fun. Isaac, Ray, Ranhee, Rachel, Megan, Chelsea and I We started the night out with food,...

Dec 31st

Suwon Station and Yongsan Digital City

What a good weekend. On Saturday we made our way to the Lotte Cinema via bus and taxi to see Sherlock Holmes. The 7:30 show we had wanted to see was all sold out so we had to wait for the 9:50 showing. With the extra wait time we went to eat at a restaurant called “Western Hof”. We had garlic chicken, which was okay and lots of Cass and just hung out. Come show time we got our...

Dec 28th

Watch

Dec 28th

Christmas in Dongtan

Christmas was a wonderful success in Dongtan! Christmas Eve we got done with work around 8:30 and went to our favorite Korean BBQ restaurant and got some great food as always. On the way home we picked up our Christmas cake bear and some booze for our night of Christmas movies. We watched Christmas Vacation to start the night, classic Grizwalds! We then watched Vegas Vacation, I know not a...

Dec 26th

Costco; Korean Style

Today our co-worker Isaac and his girlfriend took Chelsea, Megan and I to Costco in Seoul. The drive was only about 25 minutes, but parking took about another 20 minutes. Isaac helped me sign up for a membership card, 35,000 won, and we were off. The place was a mad house, with giant shopping carts, crowded aisles and oversized products, we were lucky to get out of there alive. We found some much...

Dec 17th

Dec 12th

Watch

Starting the Christmas celebrations in Dongtan with our first of many Christmas trees as a family. This really makes our place start to feel more like a home but also reminds us of all those who we miss and love back home. We also had our first signs of snow today with flurries but nothing stuck, besides the coldness. Now we just need to work on putting presents under the tree, guess we’ll be...

Dec 5th

Dec 1st

Nov 29th

Nov 25th

First Take on Korea (Dong-tan)

We’re here, we made and we’re in one piece! It’s been a whirlwind of activity these past three days, really more like six with the chasing down of our visas and driving to Chicago twice, 14 hour flight, being thrown into classes with little knowledge of what’s going on…it’s been heavy… But it’s getting better each day, I can tell, and it’s...

Nov 25th

Last Night In America

It’s our last night in the US before jumping on our plane for the 14 hours journey to South Korea. The plan is to stay up all night in an attempt to try to jump start our transistion to Korean time, we’ll see how well it works. We have our bags packed, visas is hand (finally) and are just counting down the hours now. It’s 17 hours at the moment…It’s going to a long...

Nov 21st

The Home Stretch

Here we are, in the bottom of the 9th, and getting set to steal for Korea…or something like that…We got our flights finalized today, finally, out of Chicago at 11:20am, this Saturday, November 21st. We’ll be having a final interview at the Korean Consulate this Wednesday for the finishing touches on our visas and then we should be good to go, and I mean GO! We’ll be...

Nov 17th

Watch

Thought I would throw up Kendra and Dave’s video I did for their wedding as well to have them in the same place. Hope to have something similar for Chelsea and I’s wedding sometime soon. ~Ian

Oct 25th

Watch

Haven’t had time yet to splice anything together, but her is Chelsea and I’s first dance as husband and wife on 10/17/09.

Oct 24th

3 Weddings, 2 Classes and a Year in Korea

So here we are, in the home stretch towards Chelsea and I’s impending departure for Korea. We’ve tried twice to get married, the first was thwarted by forgetfulness on our part and not remembering the marriage license and the second by the Deacon’s signature being put on the incorrect line…so that brings us to the third and from what I am told, the one which should be the...

Oct 24th