Wonderful News!!

Right now, Keith and I have a winter break until March, which is when the new school year begins. However, we have to do a little desk warming (sitting in the office) and we have one week of camp that we have to work for our school. Besides that, we'll both have time to relax at home and catch up on things in the office. One thing we will have to start doing is preparing for our new job starting next September.

For those who haven't heard yet, Keith and I just received teaching positions at the new international school opening here in Jeju next September. The benefits are wonderful and there are not many teachers working there (only about 35 in all, 4 from here in jeju...2 of our friends and us) and the other teachers will be hired from all around the world and will have 10 years of experience and masters degree) so we got very lucky with being offered the job when we did, plus the school is an American school so we will both be teaching our subject areas in which we got our degree in! I will be teaching language arts and reading for middle level and also having a spanish club and Keith will be in charge of the entire health/PE program. The director who interviewed us and hired us studied at Harvard Univ. and has taught for 30 years at private schools around the world, so I am sure he will be a great mentor for us. We are so excited and still cannot believe we just got offered such amazing jobs!

It's a 2 year contract and although we were planning on moving to Hong Kong next year to get our masters degree, we were surprised to be able to get into the international school system (which was our later goal and was one reason why we wanted to get our masters degree in the first place). We are still hoping to get our masters degree at some point but now we can feel relieved to know that we have a great job for the next two years.

It's a good end to 2010 and an exciting way for us to start off the new year!

New Year's Eve!

Finally we celebrated New Year's eve last Friday. Our friend Simon, who is from England, is an outstanding cook. Everyone knows him for his amazing chef skills. Well, soon he will be opening a catering business here in Jeju and to promote it he had a big food tasting/new years eve dinner for anyone who would like to come and try his food before going out and partying. Keith and I went and all the food blew us away! He made a tasty lasagna, sweet potato ravioli, hummus, lemon chicken, teriyaki shrimp, and steak skewers, tons of dessert like pudding, cheesecake, fudge, peppermint patties and tons of more dishes. After visiting for a while, we walked from his house to city hall where we went to a popular bar called The Factory where all our friends were meeting to watch this new band. It was a fun night and we had the big countdown at midnight. I always think that each year is always better than the last so I am very excited to see what the new year brings! Welcome 2011!

We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and New Year's Eve! Love and miss you all! Stay in touch. Happy new year! ~2011~

My 25th B-day! Time flies by!

Following Christmas, we celebrated my 25th b-day. Keith organized a dinner at a delicious brick-oven pizza restaurant, where we had Italian pizza and wine. The pizza was so good and the oven they used was even brought from Italy! The restaurant had a great atmosphere...dimmed lights, a heater right in front of our table (which was so nice since it was so cold and snowing so much outside), Norah Jones x-mas music playing and we even had our own private room for our party. Keith ordered a yummy cookie cake made by Christine who is known for her wonderful bakery goods here on the island. Keith had her put Garfield the cat on the top! Cute idea! Keith was also thoughtful enough to make some tickets for me...including five 30-minute massages, a week of not doing the laundry, dishes or cooking, and a movie night out. What a romantic guy!

Christmas on Jeju!

Wow! I've been so busy lately with celebrations!

We first celebrated Christmas Eve, in which we went to our neighbors' kyla and mike's apt in our building for an ugly sweater cocktail x-mas party. Then the next morning for Christmas we talked to family on skype, then had a brunch at our neighbor's, lunged around all day and relaxed and opened some gifts, then went to another neighbor's apt, Miriah's, for a potluck Christmas dinner. It was a great time to spend with our close friends here, although we missed everyone at home. On Sunday, Keith and I took out all our piggy bank money that we've been saving since September, and with the surpring $150 that we had saved, we went out on an all-day x-mas date. We went to our favorite Indian restaurant, walked around Shinjeju in the snow looking at Jeju sculptures, played the b-ball arcade game and then saw the new Harry Potter and we topped it off by having some delicious hot chocolate and cheesecake at our favorite Chocoart cafe.