The cold

  Korea is cold.  Vietnam was warm.  But Korea is decidedly cold.  The snow that we received last week was apparently the most that Pohang has had in 93 years.  And, as you'd suspect, they weren't really ready for it.  I think the city owns only one snow plow and it didn't make it to our neighbourhood until Wednesday or Thursday.  So there are large areas of driven-over snow which has become ice that are pretty traitorous - especially for the scooters. 
  But Pohang, and possibly Korea in general, doesn't seem to deal with the cold very well either.  Every newly and currently-being built building that I've seen - and there are quite a few of them in our area -  are built without insulation.  So the buildings don't hold heat very well at all.  You can tell when the owners of a restaurant thinks you've stayed long enough and wants you to leave because they turn off the heat and it suddenly gets very cold.
  Moreover, our school might be the coldest building in the country, no joke.  We have one running heater in the building and it heats up the entrance area.  But the teacher's room and the upstairs classrooms are frigid - sometimes seemingly colder than outside.  Most of us are teaching in our winter coats.  I know I'm Canadian and should be able to deal with it, but in Canada we have warm buildings at least.  I can only guess that the reason our school isn't warmer is because our directors rival the dutch for cheapness.
  With that in mind, it hasn't been the easiest to transition from holidaying in Vietnam to working in Korea.  I think being with Natasha's family has made me miss my family all the more.  I also miss my old friends.  It's been five months and ten days, which isn't too long, but I've found it somewhat difficult to make solid friends here.  This is likely due to the transient nature of our profession.  You never know when a fellow English teacher's contract expires and they're off to another adventure.  That's certainly been  one difficulty of living in Korea.
  If this blog sounds a little bit gloomier than others, you're right it is.  My mom and sister say that I'm probably going through the usual stages of moving to a new culture: first things are exciting and new, and then things change to being different and unusual.  I think this is likely part of what I've been feeling lately.  But I also don't mean to sound completely gloomy.  I'm enjoying many parts of my life here, one of them being the snow.  I had a random one minute snowball fight with a pair of neighbourhood boys as I was walking back from the store last week.  And I got to church yesterday for the first time in a while.  The visiting preacher told us a quite amazing personal story of difficulty in his life.  The message was 'worry not', which is always a pertinent message I find.  Also, I'm excited that a korean co-teacher has offered to teach Larina, a co-foriegn-teacher, and I Korean.  And school has been going smoothly.  I receive much joy from my students.  I like them a lot. 
  So that's how things are here with me.
Thanks for reading.
Michael