Here is the restaurant where I ate lunch with my co-teacher, Matt and his co-teacher, and the director of the board of trustees, whose grandfather founded the school I will be working at. He was a very interesting guy, and the ETA from last year had only good things to say about him, so I'm glad to have him as a resource.






The view from the restaurant. Gyeongju's beautiful, isn't it?









Here is a garden outside of the school. Seondeok Girl's School is supposed to be the most beautiful school in the most beautiful city. I guess that makes it the most beautiful in Korea? I dare any ETA to contest....:P












More of the garden.










The front gate of the school.













Here I am making cookies in my homestay. These cookies are made with white bean paste, and they're DELICIOUS. 상투과자 :)








Here's the recipe for the cookies





















This is my homestay! See the stables? They used to raise horses...but no longer. Now they just have 4 dogs.













This is my host sister Eun-mi with the cookies we made. She's very sweet and her English is very good. I think she'll be one of my students at Seondeok, actually.















This is the grass that grows all around their house, where there aren't trees or road. I think it's gorgeous to watch the wind waft through the tall grass.













Here is one of their Korean dogs. He's a guard dog. He barks a lot and once bit their other dog, a cocker spaniel named Mo-pi. They have 3 of them. They sort of remind me of a Chow-Chow, I bet they're a related breed.











Here are my host sisters, Eun-mi and Chan-mi with Mo-pi, their cocker spaniel who lives outside. She's adorable (and so are my sisters). She got away from where she usually lives and followed me around for a while when I went for a walk, which was lucky because she's not supposed to go near the other dogs. They bite her.




Host mother and sisters and pup. They're all super sweet. Also my name fits right in. They have 3 daughters, Sumee, Eun-mi and Chan-mi, and my Korean name is Jinmee. I think they're going to start calling me that, and I think I'm going to start calling my host mother imo and her husband imo-boo, which technically means aunt and uncle, but they seemed very happy when I suggested that. I think it's more comfortable for them if I adopt Korean titles for them than call them by their first names. Even though they lived in American for 10 years, they are still very Korean. Actually, all of their daughters were born in the States and have dual citizenship for the moment, although they will have to choose when they turn 20 here (18 in the US). They've said that they would prefer to take American citizenship and study there instead of here.




Host mother and sister hard at work in the kitchen.













This is my room! It already needs to be cleaned...but I have picked up since I took this picture.

Well that's about it. Tomorrow we'll spend all day touring Gyeongju tourist spots, many of which I've actually seen before when I was here 10 years ago. Should be a lot of fun.