"getting used to"

hey!
its been a long time, this whole blogging thing has taken a back seat, sorry . . .

this past week was the last week of schooling for tova and I before our winter break so we were busy getting everything ready to go so we could enjoy our vacation as much as possible.

things have been going very well for us. we are pretty surprised as to how much we are enjoying it, and how little homesickness is hitting. it helps that we have pretty awesome friends here in sokcho, and that we have each other to have some company.

we have gotten in to a little routine and that makes us happy to a certain extent. we are trying to get out and hang out, but balancing that with trying to save money is pretty difficult :-(

i was talking to my brother yesterday and he asked if i was "used to living here" it got me thinking that it is very interesting what the term "getting used to" means now. living in another country makes "getting used to" a very interesting term.

we HAVE gotten used to living here. our co-teachers are phenomenal! we could not have been paired with people who could have been better. they have made our transition here as easy as possible. we have found a lot of food in our grocery store that we like, and we are getting used to the food at restaurants (personal note: the redder the dish, soup, or sauce, the hotter it is. this was a great point made by my co-teacher and its helped me a lot!) we have gotten used to withdrawing 50,000 won, and paying bills of around 360,000 won. it seems like a lot, but with the exchange rate being around 1350 to 1, its more like 37 bucks, and 266 bucks, but still seeing a bill with lots of zeroes is rather disheartening at the very least!

then there are aspects of living in another culture that you "get used to" since you are in a different culture but i might never find "normal" just cause its so out of my realm of understanding.

for instance:

these are dried fish/squid on a clothes line. its a normal sight here. there are probably 10 balconies in our building alone that have fish of some sort hanging from the railings or baskets and drying in the wind. we used to walk by them and stare, now we are "used to it"

also this:

you can buy a drumstick in the grocery store packaged just like this in the fridge section. it looks raw, but i saw a wrapper right outside the store, so i guess you eat it cold, and its cooked. again, we are now "used to" seeing these things in the stores.



and then my personal dangerously favorite picture:


this was taken outside a hagwon, which is a private school. there is a slide directly out the second story window. no railings in the sides, and pretty steep. we would NEVER see this in the states, and yet now we are "used to" it.

we have also gotten used to turning on the hot water before showers and washing dishes (we dont have any unless we turn it on), we are used to eating while sitting on the floor at restaurants, used to seeing korean commercials (who knew that if you smash your finger with a hammer all you need to do is drink oj and its ok, or that they use a talking radish who is losing his "hair" to sell payday loans!) and we are used to drying our clothes on drying racks rather then throwing them in a dryer.

so yes, we have gotten used to it. the one thing that i dont think we will ever get "used to" is the beautiful scenery in sokcho. we have the mountains to the west of us, the east sea to the . . . drum roll please . . . the east of us! and there is a very large beautiful lake not to far from us as well. every day i wake up and look out our apartment windows at the mountains, lake and sea (all visible from the same window in our apt!) and just cant stop thinking that "we live here" and being so grateful for the opportunity to experience a foreign land, grateful for everything that South Korea has to offer, and grateful to God that even through all of this I still see him in the everyday things and He has shown Himself True even thousands of miles away from home and the comfort that Someone is looking out for us.

We are now on vacation so we will be updating frequently and uploading many pics over the following weeks on our walking tours of sokcho, hope you enjoy!