Shabu Shabu Dinner

Last night we went out to dinner to a Shabu Shabu restaurant downtown with Ramin, Tahereh, Dan, John and Michelle. Shabu Shabu is like a Chinese hot pot where you boil thinly sliced meat and vegetables in a pot on the middle of the table. We also added thick noodles to the mix. It's SO good!

John's only been here for a week...still trying to get used to chopsticks! He's from Oregon and is a forest firefighter.

Dan's new here too. He's been here for 3 weeks and is loving it! He's from Boston.

This little boy and his mom sat next to us...he was so cute!

Dan, John, Michelle, Tahereh, Ramin, Frank, Mel

After dinner, we had Krispy Kreme for dessert! It's the first one we've seen here, so we were pretty excited. It was a nice taste from home!

Snapshots of Ulsan

Well, we've been in Korea for 3 and a 1/2 months now and the time has flown by! We've taken a few random shots around Ulsan that we wanted to share with everyone.

This is the street we live on. Our apartment is a couple of blocks down the street on the right. Our neighborhood actually has a lot of foreigners living in various apartment buildings. Notice the McDonald's? We usually go there a couple times a month.


Around the corner from our apartment is this huge middle school.

Here are some boys at the middle school. It's crazy the hours of school that these kids have...a full day at regular school M-Sat, then various academies (English, math, science, etc) after-school until 11 or 12 at night! The English academy we work at has classes for middle school students until 11:45pm every night!!!!

Here's where we work, ELC. The first floor and part of the second floor are offices, and then classrooms are on the second through fifth floors. The school is one of the biggest in the area with 1,000 students. We have several busses that bring kids to and from ELC, which is nice for the parents. Our school is about a 5 minute bus ride from our apartment.

This is a sign posted-up in front of ELC with the teachers names and degrees.

This is a view from the bus stop in our neighborhood. Our apartment is behind and to the left of the brick building. The big stadium in the background is where the lake is that we walk around every day.

This is another view from the bus stop. Notice the huge church? There are churches everywhere here. S. Korea is about 50% Christian. We actually haven't seen any temples since we've been here.

This is Shinae, which is one of the shopping areas in Ulsan. It has a covered walkway with rows and rows of restaurants and stores.

Us shopping in Shinae with Ramin and Tahereh.

Florida shirt for sale...Go GATORS!!!

This is a bus that they made into a Levi's clothing store!

Hiking Mt. Munsu

Last weekend, we spent Sunday morning hiking up Mt. Munsu, which is one of the largest mountains near our apartment. After about an hour into our climb, we came across a rock platform where we sat and had lunch. The view was beautiful!

Ilsan Beach

Since we live in a coastal city, we decided to go on a day trip to the beach in Ulsan last Sunday. We looked-up what bus to take, but we weren't sure exactly where to get off since none of the information is in English. After a long bus ride to the opposite side of Ulsan, we finally managed to get off at the right stop...thanks to some helpful Koreans! We got off at the bus stop and luckily found Daewangam Park, which is a park known for its large rock cliffs and pine forest.

Ilsan Beach: The beach is along a bay, so it's pretty small. Supposedly in the summer, it's packed, but you can see that was not the case during this cold, winter day in Feb.

A group of kids flying kites...it was so windy!

At the entrance of the park, there was an area of food vendors set-up along the street selling some crazy foods, like bugs, weird fish, and corndogs covered in sugar (which were actually good)!



Daewangam Park: The park has a bridge that you can walk across to the rock cliffs that are along the ocean. We spent a while exploring here.

Light House: There was a light house at the park as well.

Pine Forest: The park also has a pine forest, which was interesting because it was right along the beach.

Hyundai Shipping Port: During the 1 hour bus ride, we could see the Hyundai shipping ports along the coast for about half the trip. (Hyundai manufacturing sites are based in Ulsan; operating the largest ship building facility in the world).

This turned-out to be a fun getaway for the 2 of us. We're hoping to come back when the weather's warmer.

Cooking Party!

Today we spent Valentine's day at our Korean friend's house for a cooking party with Ramin and Tahereh. Our Korean friend, Michelle, taught us how to make some Korean dishes that we like, kimchi-tuna soup and kim bop, which is a Korean twist on sushi.

Michelle, which is her English name, just started working with us a couple of weeks ago as a Korean teacher. She has invited us over to her condo a few times and seems to love to hang out with us! She's planning some trips that she wants to take us on around the area.

Melissa and Michelle cooking the kimchi-tuna soup


Having fun making kim bop


This is a view from Michelle's condo, which is on the 12th floor. Her condo is really nice. It's got 3 bedrooms with normal luxuries that we're used to at home...like real furniture and appliances.

We also celebrated Tahereh's 28th b-day today!

Our Apartment

Welcome to our Korean apartment! Living abroad, we have learned that we can live comfortably with a lot less, as you will see from our pics.

This is our apartment building. We're on the first floor in the back, so you can't see it from this picture. Our building is really small compared to most...3 levels, each with 3 apartments. It seems like most people live in apartments/condos here. We've seen very few houses. The apartment buildings are usually really tall. One of the students we teach lives on the 25th floor of her apartment!

This is our foyer. We have to remove our shoes and put them in a cabinet that's on the right.

When you first walk-in, you will see our "office" and living room.

Living room: Check out our new couch we ordered for only $100! It's "pleather" and a little hard, but it definitely beats sitting on the floor. The small red table is where we eat our meals.

One of the best parts of our apartment is our TV. We get about 5 channels in English!!! We can watch CNN International and there's always an English movie on at least one channel. In the morning, we can usually watch old episodes of shows like Grey's Anatomy, Without a Trace, Law and Order, and CSI Miami.

To the right of the entry way is our kitchen. Pretty basic...small gas stove, sink, and cabinets, but no oven or dishwasher.

This is the other side of our living room. To the right is the kitchen, the door leads to the bathroom, and the glass doors open to our enclosed patio/laundry room.

A close-up of our patio/laundry room. We don't have a dryer so we have to hang our clothes to dry out there.

To the left of the front door is our bedroom. Our bed is on a bed frame, but it's still only about 2-3" off the ground. We're just so thankful it's a real mattress and not a futon on the floor like in Japan!

This is the other side of our bedroom. We have another enclosed patio area here too that we use for storage. Another free-standing closet is out there, too.

Last but not least, our bathroom. As you can see, we shower in the middle of the bathroom...there's no curtain or tub. Water gets all over the toilet and sink, but we just leave the window open and it dries pretty quickly.