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Hola,

I'm in the process of moving the blog. I have spent the better part of the morning archiving all the entries from this journal into a word document. It's 174 pages long. I'm still not sure whether I'm going to move all our old entries over to the new blog or not.

I"ll have the new address up when I get things up and running. For now just use this address.

Adios,

Today we purchased Quinn his first Crocs. Here is a picture.




He's been working on getting his Buddha belly back ever since he recovered from his illness. It's looking pretty good, as you can see here.



He's also working on two molars right now and is generally looking like a very big boy.



Here he is sharing some raisins with me.

I have been meaning to post our address for some time. We have bee informed that all mail for us should go through the school. Here is the address you should use if you want to send us anything:




Ben & Julia Sheridan
C/O Korea International School
373-6 Baekhyun-dong
Bundang-gu, Sungnam-si,
Gyeonggi-do, 463-420, Korea

We had a nice video chat with Molly this morning. Quinn was very excited to see and talk to her. We gave Molly a video tour of our apartment. It basically consisted of us walking around the apartment with our laptop and showing her each room. Since our apartment is fairly small it took only a couple minutes.

Here are some quimages of Q having lunch.




Here is Quinn goofing around after lunch.





Here is the skate park in our neighborhood.



Here is a picture taken from E-mart looking back towards our apartment. If you look for the arrow you will see where we live. We are on the 19th floor, second from the top.



Once again if you click on the picture it will open in another window. If you click on it one more time it will get large enough to see some detail. If you look in the foreground of the picture you can see a bike path next to a creek. That is the path we can take into work if we decide to ride our bikes. The path runs all the way into Seoul. It has paths that branch off in all directions that will take you to various areas of the city. You really have to pay attention while riding along this path. There are tons of people walking, riding, rollerblading, etc. Most of them are not really paying attention and weaving all over the path. As you can see there really aren't any pedestrians on the path in this picture. The picture was taken in the middle of the day and most everyone avoids the mid day sun like the plague.


Yesterday I went for a cool MTB ride with around 15 other expats. One of the guys on the ride was a fellow I work with. He is actually from AZ as well and an avid cyclist. We live fairly close to each other so we met up and rode to the trail head where we met up with everyone else. The ride had quite a bit of hike-a-bike. The guys said that most rides did not have this much hiking and were excited to show us some of the other rides in the area. Two of the riders were teachers at another international school. They live in a fairly close area and are keen to show us more trails. Sweet!

Tomorrow is our first day of work where we have kids. We are both excited to get things going and get into a groove.

Finally I'll leave you with some pics of a sweet Honda I saw outside of our apartment.





Adios

I have been so busy I haven't had time to take many pics. I did snap a couple at orientation the other day. One is from the BBQ the school sponsored and one is of the staff out on the field doing some team building activities. If you look into the distance you can see apartments in Bundang.






Adios,

We've been working for a week now. It's a bit hard to get back into the swing after three months off. This is the curse of the teaching profession. It usually takes me about a week to get into summer vacation mode and about a month to get out of it. Anyway, the returning staff came back to work yesterday, so now the whole staff is together (118 total, I think). Ben and I have met our teaching partners and everyone seems really nice. Everyone is full of enthusiasm so it is a fun environment. Today we even had some time to work in our classrooms...a good thing since the kids and parents are coming on Friday for orientation. Monday, the first day of school, is fast approaching. Yikes.

Yesterday we listened to a lecture given to the staff on Korean culture. It was given by an American guy who has lived here for 28 years. It wasn't the most informative talk, but it was very entertaining. He talked at length about funny things like not being able to get a straight answer from a Korean person. We have already experienced this at length. It's so true...they completely talk around things. Apparently even the language itself is ambiguous in nature, as they have little use for things like pronouns and plurals. To illustrate the point, he said that if you were to say to a Korean, "The sun is so bright today." He would most likely respond with something like, "Yes...the sun means brightness...without it we would die." And this Korean would secretly think you were an idiot for stating something so obvious.


The presenter also talked about how things seem very "western" on the surface here in Korea. And it's true. At first glance, things really aren't THAT different from what we're used to. But don't be fooled, said our speaker, because under the surface things are actually the complete opposite of western culture. There are countless hilarious examples of this, and when you really think about it it's amazing that the two cultures are able to blend with any sort of harmony at all. It's pretty impressive.

The best thing for us to do is realize that we are the guests and it is our job to assimilate as much as we desire or are able. I think the more we can let go of what we see as "the right way" of doing or saying something, the better off we'll be. This is a rather obvious sentiment when it comes to living and working in a foreign country, but I still need to remind myself of it. Especially here in Korea. And while this is one of the harder things about being an expat, it also carries one of the biggest benefits. It teaches you humility, over and over again. And in a backwards kind of way, it helps you see how similar all humans are.

On an unrelated topic, we've got more pictures coming soon...I know you're dying for them.

Today we went through more orientation at school. It was both informative and entertaining. We learned about a wide variety of topics, some of which had nothing to do with school. We went to a series of stations where we learned about things ranging from how to pay our utilities, common cultural courtesies, how and when to take out the trash and recycling(more difficult than you might imagine),how to get a substitute, as well as other topics related to living and working in Korea. After school I played some B-Ball with fellow staff members. Wow and I bad at B-ball. Luckily most everyone else is as well so I didn't feel so bad.

Yesterday we hopped on the subway and went to a place called Samsung Plaza. It is basically a big area for shopping etc. We mainly went just to check out the subway while we had the time to get lost and then get found again.

Saturday night we went to a restaurant below our apartment called "Raccoon". Despite the name it was actually pretty good. While we there a lady was playing peek-a-boo with Quinn and thought it was the coolest thing EVER. She was obviously a little tanked but Quinn thought it was hilarious so we went along. She continued to play around with Quinn over the next 20 minutes, eventually coming really close to actually joining our party. She was over at our table and came very close to sitting down. I saw her eying our beers, self preservation kicked in and I quickly drank mine. Her husband payed the bill and dragged her out the side exit. She had the last laugh though playing one final game of peek-a-boo on her way around the corner.

Quinn has been really enjoying his time in the nursery. He has made some new friends and enjoys playing with all the new toys throughout the day.

I brought my camera to school today meaning to take some pictures. It was such a busy day that I didn't get a chance. I'll try to get some in the next couple days and get them up.

It's been just over one week since we arrived in Korea. It has been one of the busiest and most stressful weeks of my life, but now things have started settling down. Quinn and Ben are both feeling much better. Today Q got to go to the nursery with the other kids, since he wasn't contagious anymore. He really enjoyed it and seemed really perky when I picked him up this afternoon. His rash is gone and his eyes are no longer red. He seems to have kicked the nasty illness.

By the way...if you're thinking that Quinn got some strange and exotic illness because we took him to a foreign country, you should know that measles has a 21 day incubation period. It seems he picked it up in Tucson.

Today was our third day of orientation. We went to the hospital and got our health checks for our work visas. The check-up included a dental exam, eye test, blood pressure, height and weight check, chest x-ray, and urine and blood samples. All in all it wasn't a bad experience. They were extremely efficient and we were in and out of there. The only hard part was that we couldn't eat or drink starting at midnight last night (I guess because of the blood test). So by the time it was all over (about noon) I was starving. Fortunately, Ben was way ahead of me in the queue and was waiting for me with coffee and donuts when I finished. What a guy.

Tonight Ben is off at a school social function at a place called The Beer Factory. We have met some really nice folks in the new staff so far, and look forward to meeting the returning staff on Monday.

I had a meeting with the athletic director today. I'm going to be the head coach of the varsity girls' volleyball team. It sounds like it will be a lot of fun. It's going to be a lot of work with practice and games and things, but I learned today that I'll actually be getting paid for it. I've coached at a few schools and have never been paid. I'm pretty excited. It sounds like our girls' team is pretty good, so that's exciting too.

This weekend we plan to get out and explore a little more now that the boys are feeling better.

Well, poor Quinn has had a hard go of it lately, but things are beginning to look up in the health department. Yesterday, Quinn was extremely sleepy all day. A few times he crawled up onto the couch and fell asleep all on his own. For those of you who know him well, you understand how uncharacteristic that is. His body also became covered in a mysterious rash and his eyes were red and oozing. He still had a fever, though it was much lower. We decided it would be best to make an appointment at the international clinic and figure out what is going on in his little body. Ben took Quinn to his appointment today. I stayed at school and took notes for both of us during our first day of orientation. It turns out Q has something called "three day measles". I've never heard of it but apparently it's quite common and once they get it, they become immune to it (kind of like chicken pox). It is characterized by a very high fever (check), cough and sore throat (check), and a rash (check!). Apparently the doctor knew instantly that this was the problem. The eye infection was unrelated, but probably happened because his immune system was compromised. Since the "measles" thing is viral, there's nothing he can do but let it run its course. He was prescribed some drops for his gunky eyes.

It's a relief to know that it's nothing serious, and he is already acting like he feels much better.

Ben has been getting progressively worse with his illness, so he decided to ask the doc to have a look at him while he was at Quinn's appointment. It appears he has some kind of throat infection, and the doctor prescribed him some antibiotics. Hopefully he will begin to feel better in a couple days.

As I mentioned, today was our first day of staff orientation. It was a busy day full of new information, but I think we're both feeling really excited about our new jobs. Quinn would normally be going to the nursery while we're working, but today he had to keep his distance from all the other little ones so he spent most of his time with one of the nannies in the library. The doc said he should only be contagious another 24 hours, so pretty soon he'll get to play in the nursery with the others.

Last night we had our first (and hopefully last) experience in the emergency room of a local hospital. Ok, now that I've got your attention...don't worry it was nothing too serious, everyone is alright.

As posted yesterday, Quinn has been feeling pretty bad for a few days. Yesterday afternoon, after the stroller shopping adventure, we took his temp again and it was down to 99.9. So we thought he was on the mend. Well, later that evening he seemed unusually hot and bad tempered, so we took it again and this time it was up to 104.5. He's never had a fever that high, and so I promptly freaked out. We're in a new country and obviously have no idea what to do for medical care yet (our school orientation starts Wednesday, I'm sure it will be covered then). Plus, I can't tell if I'm overreacting or if this is something that is really serious. So Ben decided to call our school director to get some advice. He's lived here for four years now and has two kids of his own, so we figured he would know. This was about 7:00 on a Sunday night, so we felt a little bad about bugging him, but he completely understood our situation and was really glad we called. He agreed that it was a very high fever and was very concerned. We had just given Q a dose of ibuprofen, so we decided to wait a bit for the meds to kick in and if they didn't lower the fever we would take him in to the ER (being Sunday night, all the clinics were closed). So we wait a bit and take his temp again. This time it reads 103.9...not much of an improvement, but we thought maybe we could wait until the morning. So we call the director back and tell him the situation. Before Ben can even finish saying, "I think we'll wait until the morning" our new boss is saying, "That's still really high, let's just take him in tonight". In a matter of minutes, a taxi has been arranged to pick us up and take us to Samsung Hospital, about 30 minutes away. While we're waiting for the cab, we get calls from three staff members. First, the school nurse to help us assess the situation (she agrees that we should take him in). Next, the business manager to discuss the health insurance situation (we don't have any yet) and let us know how much it's going to cost for the ER visit. And finally, another business office staff member to tell us the license number of the taxi that is waiting for us downstairs. Organized and efficient, to say the least.

So we head downstairs, screaming baby in arms, and hop in the cab. The taxi driver is pretending he is an ambulance driver and gets us there very quickly. When we arrive at the hospital, we are greeted by the school nurse (a Korean woman who will be translating for us), the director, and our elementary principcal (who just arrived the day before and was visibly jet-lagged). All three left their homes late on a Sunday night just to be there for us during a scary situation. I can't even describe how grateful we were for this. I actually teared up at the sight of them because I was so touched. Before I could even finish my profuse thanks, the director told us to please don't think twice about it, that they've all been there with feverish babies in the middle of the night and they're just glad they could be there to help. Wow.

After checking in we're told it will be about 2-3 hours wait (the pediatric ER is PACKED). Ben takes Quinn outside in the stroller so maybe he can get some sleep while we wait. After about 1 1/2 hours, we are called in to see the doctor. Through our translator (who also happens to have a medical background) we discuss his symptoms, pattern of the fever, etc. He briefly examines Quinn and concludes that he has a throat infection, and this is causing the fever. He tells us to take him back home, monitor the fever (making sure it doesn't go over 105), and give meds as needed. We are relieved that Q is OK and very ready to get home to bed. What a night.

So that brings us to this morning. Quinn woke up at 5:30, as he has been doing since we arrived. I was hoping that since he didn't get to bed until midnight that he might sleep longer, but nothing doing. Anyway, when he woke up he was noticeably cooler to the touch and after a banana and much, much apple juice he was in a bit better spirits. He was still very tired, though, and is currently already down for his morning nap at 8am. To add to all the drama, Ben is now deathly ill with the same thing. He's in bed too and so I am left alone with nothing to do but hope the same illness is not brewing in me.

Our transition to Korea has proven very easy in some ways, and very challenging in others. I know we're all looking forward to being well and being back on a normal schedule. We'll keep you posted.