ChasingDonguri

Overview
Marisa thought I should write up a little something for those of you who may not be familiar with blogs, or how they "work." The truth is, there's nothing really fancy or complicated about it: open your web browser (like Internet Explorer or Firefox), type in our web address (which is www.chasingdonguri.com), and hit "Enter." That will take you to our mail blog page, where you can read all of our incredibly interesting updates. You will see that each blog "post" has a headline, and a date to the right which indicates when the post was made in Korean time (which is GMT + 9, 14 hours ahead of Central US time). Each blog post also shows a picture of either myself or Marisa under the date, which indicates which of us made the post in question. You can see that this post has my picture displayed, because I posted it.

Photos
Anything that we write in terms of updates will be posted to the top of the front page of our blog, so new posts will be readily visible when you come to our webpage. We will also post some pictures on the front page to go with the updates; however, we will not post ALL of our pictures to the front page. If you want to browse through all of our pictures, you will need to click on the "photos" link at the very top of the page (There's a row that says "Blog, Scrapbook, Photos, Videos, About Us" -> click on the "Photos" link). That link will take you to a page which displays all of our photo albums: click on an album, and you can browse through the pictures in that album. So any time we upload new pictures, they will into an album on our photos page. Like with the photos, any videos we take will be present on the "Videos" page, but these will usually be posted to the front page of our blog as well.

Scrapbook
The "Scrapbook" link will let you browse through Marisa's scrapbook, as she adds pages to it: currently she doesn't have any scrapbook pages completed, so there is nothing there.

Commenting
At the bottom of each blog post there will be a link that says "Add a comment"; clicking on that link will allow you to say something in response to the post, like "really cool post," or "I also like pink giraffes." If someone has already made a comment, the link will say something like "2 comments" -> you can still click on the link to add your own comment.

Getting Email Updates
If you would like to be updated by email when we post something new to our blog (so that you don't have to keep coming to the webpage to check), there is a cool service called RSS Forward that will allow you to do just that: simply go to www.rssfwd.com and enter the website address of our blog into the form on the front page, then click "Submit," and follow the instructions to enter your email address. Once you have subscribed to our blog via RSS Forward you will receive any new posts you make in your email inbox. Images and videos will be removed, however, so I recommend visiting our site any time you get an email about an update.

That's It!
That's basically it. There are a variety of other little features that you can discover and explore for yourself (or maybe I'll post about some of them later on), but that's it for the basics.

Appendix A: Why Blog?
Okay, okay, so some of you may be wondering what all of this hoopla is about: what is it with us young people anyway? Why can't we just send out email updates the old-fashioned way? After all, email was good enough for our grandparents, right? Here are a few of the benefits of blogging, from our perspective:

1. A blog allows us to update everyone at once about our general experience: we can then use email for the personal notes and such.

2. A blog allows information to be better organized and more accessible than email. Fancy things like archiving, tagging, and searching can be implemented easily.

3. A blog allows us to update you with pictures, videos, and scrapbooks, rather than with text alone.

4. A blog allows freedom of choice: if you don't want to be bombarded with what's happening in our lives, you can simply stop visiting the site, rather than having to resort to an embarassing email explaining how you want to be taken off our list because we're boring.

5. A blog allows for a larger audience: should someone outside of our circle of family and friends be searching the internet hoping to find a few stories from people teaching English in Korea, they might be lucky enough to stumble upon our site.

Appendix B: What's With the Name?
A couple of you will understand the name, and if you've read Annie Dillard you might get the byline... I'll explain them later on.

I've spent the past two days talking about myself. I have 18 different classes and in everyone this week I have to introduce myself and say as much as possible. Then I get to respond to questions from the students. Luckily this is highly entertaining, and keeps the process from being too repetitive. The most popular questions include: how old am I? (met with loud exclamations of disbelief and excitement. I gather the previous English teacher was 55, so perhaps that's why it's so exciting. Or perhaps I look really old. Or perhaps they think I am too young to be here?), how old is Jordan? (this is met with even more exclamations. From this I can only gather that most couples here are not the same age.), do I have a baby? (always said with numerous giggles, this is middle school I guess, and babies are funny), how tall am I? (I can't deny that I love this question. My co-teacher always reinforces my answer by taking off her shoes and standing next to me, showing that I am indeed several inches taller than her), how tall is Jordan? (clearly met with wild excitement and disbelief, since they already thought I was tall), is Jordan handsome? (of course), as well as many questions about my favorite things and my knowledge and enjoyment of Korean food (as if I would claim to not liking kimchee to any Korean). Some of the more interesting questions and statements have been: Is Jordan fat? (the answer was met with much disappointment), being told that I have a high nose (I took this as a compliment), having Edelweiss sung to me (I sang along) do I like beer (umm, no), and what do I want to be when I grow up (I lied and said a teacher). Erica also generated some interest in one class when a boy asked if she was pretty.

The co-teacher I've working with the past two days, Miss Doo, has been very nice and seems to find her students highly entertaining. She clearly enjoys them very much, even though they are loud and crazy, so that makes it fun to work with her. I believe I will have a total of 4 co-teachers I'll be working with and it will be interesting to see how they all handle the classroom.
My school is quite large. It contains grades 7,8 and 9, with about 300 students per grade broken up into nine different classes. I teach grades 7 and 8, since the ninth graders are preparing for some test and I'm not experienced enough to teach them. I'll also have conversation classes in the afternoons with specially selected students and faculty. These haven't started yet, but I'm looking forward to having more personal conversations with people.
My main co-teacher who has been helping me adjust to Korea is Ms Park. She was delighted to discover that she is the same age as my mom and declared herself to be my Korean mother. I think she may even have a daughter my age as well. At least one close in age. She is very kind and always telling me what to do. On the first day of school she decided I was too scantily clad and gave me her scarf to wear "in front of the students" and also gave me pointers about what shoes the teachers wear.
In the school everyone wears indoor shoes or slippers. The women all wear what look like normal shoes, the men where sandals, as do the students. I only have one pair of shoes with me. I don't have enough to designate one for indoor and one for outdoor. So I've been wearing various things. I guess my slippers were not acceptable to Ms Park. But I think come winter I'll be wearing them again, because my sandals will be a bit cold. I've decided to give them a week to get used to me and then I'll wear what I want on my feet.
For the first time in my life I've found myself eating hot lunch. I wasn't really given a choice in the matter, and it seems that everyone eats the school lunch, so I've been going along with it. Also, I think I may be paying for it somehow, so I figured I should eat it. But for a girl who wouldn't even eat hot lunch in the States where they serve chicken nuggets, this food is a bit of a stretch. But I've been eating it; I just tell myself that's it's very healthy and good for me to eat. Then I close my eyes and eat the seaweed that is served on the side. I also stuff my mouth with rice, since they don't have water with the meals, so I have to wash it down with rice. The highlight has been eating a donut with chopsticks. Today I had a chicken drumstick which I was at a bit of a loss how to eat. They offered me a fork, but I said, "in America we eat these with our fingers, a fork isn't going to help me."
The day is almost over now and I've been informed by the co-teacher (Miss Kim) who sits next to me that at 4:30 I go home everyday. So that leaves me about ten minutes. I've been taking the bus to school, which has been a bit of an adventure. Yesterday afternoon was my first time and I left school with the bus number in hand, but could not find a stop with that number. So I ended up getting on a random bus and pointing at the word 'university' to the bus driver (we live by Gunsan University, a nice landmark when you don't know your way around). Luck was with me and he told me the bus did go there. After riding the bus for a while I was a bit doubtful, especially when we drove to the edge of town to a huge industrial, scary park. But in time the bus driver pointed and I felt relief when I realized I knew where I was. This morning I was apparently standing on the wrong side of the street to catch the bus, but another bus driver stopped and got out of his bus and took me to the other side just as my bus was pulling it. So at least the bus drivers are very friendly and helpful. Everyone, with the exception of our super boss, has been very friendly and helpful, which makes everything much easier and enjoyable.