I'm not exactly awake for the morning calm part.

When you work the hours of 2pm - 9pm, that makes sense.

I'm in my apartment! My internet is activated! I'm teaching six classes a day, and each day's schedule is different! I'm exploring and discovering fantastic new things.

Two days ago I went for a walk close to sun set, just to stretch my legs and explore my neighborhood a little bit. This town is really, really new. I can't imagine that it's more than five or ten years old. Maybe not even that. It is basically bisected by the main road. Everything on one side of the main road looks like it could be a downtown area--apartment buildings, 15 stories high, commercial buildings with endless advertisements. My hangul reading is exploding. I can almost read words in under a minute now, haha. Anyway, the weird part about this is that these buildings all look the same.

On the other side of the street is where I live. This area has more small apartment buildings, cuboids--just about as tall as they are thick--three or four stories. The roads are narrower and snake around. Also there are about three churches within the block. The universal sign for church is a glowing neon red cross. In the day time they all look different, but at night they all look the same. It's interesting--in the dark there are no denominations.

Anyway this sector isn't very wide, because there are some hills right next to me. My area is composed of small apartments and large single family homes (more on that later, it's really interesting) and then the foothills. I have the most amazing view. Out of my window you can see gardens and little farm plots, then huge apartment buildings in one direction, and mountains in the other. The view makes up for the fact that my whole apartment is about the size of my bedroom at home, haha. (But I do like small things. It's like living in Polly Pocket Ville.)

Two days ago I went exploring at sunset, to discover my first 'WOW' location. I was actually discretely following this old couple... they looked like they were out for a walk, not going anywhere in particular, so I figured that they would lead me up into the foothills. And they did! They surpassed me pretty quickly, but I ended up climbing up the side of this hill on a shadowy brick-paved path... newer, I think, but still beautiful. At the top was a set of very steep stairs, and then--open grass. There was a grave yard carved into the side of this hill. It was wide and open, with burial mounds and Buddhist-style stone-stick markers. It was remarkably spread out. I think maybe they are family plots for folks that are young still. However, at the top of this hill graveyard, I stopped and looked out--the entire west side of Daejeon was visible in a warm sunsetty glow. It was fan-TASTIC. Gorgeous. Normally the metaphor is "the city was laid out like a blanket..." or something more akin to fabric sitting over the ground. However, Daejeon is kind of a spikey city. At least for my area, it is clean, simple, and full of very straight vertical lines. The city doesn't lay on the ground but seems to grow out of it.

Exploring is a blast here. I always find interesting things. I can't wait to start traveling around Korea, either.

The final thing I have to say, before I go get lunch and go to work, is this: there is probably nothing more hilarious than trying to figure out computer problems when you have no common language. It took the internet man forever to figure out my computer. Eventually he just went down to his car and got his own laptop. Haha. :D