How time flies! It’s
been weeks since we’ve updated our blog and we are sorry for the delay! Office time quickly turned into
classroom time over the past month.
Today, we completed our fifth round of a 3-day camp for 5th
graders. The program is called
Basic Course…and I guess I wasn’t aware of just how basic these students’
English knowledge would be. We are becoming more adept at understanding classroom
Korean…or the gist of short Korean phrases. Some people look at us strangely and ask if we speak Korean
after we’ve successfully answered some basic, generic questions. They don’t believe us when we say no so
we get talked at a lot here. Oh
well, we’re getting really good at smiling and nodding J
 |
| Captain Luke |
For the first three
weeks, I was in charge of the situation room: Gameroom. I taught Guess Who. That’s a really hard game to explain to
an ESL student! They probably
spent more time flipping around the boards than actually playing the game, but
oh well. I tried and they seemed
to have fun with it. Luke taught
restaurant and the students were a little destructive with the fake fried
chicken, side salads and ice cream sundaes. We have since moved on with our teaching requirements and I
much prefer teaching Hollywood Studios.
They kids make a commercial comparing Coke and Pepsi and it’s pretty
cute J
New car
ceremony:
The director of our
school bought a new car a few weeks back.
We were invited to his new car ceremony and it was quite an experience! There was a pig’s head where people
placed money after bowing and offering rice wine to the car…??? It was
strange. We had a big snack
afterwards of pig feet, pig ears, chicken and red bean rice cakes to
celebrate. “Toto, we’re DEFINITELY
not in Kansas anymore!”
Sometimes I feel
like I need to write about all the crazy things that we have seen or done over
here in Korea, but save for a few interesting stories, this post is more about
our ordinary life here in Cheongju.
We live in the middle of nowhere.
Farming is the primary way of life out here so it is extremely quiet,
very picturesque and we have the glorious blessing of living in the middle of
some beautiful mountains.
Spring has finally
arrived and all of a sudden we are accosted with color! Sadly, the cherry blossoms and forsythia
have finished their short week or so of flowering (don’t worry, I took about a
hundred photos), but after a weekend of torrential rains, the pink, red and
white rhododendrons are so happy and the hills around us are full of
green. New flower buds are popping
up everywhere and we are so excited about the warmer weather. Walks have returned to our everyday
routine. We went on one yesterday
and realized that Japanese maples are prolific here! We ventured off the path for a few yards and there were
hundreds of small trees sprouting up.
Trying to figure out if there’s any way we could bring some home…
A couple of
weekends ago, we had the opportunity to attend the Cherry Blossom Festival in
Seoul with Jesse and Dawun. Entire
streets were lined with these trees and I spent the majority of my time trying
to capture their beauty through our camera lens.
Our small city has
a pretty small selection of foreign restaurants so we take advantage of our
infrequent visits to the capital to get our fill of familiar foods. We had Mexican food at “On the Border”,
fried chicken at “Frypan” and great sandwiches at “Joe’s Sandwiches.” We also did a quick run to Costco to
grab some essentials: 5lbs of cheese, 8 cans of beans, a large box of Oreos, an
even larger bag of tortilla chips, sticks of butter for baking and a double box
of Honey Nut Cheerios.
Jesse lives in
Ilsan, a city north of Seoul and he has a lake near his apartment. On Sunday morning, we walked over to
the park, rented bikes and rode around the 3 kilometer loop, stopping every so
often to photograph a pretty flower and to take a short reflexology walk! It was a glorious morning. I have missed bike riding with
Luke!
Two weeks ago we
had a field trip. We got the day
off from work and instead, we all spent the day enjoying the great
outdoors. We started at Nongdari,
the oldest bridge in Korea; built over 1400 years ago and still usable! Impressive. We hiked across and then walked to a huge lake that was nearby. A nice leisurely walk there turned into
a mountainous, up & down, rocky hike back to the bus. It was a good haul. We were sweaty and tired, but it was a
joy to be outside on a work day looking at mountains and flowering trees. The cherry blossom trees were just
stunning. I couldn’t stop taking
pictures!!
We ate bulgogi for
lunch at a restaurant and then took a quick trip to a bell museum. After that, we headed toward an old
3-story temple and on the way, we saw a bear farm. They raise bears and kill them for their bile which they use
for medicine I believe. It was so
depressing to see all those bears in such small cages LL
Once we arrived at the temple, we wandered around and inside, took a
bunch of pictures and then made our way to a park where we had a chic-nic, a
chicken picnic with our co-workers.
It was quite a day, a beautiful day to be outside and a great way to
spend a work day! Thank you
CBFLIS!
This past weekend
was the first one with NO RAIN so we took advantage of the beautiful weather
and spent our entire Saturday outside with our neighbors, Andrew &
Daphne. We wore ourselves out
going on a long walk, we had a delicious picnic, tried to play tuho (a Korean
game with arrows and a bucket), and hit tennis balls to each other in a big
field. To top off a wonderful day
in the sun, we had a huge barbeque dinner and great conversation on the patio
area of our building. Thanks God
for your beautiful creation that we get to enjoy!!!
Sports Day:
I promise we do
work sometimes, but yesterday was not one of those days! Yesterday was sports day. We went over to the school next door
and played volleyball, ping-pong and soccer-volleyball. Let me rephrase, mostly we just
watched the intense Koreans play sports while we cheered them on. Luke tried soccer-volleyball which is
exactly what it sounds like. You
have a net like in ping-pong that comes to about 3 feet high and you kick a
volleyball over the net to the other team. You can let it bounce between hits and you need to get it
over in three or less kicks/headers.
Of course there was chicken and spicy Tofu for a snack (?) and lots of
relaxing had by all. I would have
loved to play but I’m wearing a brace on my left wrist from a stretched
ligament so I tried ping-pong but could be of no help to the CBFLIS volleyball
team.
We are officially 5
months into our contract, 7 months to go!
Weird how time flies! We’re
sad to be missing the graduations of Joe, James and Savanna and moving in Jen and Joe into their new house in Charlotte. We’ve missed birthdays and holidays and
it’s sad to be away from family this year, but we are making wonderful memories
here in Korea and we look forward to being with friends and family in 2013!
As always, thanks
for reading.
Luke & Rachel
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