September 12, 2005 update

September 12, 2005

A long due hello to friends and family!

I know that it has been a tremendously long time since our last update from here in Korea. I find that we are daily settling into a routine and sometimes I forget that life wasn’t always like this! Nevertheless, I hope that this note will serve to bring you up to date on all the happenings in our life here.

September began with the return of Jon’s normal school schedule, a welcome blessing to both of us. Jon now works 4-9PM Monday-Friday. I am still helping out at the school as much as I can. I recently completed the editing of the school’s newest textbook which will be published soon. I also go into the school most Fridays to teach and supervise Jon’s classes as he does individual speaking tests with the students. I try to plan a fun or different activity for them after they are done writing their exams. Recently we have made birthday cards for “teacher Jon”, watched a short movie and written a summary of it, played games and had good conversations. Jon has wonderful students and they are really starting to warm up to both of us. Jon has gotten into a really excellent routine with planning and evaluating his lessons. He is very creative and seems to have a very holistic approach to teaching.

Our school has really been amazing in all aspects. Before coming to Korea we heard a lot of horror stories about unfulfilled contracts, accommodation nightmares, salary discrepancies etc. We have been blessed to have not experienced anything like that! The director of the school, Mr. Kong is a really amazing guy who treats us very well. Jon truly looks forward to going to work every day and the environment in the school is always positive and a real team setting.

As for me, while Jon is at school I have been keeping very busy. Running a household here is a lot of work! Laundry must be line dried and usually ironed, garbage has to be separated into various recyclable products as well as compost, groceries need to be purchased from various market vendors and small stores… the list goes on! I really enjoy it though. It is nice to experience life at a slower pace then my Edmonton days and I am building some great relationships with people in our neighborhood. I also have been making time to go on long walks every evening, really exploring our neighborhood in all directions. With that and helping with marking and lesson planning I keep very occupied!

Last week I was able to take in a festival at our local park. I was buying bread from the bakery and I heard live music and decided to check it out. To my surprise, our little badminton court had been taken over by a huge stage and tents. From what I could gather, the festival was for the reunification of the two Koreas. I was DEFINITELY the only foreigner there, but that hasn’t stopped me yet! I got to see some amazing Taekwondo, as well as traditional Korean drumming, children’s orchestras and much more. Some highlights included a Buddhist monk coming up on stage to dance with kindergarten age students, and a 10 year old boy that did a “Napoleon Dynamite” dance. It was totally awesome! If you check, there are some pictures of this fun night on our blog page.

We are really enjoying our bible study group and have lots of fun together. Last week we all went to a Board Game Café as well as too a movie at the international film festival. We also play games after bible study most weeks. It has been a great way to make good friends, both with foreigners and Koreans.

This past weekend we went to Seoul to celebrate Jon’s birthday. We left very early Saturday morning to catch a train for Suwon where we went to an amusement park called Everland. Everland was basically a big Disneyland knockoff which was fairly amusing. They had all the details down right to the “Global Village” ride, which was eerily reminiscent of “It’s a Small World” at Disneyland. Almost the same music. Same boats. Same creepy dolls moving back and forth dressed in cultural garb…. There must be some kind of copyright infringement going on there!!!

We had a great though and braved lots of scary rides. We went on a suspended roller coaster (the track is above you) and that was our most favorite. They also had an electrical parade; again not unlike Disneyland ( the parade was really good though. We stayed the night at a hostel right at Everland and in the morning headed into Seoul.

Sunday morning we went to church at Yoido Full Gospel Church, the biggest church in the world. There are 800,000 members!!!! It was a crazy experience. They have I think 7 services every Sunday. We were given headphones so we could hear a live interpretation into English of the whole service. They were interpreting it into 9 different languages!! Unfortunately, we didn’t actually hear Pastor Yonggi Cho preach, he of course does not do every 7 services!! It was still a really amazing experience though!

We also went to a market in Seoul that has been going on for 600 years. It was huge and full of every kind of good you can think of. It was a maze and a little overwhelming but cool to see. We had a great time in Seoul but it made us very grateful to live in Gwangju. It was so crowded and busy all the time and Gwangju is much more laid back. Plus, it feels like we are getting a more “authentic” Korean experience here. People in Seoul seemed a little more aloof and cynical, where as in Gwangju everyone is friendly and open. It felt good to come home!!!

Well this is very long already so I won’t say anything more today. I hope that this finds each of you well and we would love to hear from all of you. Getting email from home always brightens our day!

Love always, Jon and Emily Reesor

The Call to Melons

Hey everyone! Jon here. This is my first official blog post.

When I first arrived in Korea everything was still new and a little foreign (okay, actually a lot foreign). I was in our apartment just relaxing when I heard a voice on the street coming through what sounded like a world war II speaker.

Not speaking Korean, I was worried it may have been a demand for all foreigners to immediately report outside the apartment building or a warning about a natural disaster or something like that. It also sounded remarkably like the call to prayer that you hear in Muslim nations.

It turns out that there are just a remarkable amount of people that sell things out of the back of trucks and they drive around using loudspeakers (not very good ones) to hock their wares. They normally sell food type things (melons, cases of little dried fish, onions, or garlic) and occasionally other things like knives or sunglasses.

The Muslims have their call to prayer, the Koreans their call to melons.