New Pictures!

Here's a new picture of the staff from MunHwa. It was taken near Puan (on the west coast in the middle of Korea) at this movie set that was a reconstruction of some ancient time. It was pretty neat. Anyway, starting from the front left, it goes Emily, Arwen (Tyrone & Gabriella's daughter), and 5 math teachers (names forgotten/unknown). In the back on the left is Mr. Lee, Jon, Tyrone & Capulet (I'm sure that's not spelled correctly), Eun Gyung, Gabriella, Jung Hae, Gumi, Mr. Moon, Michael, Mr. Kang (my boss), 3 more math teachers and then the 2 secretaries at the English school. (Just so you know, Mr. Kang owns a math and an English school and this was a little getaway for both sets of staff.)

This is Emily and I with the Yellow Sea behind us. (No, we did not pee in it. That is the name of the body of water.)

This is a Korean BBQ. Mr. Lee (the fellow on the left with the sunglasses) is cooking using a portable gas burner and a frying pan. He is frying meat and the lady with the pink hat is handing out rice from the styrofoam container. Gumi (the lady in the black with her back to the camera) is sitting by the lettuce that you wrap the meat and rice in. There is also red pepper paste, green chili peppers and kimchi, all of which make up your essential Korean BBQ. It's quite fun and rather tasty.

This is Emily & Arwen. Arwen has absolutely fallen in love with Emily while she continually screams and runs away when she sees me (Jon). It's just not fair. (All of the preceding pictures were taken on the MunHwa staff picnic day.)

This is me with some Korean fellows that we went out for tea with. They speak English, they're male, they're my own age and they're Christians! So far, that's been a bit of a rarity. It was a direct answer to prayer (and a most welcome one!) that we met these two fellows. The fellow on the left (sorry for the perspective!) is Ryan and his sister's name is Leah. We met her but she left a couple of weeks ago to study for some English tests in Australia. She came for tea with us but she left before this picture was taken.

This is an example of a quasi-typical Korean meal. This is called galbi, which is the meat in the middle. It's amazingly delicious. (I think it was pork ribs, essentially.) Traditional Korean meals come with (literally) about 15 side dishes, which is all the other plates. Some examples are cold raw crabs cut in half (still in the shell with legs, etc.) in a sauce, blood soup (we both tried it - it's not bad), bean sprouts, dandilion sprouts, seaweed, rice, coleslaw, more bean sprouts, pickled radish, kimchi (of course!), eggplant and other such things. The side dishes are various and rarely are they ever all consumed. It's rather fun to eat Korean style - every dish and plate is fair game, except for your rice bowl (when you have it).

Finally, this is Emily and I in Sajik Park, a park quite near to our apartment. It's one of the largest in our city and it's quite beautiful. We went there for a picnic last week (when this picture was taken). If we look a little awkward, it's because we were. Foreigners here are still a bit of a novelty, and beautiful foreigners (like Emily) are especially an attraction for Koreans. In this case, we were using the timer on our camera. However, we were beginning to draw a small crowd of people watching us. Okay, they were watching Emily, but I was there too.

Emily will regularly get people telling her how beautiful she is. One older fellow (about 65 years or so) said she was a second Cleopatra. Another fellow called out "Good looker! Good looker!" as we walked by. She will often get people striking up conversations and giving her free things when she goes shopping.

Me... Well, people would often rather stand on the bus than sit next to me. But that's the way the cookie crumbles, I guess.

Anyway, stay tuned! We're going on two more hikes this weekend so we should get all sorts of pictures after that. We love you all and miss you. Please keep the e-mails coming (it's wonderful to hear even the "boring" stuff!) and we'll update soon.