Kimchi Festival and PICTURES!!!

A couple of weeks ago we went to the Kimchi Festival with some friends. It's about as exciting as it sounds - a festival for kimchi (vegetables, usually cabbage, fermented with red pepper paste). If you like kimchi (which I d0), it was rather interesting. If you don't like kimchi, you can't really like Korean food and the festival would be less interesting. Generally speaking, of course.

Anyway, it was a good time and we had some good kimchi. Being foreigners at a kimchi festival, we stuck out somewhat more than usual and received some nice attention from a group of elementary school girls and an old man. Also a few video cameras and photographers.

A good time had by one and all!

Here's a quick explanation of the pictures. Sorry it's not very well organized, but this is faster. There are some pictures of Emily and our friend Matt enjoying Korean traditional games. (Actually, I don't know if they're traditional or not, but we saw Korean kids doing it so we joined in.) Also of the World Cup Stadium, built for the 2002 World Cup. (That's soccer.) Also some pictures of drawings done of Emily & I. Also pictures of us on this one street downtown. One also of Korean Buddhist monk painting a good luck symbol guy. A picture of our friend with the girls that hung out with us for a while. I'll let you figure out which picture is which. Let's pretend it's a game or something.

Eat Your Wheaties

I'm sure you've heard it a thousand times - "Breakfast is the most important meal of the day." It's true, and I now know why.

Breakfast makes you sturdy. Sturdy, as in strong and leanable. Leanable like you can be leaned (leant?) on.

I skipped breakfast one day and proceeded to take the bus to school one day. I apparently wasn't very sturdy looking, or so it would seem in hindsight. I was just a regular Joe on the bus (or Kim, as the case may be), my business being minded by me and others keeping an eye on their own businesses. The next day, I ate breakfast and I noticed a change almost immediately. I boarded the bus (crowded, as it usually is on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday) and my sturdiness was apparent to all.

It was like there was some secret communication through the crowd - "That guy had breakfast. He looks sturdy." Breakfast makes me look strong and secure. Breakfast makes me look like a cushion for falling on when you lose your footing. Breakfast makes me look like a brick wall, appropriate for leaning when going around corners. Breakfast makes me look like I've got some sort of secret trick that keeps me from falling and so everyone is able to "fall on the foreigner" with no adverse reactions. Breakfast + Me = Sturdy, sturdy, sturdy.

On second thought, perhaps I'll eat breakfast once I'm already at school. Sturdy just isn't worth it.

Just One of Those Days

Yesterday (Monday) was just one of those days for me (Jon). Not much specific, but just a lot of little things. Want to know why? I'll break it down for you.

1. It was Monday. (Inherently unpleasant.)
2. It was raining. I bought a new coat (cashmere/wool blend) and was uncertain of the care for it. As a result, I really wanted to wear my coat but had to be careful of getting it wet. The rain was therefore disappointing.
3. Because it was Monday and raining, many people drove instead of taking the bus.
4. Because many people drove, my bus ride which normally takes 10 minutes instead took 40 minutes. I was late for work.
5. Because I was late for work, I was locked out of the teachers room (a communal office) because they were all at their Monday staff meeting.
6. Monday and Tuesday I teach grade 9 students. The grade 9's wrote their exams last week. Most of the grade 9's still have a month of classes. How much do you care if you're finished your test but you still have classes? Yeah, about that much. My first class was miserable.
7. Monday is the busiest day of the week for me with 5 classes to teach. My co-teacher asked if she could move a class from Tuesday into my only spare in the morning. No big problem, but it means I taught 6 out of a possible 7 classes on Monday.
8. Lunch involved a fair amount of seafood. (I'm allergic to seafood, as a refresher.)
9. After lunch, I got a phone call asking me to go out and teach an English camp for a week. Right now. "Leave school, pack your stuff and come out to camp." Great news! I leave school (ten minutes before my only spare of the day was to start), change, half pack and...
10. I get another phone call. "It doesn't work for you to come to camp. Go back to school."
11. I go back to school. Now, I'm justifiably late and the bus goes like a speed demon. House to school in 20 minutes, including walking time. I have now spent my only free time going home and coming back to school.
12. Because of the wasted spare time, I am now behind in my work. I spend some time in the evening working and...the computer crashes. Our computer has this sucky habit of crashing whenever it feels like it's working too hard, and gee by golly, if it wasn't working too hard right then.

By that point, I figured that I had enough of the day. I went and joined Emily on the couch and figured it was finished. If I just sat on the couch, nothing else could happen to me. I experienced some real "God Joy" though since I didn't really get frustrated or angry at any point. I came close with the cancelled camp invitation, though. Instead, I felt a "joy without reason," in a day where almost everything seemed to be going wrong.

I'm still happy it's Tuesday.

Thanksgiving

Saturday we had our first actual Thanksgiving in a home since 2004. We had a turkey dinner at church last year, but no turkey at home. This year, we remedied that. We spent Friday night at our friend's and then went over early Saturday morning and put the turkey in our other friend's oven. The other four people we were having Thanksgiving with all live within a block or two of each other so it meant we had easy access to everyone's apartments.

Turkeys are rare in Korea - most people have never eaten one. Suffice it to say that three foreigners walking down the street (which is enough of an attention getter) carrying a huge stuffed turkey in a pan (we washed and prepared it before transporting it) caused many people to stop in their tracks and stare as we went by. One lady in the elevator muttered something about "That doesn't look delicious..."

Anyway, it was in the oven at about 9:00 AM, and then we went back to the first apartment and just relaxed, watched a movie and hung out until about 1:00 or so. We went back to the turkey apartment only to discover that the oven had gone out! We had no idea when it would have gone out, so we relit the oven and tried again. About 45 minutes later, we checked the oven again - still on. 45 minutes later - turned off. We lit it again and decided it had one more chance. About 30 minutes later, it had gone out again.

So here we are - it's about 3:00 (we were planning on eating at 4:00) and the turkey is at least 3 hours behind schedule. Since we had no idea when the oven went out the first time, we had no idea how much longer we needed to cook the turkey. We had no meat thermometer as Koreans tend not to cook large chunks of meat at home. We were hungry, we were tired and we just wanted to eat some turkey. There was a vote at the end - salmonella or safety. Some of us didn't care whether the turkey was done or not while others reasoned that dry turkey was better than group sickness. However, majority and hunger prevailed and the turkey was pulled out around 7:30.

To cut a long story short, the turkey was done and we were finally ready to eat at around 8:30. We had the works - mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, stuffing, gravy, turkey (obviously), homemade buns and apple pie. We ate quickly, we ate muchly and it was fantastic. I'd be willing to wager that a grander feast was never seen in that Korean apartment.

After dinner, we sat around and played some Bond on the N64, then some spoons (card game) and hung out for a bit. It was a really good time and there were (and still are) plenty of leftovers, which is the second best part of Thanksgiving dinner. It was a grand ol' time, had by one and all, and I was thankful that we were able to do what we did with the people we could.

(We have some pictures which we will post soon. Maybe.)

Take 35 of these and call me in the morning

I (Jon) was struggling with a cold a few weeks ago. Since I needed to keep teaching, and our supply of western cold medicine is running low, I figured I'd hit a pharmacy. I wanted to avoid a hospital or a real doctor as they tend to give you a shot in the butt for any old reason and I prefer my butt unshot, thank you very much.

Pharmacies here are a little different than in Canada. The employees are trained (at least somewhat) how to give out medicine. The basic deal is this: doctors and pharmacists (apparently) had a fight a while back. Doctors would only give a prescription for about 3 days worth of medicine, making the patient come back every time they needed a refill. The doctors did this to make money off of each visit. The pharmacists got upset because people were only buying 3 days of medicine at a time. The retaliation?

"Don't have a prescription? That's okay! We'll hook you up with what you need."

What has evolved is a pharmacy that will give you pretty potent medication for a paltry price without a prescription. I picked up pills for a sore throat that contained morphine. No questions asked. Usually, it's $2 for a pack of 10-20.

But I digress, and digression is the seed of many things. I'm not sure what, but it reminds me of this story...

So one of the cold medicines I got came in a pack. The instructions were to take one pack with each meal. "Good enough," I thought, "I can do that." I get home, have a meal and open the pack, only to find...


One pack is about 35 little pills that smelled like something you give a pet rodent. Thus the title, thus my story.

The End.

Home Alone

Apparently, I look like Macaulay Culkin (the kid from Home Alone 1 & 2, in case you don't recall). Many students have told me. Many different students from different classes and different grades and different schools. *Sigh...*

One teacher said I looked like Matt Damon. I'll go with that instead.

Thanksgiving

Two weeks ago, Emily & I rented a car with our friends and drove to Daejeon (2 hours north) to hit a spa (naked communal bath) and Costco (not naked communal shopping heaven). It was really nice to drive instead of taking the train (though the train is phenomenal as well) and we were able to get more stuff.

More stuff, specifically, is a turkey. They're about $50 each, but we picked up one of the last remaining 3 turkeys, and were happy to do so. This Saturday, we'll do American Thanksgiving with two American and two Canadian friends of ours. We'll do it up right - stuffing, potatoes (sweet and original flavor), fresh made buns (Mom's recipe), gravy and the works. This'll be far more authentic than last years meal of slow-cooked chicken.

Korean Thanksgiving (Chuseok) has passed us by, as has Canadian Thanksgiving. But lo and behold if American Thanksgiving isn't high nigh upon us! One of the downsides of being an expat is that we miss all the holidays from home, but we celebrate the best you can. One of the upsides, though, is that you get to celebrate the best you can with everybody else's holidays from home.

Fortunately, there's Americans at church. What does that have to do with anything, you might ask? Well, if you asked, I might tell you. However, you didn't ask. How do I know you didn't ask? Because I'm smart. That's how I know. I'm smart.

I'll tell you anyway, though, and you're welcome to ask after the fact, should your heart be so inclined. Our pastor is an American fellow and so we get to have another turkey dinner at church the following Sunday. Yup, two genuine turkey dinners, the second being rounded out by such things as rice, kimchi and the like. Not too shabby, all things considered - two gin-u-wine turkey dinners in about 8 days. We're cooking a turkey for the church dinner, so somewhat of a fleshy "service fee" shall be deducted from the beast before we bring it to church.

Shh! Don't tell!

Anyway, a Happy Belated/Early Thanksgiving! Whatever country you're from and wherever you call home, may you know and appreciate the blessings that God has put in each one of our lives. A grateful heart never runs out of things to be thankful for.

Pictures

Well, it's been a while, but here are some pictures from the wild and wonderful world of Korea! Due to a complete negligence in posting, a great many events have passed undocumented by this here blog. As such, the pictures shall be random and various in their variety and arbitrary order.



Here's a picture (obviously) of some of our church friends. Emily had to do a devotional for school so these are the people that volunteered their time to listen. Great people, them!
If you've ever considered leaving a fridge unplugged with the door closed for six months - don't. These pictures don't do the fridge justice - every dark spot is mold. Nasty, stinky, smelly, three hours of cleaning worth of mold. We actually switched fridges about a month after this picture was taken - our current fridge is huge, new and amazing.


The view from our apartment (one from each side - sorry the second one's not amazing). That's not smog in the first picture (just so you know), it's mist - Korea was famous for its misty mountains long before Middle Earth was.


Here's a picture from my sports day. Tug-of-war is done differently here on a sports day - two classes start at either end of a soccer field and run towards the middle where there are three ropes. You can choose how many people go to each rope, but you have to win two out of the three to win the match. It's really quite funny to watch. You will notice the grass field - incredibly rare for a school. It's normally sandy. Also, the picture is taken from the office. Basically everything you see (which is a soccer field) is all of the "playground" that they get. Land is expensive here - apparently if you "sold" Korea, you could "buy" six Canadas.

This is what a majority of shopping looks like in Korea - stands on wheels set up for the evening. They'll sell anything from puppies to jewelry to T-shirts and DVD's. It's my favorite kind of shopping since everything is dirt cheap and you don't have to go "in" to take a look at what they've got. This is a picture taken on our trip to Seoul with our friends Brooke & Ryan.
As long as we're being completely and utterly random, here's a picture from my birthday. We went out for shabu-shabu (an incredible meal of thinly shaved beef and a really tasty soup broth) with some friends. On the left, front to back, is Brooke, myself, Philippa and Carol (Brooke I worked with last year and Philippa and Carol I met this year). On the right, front to back, is Ryan, Emily, Jeong Eun, Mi Ok (two of my co-teachers) and Eun Gu (a friend from church). It was a good birthday, especially because there was good people to spend it with.


Across the street from our apartment, you can go hiking along a path for quite a distance. We've followed it 45 mintues in but no further as of yet. As you walk, you will come to three exercise areas where people actually do work out. Situps, parallel bar exercises and crazy looking hoola hoops are just a few of the calisthenical wonders that you'll experience.

Anyway, I'm not going to make any promises to post more regularly or anything like that. Check back every once in a while and hopefully there'll be something new when you do.

Update

Hello everyone!

It may seem like a long time since we've sent out an e-mail. That would be because it has been a long time since we've sent out an e-mail. Things have been really good here so far this year and it's funny how things like e-mails and blog posts and whatnot can just fall by the wayside.

As Julie Andrews has taught us so well, when we're going to start somewhere we should probably start at the beginning. Since it seems like such a very good place to start, that's exactly where I shall begin.

Emily and I both arrived safely in Korea, I on August 22 and Emily on September 3. My job orientation went really well and I met a lot of really neat people. The sessions were useful and (generally) interesting, which I guess was a first. I hung out with a group of people from England and we played a lot of soccer and had an overall good time. The facilities were sufficient (not amazing, but apparently good enough to write home about) and the food was well thought out. It began with a lot of western style food and a little bit of Korean food and ended the 10 days with mostly Korean food and a little bit of western food, which should help with the cultural adjustment for the people new to the nation.

Emily arrived on my first day back in Gwangju (our city) and so we walked into our new apartment together for the first time. I'm glad that we were together - alone, that thing would have eaten us alive. The previous occupants had left a fair amount of "stuff" behind in their apartment and the moths/ants had taken leave to move in. It was a few days of cleaning and some new furniture, but now it looks smashing and we really enjoy it. It's a good size and it's in a great neighborhood.

I am teaching at two different middle schools (junior high) - Yong Bong and Buk Sung middle school, for those of you familiar with the area. They're a little far from home, but both schools are fantastic. The people I work with are amazing and I love the students. Their English level is certainly lower than the students I worked with last year, which presents a special challenge. However, they really are neat kids. I teach grade nines at my Monday/Tuesday school (Yong Bong) and 7 & 8's at my Wednesday/Thursday/Friday school (Buk Sung). I work with a total of seven different co-teachers and they're all gold.

Emily's been continuing her degree through IBOLT and that has been going well. She's been keeping busy with it and never ceases to amaze me with how disciplined and productive she is. On top of her full time studies, she also maintains the apartment and does most of the cooking. She's been enjoying her courses, which is good.

Church has been also going well. We've been back at the same church as last year, so it's good to be with all the people we know and love again. We haven't gotten involved as of yet, but we're likely to start doing something soon.

The weather here has been absolutely fantastic. Fall in Korea is gorgeous - weather in the mid 20's (Celsius), leaves turning brilliant shades of yellow, brown and red and the occasional rainfall. It's the best time of year here. As of today, the weather is still around 20 - 25 degrees in the day and about 1/2 of the trees have actually changed or lost their leaves.

My schedule has been blissfully erratic thus far. I've been working for about 9 weeks so far and have only had 3 five-day weeks. There's been sports days, exams, picnic days, school festivals, camps, singing competitions and other such things to liven up a regular schedule.

We also have our address and phone number ready and working. I got a cell phone (my first one ever!) so if you want any of that information, send an e-mail to either myself or Emily and we'll let you know.

To sum it up, this year is even better than last year was. We're really experiencing God's blessing here and we love it. We do love and miss our friends and family in Canada, but we're also making a life for ourselves here.

Please do drop a line sometime as it's always great to hear from people back home. An unfortunate part of my working during the days is the fact that I can only phone Canada on weekends due to the time difference - Canada is working while we're sleeping and I'm working while Canadians everywhere are enjoying their evening. Emily is home most of the time during the days, though, so feel free to phone anytime. Well, not anytime - do the mental math conversion of time zones and figure it out first. Then please do call! We are sixteen hours ahead now, with daylight savings time.

We love and miss all of you very much. God bless!

Jon

PS: We are perfectly safe here and feel no danger or threat from anything happening on the northern side of the Korean border. Rest assured!

A reminder of why we do what we do

I know many of you have probably already seen this video, but I thought I would post it here. This reminds me of the incredible adventure of travelling and encourages me to keep doing what we are doing here in Korea. Jon and I are excited to travel this winter to see more of God's incredible world.

This movie was created by a guy named Matt who had a passion for travelling. He was sponsored by a chewing gum company to take a 6 month journey around the world. All of the pictures are real! Enjoy, and let it remind you of all that this world has to offer!

You can read more of Matt's story at www.wherethehellismatt.com

Love, Emily