pictures from our trip to Busan

This gives you an idea of the amount of umbrellas on this beach!!!

Lots of speedos!!!

August 3, 2005 Update

August 3, 2005

Hello Friends and Family!

Greetings again from Korea! I know it has been a while since our last update, I feel like I haven’t touched base in so long! We hope and pray that this email finds all of you well and in good health. We miss all of you very much! It is sometimes hard to be away from Edmonton, especially during the summer festival season! This is the first year in a very long time that I haven’t been a “festival junkie” back home! We are doing well though, and certainly are enjoying our summer here in Gwangju!

Korea still is such a precious corner of the world to us, and we are learning so much daily about the beautiful country and people who live here. The Koreans in our neighborhood are starting to get more used to seeing us walking around so we don’t get quite as many stares. I still have women touch my face, laugh when I walk by (good naturedly!), want to carry my bags, and offer me seats on the bus or subway. Apparently my red hair is quite a novelty here, so people do take my picture on their cell phones quite often. They don’t tell you they are doing it, but the “I’m taking a picture” cell phone stance is pretty unmistakable. Its fun though, you feel like a bit of a celebrity, and I am just grateful that the attention is positive rather than negative!

We just finished a week long holiday, which was such a treat! The first few days of our holiday we just hung around here in Gwangju. I finally got my alien registration card, as well as my passport back, which was a major load off. All of my visa stuff came through with no problem also! We were planning on going to Seoul, but ended up going to a different city here in Korea instead. We chose to go to Busan which is on the east coast of Korea, about a 4 hour bus ride from here. It was absolutely beautiful there! Once we arrived in Busan we managed to navigate our way on the subway all by ourselves! The subway system is massive, and we were on the subway for almost an hour traveling from one end of the city to the other. Busan is right on the ocean and we stayed right by the beach, it was so incredible. We got to swim in the ocean a few times, and the water was wonderful. The beach was so so busy, it was just a mass of umbrellas from one end to the other. We had a great time! Our motel had a mineral bath with hotspring water right in our hotel room! It was the coolest bathroom I have ever had in a hotel! Busan is definitely a place we would love to return to, being by the water was an awesome treat.

Jon is back at school starting today, still working the crazy long days. I am able to help him quite a bit getting stuff ready and making up worksheets and stuff, so I am keeping busy as well. We find that one of the hardest things here in Korea is figuring out what to eat. We are gradually adjusting though, and are coming up with a few more things to cook.

It has rained quite a bit here recently which has helped to cool things off. I am not constantly covered in sweat now! Tyronne’s (a teacher that works with Jon) family just arrived from New York and it is a real treat to have them here. His wife’s name is Gabriella and she is originally from Romania, and they have two kids, a two and a half year old girl and a 9 month old son. They are just precious! We went out for dinner with them last night and it was so fun to hang out with the kids!!! Their son is just starting to walk and Arwen is just a honey. They are definitely a hit with the ladies who work in the market!!

We have found a church here in Gwangju that we are going to try out for a while. They have a really great English service and the community is great! We have also joined a bible study with some other foreigners which is great also.

Anyway, this is probably long enough to be boring now!! We would love to hear from all of you, and if you have any questions for us about life in korea we would be glad to answer them in an upcoming update!!

We love you all and will talk again soon!

Emily and Jon

Ps. If you would like to see some pictures of our life here in Gwangju, or would like to read past updates, check out our blog at http://reesorsinkorea.blogspot.com

July 19, 2005 Update

July 19^th, 2005

Hello again from Korea!

Jon and I hope that this update finds each one of you well and enjoying summer! We keep track of the weather in Edmonton, and it looks like you are having some great sunny days! Here it continues to be very hot, but the humidity has decreased a little bit. We are definitely out of the rainy season now, so every day there is a beautiful blue sky and the mountains surrounding us are in clear view.

To keep cool, Korean women either use umbrellas (which they use for everything from sunny days to snow apparently!) or these really funny looking visors that are like a big tinted safety shield – looks like something we would have sold at Century Vallen! The umbrellas can be quite annoying at times because Jon and I are both taller than the average Korean so we often get umbrellas in the eye on the crowded streets.

Jon and I had a really great weekend here in Korea. On Friday night we went “downtown” to see the sights, but primarily to go to McDonalds!! Downtown feels like you are stepping right into any movie featuring an Asian city (like Lost in Translation). There are street upon street of stores carrying the hippest most current clothing styles. There are a lot of shirts here with English writing on them, but most of the time the English makes very little sense! Downtown also features the most western selection of stores. There is a Starbucks, KFC, McDonalds, Burger King, Outback Steakhouse, TGIFridays etc.

On Saturday Mun Hwa, the school Jon teaches for had an event planned to welcome us and another new teacher named Tyrone. Originally we were supposed to go and climb a mountain, as I had mentioned in a previous email, but in typical Korean style plans changed at the last minute. Well actually, we were already driving up the mountain as our plans were changing…It started to rain so the cars just kept driving and driving up and down the mountain apparently waiting for the rain to stop. The rain never did stop so we ended up driving back to the school and eating lunch there. We had an awesome meal of some traditional Korean food and then we headed off to a “singing room”, called a “Nori Bong”.

The singing room was very fun! You basically go into a room with a big screen TV, two mics, and some tambourines and sing karaoke together! Since you are only in the room with the people you came with it’s not as scary as a karaoke bar and you can really let loose! We had a great time building a relationship with the Korean teachers at Jon’s school over this activity!

On Sunday we went to church which was cool. The church itself was HUGE, and their English service was a pretty good size as well. It’s hard though, because the service seemed to really be geared to Koreans who wanted a venue to practice their English rather than for native English speakers. Consequently it’s a lot of SLOW speaking and explaining things, but it was fun anyway! They had a big lunch after the service that they invited us to stay for so that was awesome.

We are starting to experience Korean department stores, which are crazy! The other day we went to an electronics market, which was just huge and packed with every sort of device imaginable. Today we went to “Home Plus” which is kind of like Wal Mart except that it has 5 floors! There they had some western comfort foods like cheese, Campbell’s soup, and tortilla chips.

I am really excited because I have an opportunity to do some volunteer work at a girl’s orphanage starting this weekend. They are looking for an English tutor to work with the girls and I am so juiced about being able to serve in this way. This coming Saturday we are going to a BBQ at the orphanage to meet the director and figure out what days will work. I also may have an opportunity to be an English tutor at a drop in center here in the city, which is also run by the orphanage. God is really opening up doors for me to serve people and I feel very blessed!

Anyway this email is long enough for now, thanks for reading! We would love to hear from all of you and find out how life is “back home!” Any emails we get mean so much to us trust me!

As promised, I have our “snail mail” address now, for now please send any correspondence to Jon’s school, I only have our address in Korean characters!

Jon and Emily Reesor C/O MunHwa Language School

67-14 Jang-Dong Dong Gu

Gwangju 501-060

South Korea

July 14, 2005 update

Greetings friends and family!

I (Emily) have arrived safely here in Korea, thanks to all of you who prayed for us, your prayers were certainly felt! My journey here came off without a hitch, as all of my various airport transfers; customs, baggage checks etc. were seamless! I encountered an abnormal amount of air turbulence on all of my flights so I was feeling quite sick when I finally arrived here in Gwangju but other than that I arrived in one piece as did my entire luggage.

I have adjusted well to the 15 hour time difference. It helped that I slept very little on any of the planes so going to bed when I got here was no problem!! I have been here in Gwangju now for 4 days and it really is an amazing place! It is also wonderful to be reunited with my beloved husband and to put late-night long-distance phone conversations behind us for a while!

From where I am sitting right now, I can look down over our balcony and see the Market below us where there are many stalls with fresh produce, fish, household goods, eggs, and of course – Kim chi!!! In the distance there are mountains all around, not like the Rockies but very green and lush. I also see row upon row of tall apartment buildings, and 16 churches!!!! All in all quite a different view that what I am used to, it is a lot to take in all at once.

We have spent my first few days here with Jon showing me around our neck of the woods here. We have gone out to eat Korean food twice now, and also to a nearby pizza and pasta place (one of very few places you can find cheese in Korea). Today we also went to the immigration office with a man from the school so Jon could pick up his resident alien card and I could apply for mine as well as for my spousal visa. Pray for the safety of my passport, it has to stay at the immigration office for a week while they process my visa and that always makes me nervous!

Prices of things are remarkable here. Yesterday we bought 12 red peppers for $2.50CDN! At the Lotteria, which is kind of like McDonalds, you can get really good ice cream cones for $0.30! Juice is also very inexpensive as is clothing.

The Korean people are very kind and respectful. We are definitely two of VERY few white people in this neighborhood but everyone is very nice. Sometimes people do laugh at you, I have no idea what at, more then likely I am doing something strangely! It is strange and hard not knowing the language, especially because people generally don’t get it when you don’t understand so they just keep talking to you in Korean. We are beginning to learn how to read the letters though, which really helps in figuring out what things are.

On Saturday all of the staff and spouses from Mun Hwa are going on a quasi field trip to Mudong Mountain, which is near here, so I am looking forward to that. We may also go to a Nori-bong, which is kind of like a karaoke bar I think.

Anyway, we love and miss all of you and appreciate so much your emails, please keep them coming. We definitely want to stay in touch with all of you as much as we can. In the mean time, may God richly bless every one of you.

Love always, Jon and Emily Reesor

Email: jonreesor@gmail.com

emilyreesor@gmail.com

Phone: 011-82-62-651-8941