It's beautiful. I really enjoy walking to work, past the park, hearing smooth jazz or a piano sonata coming from the trees. It's almost as if I lived at Disneyland and I love it.
Speaking of Disneyland, I have discovered something ultimately better. It's called Everland and I had the wonderful privilege of visiting this magical place yesterday. And yes, I did say that it was better than Disneyland and I mean it. Us Californians think there is nothing more magical and wondrous than Disneyland and we all wish we were there all the time, but all you doubters need to come visit me in Korea and learn the amazingness of Everland. Google it, I dare you.
So, yesterday was my birthday and it was an amazing one. John and I were invited to go to Everland with a group of Johnny's adult students--an amazing group of Korean women. We had shadowed their class the week before and they had told us that they would be going to Everland and wouldn't we please come with them? Well, we couldn't really say no, nor did we want to, and so we agreed and made plans to go on Friday.
We didn't really know what to expect, going to a Korean theme park. We had anticipated something a lot smaller than what we got though. Instead of the carnival-sized theme park with lame rides that we thought we were getting, Everland ended up being HUMONGOUS. Imagine a theme park probably twice the size of Disneyland built on the side of a mountain containing anything and everything you could possibly think of: an entire waterpark bigger than Water World; one of the world's largest and scariest wooden coasters in the world; a huge safari area complete with lions, tigers, and bears; gondolas or "human sky" as they call it, that carry you throughout the park; lots of monkeys and talking birds; an amazing sea lion show; a rotating house; roller coasters of all sizes; an unbelievable bird show with hundreds (seriously) of trained flying birds; and last, but certainly not least, a boat ride that is a total rip-off "It's a Small World."
Needless to say, it was an incredible day. And really the most incredible part was hanging out with those amazing Korean women. As Korean cultural rules require, because they invited us along on this outing, the women paid for everything. Our tickets into the park (including an all-access pass to any ride), all of our food and snacks, and even a birthday present for me! Their generosity baffled me--they went above and beyond any "cultural rules." And they are so kind! And their English is so good! Thank you Lord for those women and the ways they have blessed us.
Our trip to Everland was most memorable and wonderful. Unfortunately, we have no pictoral documentation of our day because we forgot to put the battery into the camera. It was a horrible discovery to find that we had brought the camera and that it had no battery in it. Nevertheless, it was a birthday that I will not soon forget.
Besides exciting trips to amazing theme parks, life in South Korea is going swimmingly and we are really loving it. John and I have gotten more and more acquainted with our new city and are slowly learning our way around town. This week has been particularly busy because we have been intensely preparing for the beginning of the new semester. Classes start on Monday, Sep 1st (no Labor Day for us in Korea), and we are really excited to start teaching.
So, that's all for now. I wish that all of you could come and visit us here in Korea so that you could hear the classical music in the parks.
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Ahneong-haseoyo!
*Warning: Please proceed with caution, this is a very long blog.
We finally have internet access at our apartment! So, welcome to the first real blog/update from Pyeongtaek, South Korea! John and I have been here now for 11 days and already feel at home in this far away city. But let's start at the beginning...
We flew out of SFO on Friday, August 8th at around 2 pm. My parents and sister accompanied us to the airport, which meant a great help with our NINE BAGS but which also meant a bloated and teary face for me over our long goodbye. I've never been so far away from my family before; I take great comfort in Skype, however, and the fact that I chatted with my family just yesterday with full web camera access so that I could see my parent's dear faces and my sister's new haircut (everyone who loves us needs to download Skype so that they can talk to us for free (it's a free download, even if you don't have a web camera, www.skype.com)).
Ok, so. The flight was 12 hours and it felt that long. Korean Air runs a very nice flight, though. We found ourselves impressed with the touch screen TVs on the backs of every seat which provided us with hours of entertainment. The food was really good, surprisingly; they served us traditional Korean bi-bim-bop with spicy red pepper paste, sticky buns, fruit, and all of the 7up that I could drink. Sounds pretty good, right? Well the down side was that we had requested exit row seats because of our ridiculously long legs but we didn't get them, sad face. (They actually gave us seats one row behind the exit row...just to taunt us) So it wasn't the most comfortable 12 hours of my life.
We landed at the Incheon/Seoul airport at 6 pm Saturday, August 9th Korean time. The first thing that struck us (besides Korean mothers loudly yelling for the children) was the humidity. Even inside the airport our skin could feel the difference in the air and I felt as if my skin was begging me to get back on the plane. Humidity = instant sticky. We were exhausted, neither of us had slept on the flight, and now we were sticky but we knew that we had to mentally prepare ourselves for what was coming next: retreiving our NINE BAGS and heading towards customs. John set up a good system for retreival of the NINE BAGS; he set me up in a corner of the baggage area with two of the airport carts while he waited for our NINE BAGS to head down the carousel. After about 15 minutes we had retrieved 7 bags and 1 djembe and were still waiting on my guitar. I was getting a little worried so I walked around the baggage area looking to see if it had been put with the fragile items. Sure enough I spotted my guitar, being held by a Korean customs agent walking my way. I tried to gesture with my hands that the guitar belonged to me, pointing to the guitar and pointing to myself. He also began to gesture to me and I got the idea that I needed to follow him. So I gestured to John and the two of us pushed our heavy airport carts after the customs agent.
He brought us to the searching area where a Korean traveler was having his luggage "searched" which basically is where a customs agent takes your suitcase (or NINE BAGS, in our case), opens it up, turns it over, dumps everything out of it, looks through it all a little, and tells you to put it all back inside. John and I looked at each other worriedly; with our NINE BAGS this process could take forever. The customs agent who was holding my guitar motioned for us to stay put for a second and called over another Korean woman who looked like she was in charge of the place. They began speaking Korean to each other, motioning to us and our bags. The woman's eyes got big as she looked at all of our stuff. I'd like to think that she also noticed the sweat dripping off our foreheads and the worry in our eyes. My heart leapt for joy as she smiled at us and motioned for us to just go, bypassing any customs procedures at all. The man holding my guitar looked taken aback, but she was in charge, so after running my guitar through what looked like an X-ray machine he let us go. And that is the story of how we waltzed through baggage claim and customs at the Incheon airport in under 20 minutes with NINE BAGS. Praise the Lord!
Our good friend Johnny (who is also a teacher at the same Center) and one of our new bosses Mrs. Eem were there to greet us after we escaped from customs. The four of us got in an airport bus with our NINE BAGS and began the hour trip to our new home, the city of Pyeongtaek. Pyeongtaek is considered a small city here in Korea, but for John and I it is anything but. I mean, it's no San Francisco, but with a population of 400,000 people, Pyeongtaek holds its own. It's a rectagular shaped city with a bustling downtown area, loads and loads of restaurants (including many Western ones like McDonalds, KFC, Pizza Hut, etc.), many community gardens, shopping malls, and mopeds. Our apartment is located in a quiet area of town right next door to Johnny's apartment building and also right behind the Pyeongtaek Youth Community Center which is our place of work. So, thankfully, in this land of stickiness our commute to work is nothing but a 2 minute walk.
And now for our apartment, the moment you have all been waiting for. It's wonderful and we love it. We were anticipating it being much smaller than it actually is, and it turns out that it is the absolute perfect size for us. I can't tell you how much I wanted to upload a video tour of our apartment for you, I may have even told many of you that that was the plan. However, sigh, after many (and I mean many) attempts at uploading our video tour, we've come to the unfortunate realization that it's just not going to work. So, instead and only slightly lamer, for your viewing pleasure, a photo-tour of our lovely new home:
So, that's our apartment, we love it. We're pretty much settled, we have a few more things we'd like to pick up, but for the most part we'd really like to keep it simple here.
For the last 10 days, John and I have spent our time setting up our apartment, shadowing classes at the Center, familiarizing ourselves with our new city, experiencing Korean food and culture, and studying the language. We've also been able to hang out with Johnny quite a bit which is great, it's wonderful to have a friend here. We're so excited to finally be here and although the pangs of homesickness have hit us a few times already, we've found that as long as we commit ourselves to keeping in touch with those we love we will be just fine.
We've also committed ourselves to this blog, so over the next year you will find us blogging regularly about our new culture, language, food, and teaching experiences. So please stay tuned! We are so very grateful to all of you for your support, prayers, and kind words, WE LOVE YOU. And praise to God for His constant grace, His never-ending love, and for tasty Korean food.
We finally have internet access at our apartment! So, welcome to the first real blog/update from Pyeongtaek, South Korea! John and I have been here now for 11 days and already feel at home in this far away city. But let's start at the beginning...
We flew out of SFO on Friday, August 8th at around 2 pm. My parents and sister accompanied us to the airport, which meant a great help with our NINE BAGS but which also meant a bloated and teary face for me over our long goodbye. I've never been so far away from my family before; I take great comfort in Skype, however, and the fact that I chatted with my family just yesterday with full web camera access so that I could see my parent's dear faces and my sister's new haircut (everyone who loves us needs to download Skype so that they can talk to us for free (it's a free download, even if you don't have a web camera, www.skype.com)).
Ok, so. The flight was 12 hours and it felt that long. Korean Air runs a very nice flight, though. We found ourselves impressed with the touch screen TVs on the backs of every seat which provided us with hours of entertainment. The food was really good, surprisingly; they served us traditional Korean bi-bim-bop with spicy red pepper paste, sticky buns, fruit, and all of the 7up that I could drink. Sounds pretty good, right? Well the down side was that we had requested exit row seats because of our ridiculously long legs but we didn't get them, sad face. (They actually gave us seats one row behind the exit row...just to taunt us) So it wasn't the most comfortable 12 hours of my life.
We landed at the Incheon/Seoul airport at 6 pm Saturday, August 9th Korean time. The first thing that struck us (besides Korean mothers loudly yelling for the children) was the humidity. Even inside the airport our skin could feel the difference in the air and I felt as if my skin was begging me to get back on the plane. Humidity = instant sticky. We were exhausted, neither of us had slept on the flight, and now we were sticky but we knew that we had to mentally prepare ourselves for what was coming next: retreiving our NINE BAGS and heading towards customs. John set up a good system for retreival of the NINE BAGS; he set me up in a corner of the baggage area with two of the airport carts while he waited for our NINE BAGS to head down the carousel. After about 15 minutes we had retrieved 7 bags and 1 djembe and were still waiting on my guitar. I was getting a little worried so I walked around the baggage area looking to see if it had been put with the fragile items. Sure enough I spotted my guitar, being held by a Korean customs agent walking my way. I tried to gesture with my hands that the guitar belonged to me, pointing to the guitar and pointing to myself. He also began to gesture to me and I got the idea that I needed to follow him. So I gestured to John and the two of us pushed our heavy airport carts after the customs agent.
He brought us to the searching area where a Korean traveler was having his luggage "searched" which basically is where a customs agent takes your suitcase (or NINE BAGS, in our case), opens it up, turns it over, dumps everything out of it, looks through it all a little, and tells you to put it all back inside. John and I looked at each other worriedly; with our NINE BAGS this process could take forever. The customs agent who was holding my guitar motioned for us to stay put for a second and called over another Korean woman who looked like she was in charge of the place. They began speaking Korean to each other, motioning to us and our bags. The woman's eyes got big as she looked at all of our stuff. I'd like to think that she also noticed the sweat dripping off our foreheads and the worry in our eyes. My heart leapt for joy as she smiled at us and motioned for us to just go, bypassing any customs procedures at all. The man holding my guitar looked taken aback, but she was in charge, so after running my guitar through what looked like an X-ray machine he let us go. And that is the story of how we waltzed through baggage claim and customs at the Incheon airport in under 20 minutes with NINE BAGS. Praise the Lord!
Our good friend Johnny (who is also a teacher at the same Center) and one of our new bosses Mrs. Eem were there to greet us after we escaped from customs. The four of us got in an airport bus with our NINE BAGS and began the hour trip to our new home, the city of Pyeongtaek. Pyeongtaek is considered a small city here in Korea, but for John and I it is anything but. I mean, it's no San Francisco, but with a population of 400,000 people, Pyeongtaek holds its own. It's a rectagular shaped city with a bustling downtown area, loads and loads of restaurants (including many Western ones like McDonalds, KFC, Pizza Hut, etc.), many community gardens, shopping malls, and mopeds. Our apartment is located in a quiet area of town right next door to Johnny's apartment building and also right behind the Pyeongtaek Youth Community Center which is our place of work. So, thankfully, in this land of stickiness our commute to work is nothing but a 2 minute walk.
And now for our apartment, the moment you have all been waiting for. It's wonderful and we love it. We were anticipating it being much smaller than it actually is, and it turns out that it is the absolute perfect size for us. I can't tell you how much I wanted to upload a video tour of our apartment for you, I may have even told many of you that that was the plan. However, sigh, after many (and I mean many) attempts at uploading our video tour, we've come to the unfortunate realization that it's just not going to work. So, instead and only slightly lamer, for your viewing pleasure, a photo-tour of our lovely new home:
So, that's our apartment, we love it. We're pretty much settled, we have a few more things we'd like to pick up, but for the most part we'd really like to keep it simple here.
For the last 10 days, John and I have spent our time setting up our apartment, shadowing classes at the Center, familiarizing ourselves with our new city, experiencing Korean food and culture, and studying the language. We've also been able to hang out with Johnny quite a bit which is great, it's wonderful to have a friend here. We're so excited to finally be here and although the pangs of homesickness have hit us a few times already, we've found that as long as we commit ourselves to keeping in touch with those we love we will be just fine.
We've also committed ourselves to this blog, so over the next year you will find us blogging regularly about our new culture, language, food, and teaching experiences. So please stay tuned! We are so very grateful to all of you for your support, prayers, and kind words, WE LOVE YOU. And praise to God for His constant grace, His never-ending love, and for tasty Korean food.
Monday, August 18, 2008
Soon and Very Soon...
We get internet in our apartment tomorrow. I know you're all a-titter with anticipation.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
I know you all are wanting to see pictures, but...
We still don't have internet at our apartment! So, a lengthy update and pictures will have to wait. But, we are doing well! Right now I (Ferial) am typing to you from our new place of work, the Pyeongtaek Youth Community Center, and we are loving it. We've completely adjusted to the time zone by now, but we still can't seem to get used to the humidity, it's crazy! Our friends and our new "Center Family" have been so kind and welcoming to us; we are so grateful for their blessings. Also, our apartment is coming together quite nicely. Our apartment is wonderful, just the right size for us and everything is brand new and trendy. We love it. It's starting to feel like home.
So, that's it for now, I know it's not much, but I just wanted to let you all know that we are doing very well. We have to rush off to a "Center Family" dinner, but I promise there will more updates soon!
Love.
So, that's it for now, I know it's not much, but I just wanted to let you all know that we are doing very well. We have to rush off to a "Center Family" dinner, but I promise there will more updates soon!
Love.
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Friday, August 8, 2008
As the time draws ever nearer
I sit on my bed, at my in-laws home, my brand new Macbook atop my lap. Ferial is getting ready for our last dinner with her family. Nine bags and many hours later, we're nearly finished packing. It's just now starting to sink in, this thing that we're doing. We've said good-bye's to all our friends, and had one last harrah. It's a fearful thing to do, to uproot ones life and board a rocket. By this time tomorrow we will be soaring through the atmosphere. When we land, we will be 16 hours in the future, in a country where very few people will speak our language, amidst a vastly different culture than our own. These are things which make me nervous, but also excite me to no end, new food, new sights, new sounds...
We recently found out that while our semester doesn't begin until September, our company has been planning this entire time that if we should arrive early (which we are), that we (I) would take over for the classes of a teacher that is leaving on the 16th...! On the contrary, we have been planning that in the event we should arrive early (which we are) it would just be that much more time we would have to adjust to new food, new culture, new city, new apartment, new time-zone, new job, new church, new we live in another country now!!! Granted, this really isn't that big a deal. However, it does make me uncomfortable. Reason being, I don't like the idea of me, Johnny-no-teaching-experience, walking into the classroom of a seasoned veteran, and taking over his job for the last 2 weeks of the semester, with students who are used to a certain way of teaching and have this be my employers' first impression of me as a teacher. I would much rather have this opportunity to get really good and prepared for the first week, and take what I learn in preparation for that to be utilized in the rest of the semester. I don't want to have to be teaching classes, and then coming home trying to figure out where to keep my toilettries. We thought coming early would give us the chance to have our apartment all set up, and ready complete with all amenities, before we had to worry about the burden of a teaching schedule. I don't think I am being too unreasonable here. I am not asking for anything off the wall. I just want to start my job on the day I was supposed to. Simple, right?
I have been encouraged by a wiser person than I, that instead of putting my foot down and standing my ground, it is an often better thing to put ones head down, in humility, considering others as better than myself, and politely explaining my position. In his experience you can get much further with this sort of an attitude, and piss a lot less people off in the process.
Please be in prayer with us, regarding all these things.
We recently found out that while our semester doesn't begin until September, our company has been planning this entire time that if we should arrive early (which we are), that we (I) would take over for the classes of a teacher that is leaving on the 16th...! On the contrary, we have been planning that in the event we should arrive early (which we are) it would just be that much more time we would have to adjust to new food, new culture, new city, new apartment, new time-zone, new job, new church, new we live in another country now!!! Granted, this really isn't that big a deal. However, it does make me uncomfortable. Reason being, I don't like the idea of me, Johnny-no-teaching-experience, walking into the classroom of a seasoned veteran, and taking over his job for the last 2 weeks of the semester, with students who are used to a certain way of teaching and have this be my employers' first impression of me as a teacher. I would much rather have this opportunity to get really good and prepared for the first week, and take what I learn in preparation for that to be utilized in the rest of the semester. I don't want to have to be teaching classes, and then coming home trying to figure out where to keep my toilettries. We thought coming early would give us the chance to have our apartment all set up, and ready complete with all amenities, before we had to worry about the burden of a teaching schedule. I don't think I am being too unreasonable here. I am not asking for anything off the wall. I just want to start my job on the day I was supposed to. Simple, right?
I have been encouraged by a wiser person than I, that instead of putting my foot down and standing my ground, it is an often better thing to put ones head down, in humility, considering others as better than myself, and politely explaining my position. In his experience you can get much further with this sort of an attitude, and piss a lot less people off in the process.
Please be in prayer with us, regarding all these things.
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Sunday, August 3, 2008
We Hope On
Tonight I had the privilege of sharing a meal with a Sister in Christ who is suffering from Leukemia. I hope she doesn't mind me sharing a bit of her story, because the four of us, at dinner, had a conversation that was very encouraging to me, personally.
This woman is a junior or senior in University, I don't know which. She was diagnosed in mid-April with Leukemia...less than four months ago. In addition, she was told this week that she was not responding to chemotherapy. She has a choice to make, in a week and a half, whether or not to begin undergoing intensive treatment for her condition or to do nothing. This seems like a no-brainer, right? However, she has some of the best doctors in the world telling her that there is a 95% chance that even if she goes through with the intensive treatment, the cancer will not respond. Chemotherapy is horrible to go through. I can't even imagine the torture it must be, in hope of a cure. So, her choice is not just one of treatment, it is one of quality of life. Should she go through the tortuous chemo, only to find that it did nothing to stop the cancer from taking over her body? Or should she choose not to endure the chemo, and live a fairly normal life for who-knows-how-long, until such a seemingly inevitable day that she does succumb to the disease?
Some may answer a whole-hearted YES! If there is a 95% chance she won't respond, then there is a 5% chance she will! 5% is more than zero! Fight while there is still a chance to fight for! As long as there is a chance then there is hope! I understand this perspective. As long as there is a chance there is still hope. However, it is not actually her choice that I want to focus on here.
During our conversations over sushi, I asked her some very pointed questions about her condition. I know that if I were in her place, I would want people to talk to me straight, not attempt to dance around the subject, ignore the elephant in the room.
(I have had two good friends battle cancer, in the last few years. One died twice and lived to tell about it. He is baffling doctors today with his recovery, and baffling everyone else with his unshaking faith in The Lord. The other only died once, and when she did it was for good. She went to be with the Lord. After much doubt and questioning, she died in peace, in faith, in Christ.)
I asked her how all of these things were affecting her spiritually. She looked at the others at the table, shook her head, and said he's good. He's really very good. I really didn't know if this would strike a chord. After all, this was only the second time I'd ever spoken to this girl. But apparently it did.
She went on to tell me that there are good days and bad. Some days it is easy to trust The Lord with all of this...some days it is difficult to believe in His goodness, and feel His presence.
Hope. Hope.
Hebrews 11 says that "faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." I went on to encourage my friends that this hope is just as real for us today, as it was when we first came to faith. Our hope is in a Jesus that we cannot see, that we could never see. Our hope is in a Heaven that we cannot see, that we could never see. Our hope is in an afterlife we cannot see, that we could never see. We couldn't see God the day we first came to hope in Him. Why would that change, just because we've been in the faith for a few years? Are we surprised now that we do not see Him? No! We couldn't see Him to begin with! That is why it is faith! It doesn't matter if you're 15 or 55; whether you're suffering from Leukemia or in the peak of health. Our hope does not fail us. This hope is the same today as it always was. We didn't come to faith so that we could see miracles today. It wasn't so that we could have hope of an easy life here and now...it was so that we could have a hope for the future! A hope in an afterlife! A hope of Heaven!
I think I worded it better tonight, in the moment, led by the Spirit of God, but I hope my thoughts encourage you tonight, even poorly worded.
This woman is a junior or senior in University, I don't know which. She was diagnosed in mid-April with Leukemia...less than four months ago. In addition, she was told this week that she was not responding to chemotherapy. She has a choice to make, in a week and a half, whether or not to begin undergoing intensive treatment for her condition or to do nothing. This seems like a no-brainer, right? However, she has some of the best doctors in the world telling her that there is a 95% chance that even if she goes through with the intensive treatment, the cancer will not respond. Chemotherapy is horrible to go through. I can't even imagine the torture it must be, in hope of a cure. So, her choice is not just one of treatment, it is one of quality of life. Should she go through the tortuous chemo, only to find that it did nothing to stop the cancer from taking over her body? Or should she choose not to endure the chemo, and live a fairly normal life for who-knows-how-long, until such a seemingly inevitable day that she does succumb to the disease?
Some may answer a whole-hearted YES! If there is a 95% chance she won't respond, then there is a 5% chance she will! 5% is more than zero! Fight while there is still a chance to fight for! As long as there is a chance then there is hope! I understand this perspective. As long as there is a chance there is still hope. However, it is not actually her choice that I want to focus on here.
During our conversations over sushi, I asked her some very pointed questions about her condition. I know that if I were in her place, I would want people to talk to me straight, not attempt to dance around the subject, ignore the elephant in the room.
(I have had two good friends battle cancer, in the last few years. One died twice and lived to tell about it. He is baffling doctors today with his recovery, and baffling everyone else with his unshaking faith in The Lord. The other only died once, and when she did it was for good. She went to be with the Lord. After much doubt and questioning, she died in peace, in faith, in Christ.)
I asked her how all of these things were affecting her spiritually. She looked at the others at the table, shook her head, and said he's good. He's really very good. I really didn't know if this would strike a chord. After all, this was only the second time I'd ever spoken to this girl. But apparently it did.
She went on to tell me that there are good days and bad. Some days it is easy to trust The Lord with all of this...some days it is difficult to believe in His goodness, and feel His presence.
Hope. Hope.
Hebrews 11 says that "faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." I went on to encourage my friends that this hope is just as real for us today, as it was when we first came to faith. Our hope is in a Jesus that we cannot see, that we could never see. Our hope is in a Heaven that we cannot see, that we could never see. Our hope is in an afterlife we cannot see, that we could never see. We couldn't see God the day we first came to hope in Him. Why would that change, just because we've been in the faith for a few years? Are we surprised now that we do not see Him? No! We couldn't see Him to begin with! That is why it is faith! It doesn't matter if you're 15 or 55; whether you're suffering from Leukemia or in the peak of health. Our hope does not fail us. This hope is the same today as it always was. We didn't come to faith so that we could see miracles today. It wasn't so that we could have hope of an easy life here and now...it was so that we could have a hope for the future! A hope in an afterlife! A hope of Heaven!
I think I worded it better tonight, in the moment, led by the Spirit of God, but I hope my thoughts encourage you tonight, even poorly worded.
Saturday, August 2, 2008
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