Shut up, Malfoy.

So, today John and I got the fantastic opportunity to experience "Dr. Fish." We were at this swanky coffee shop/cafe in Seoul and you had the option to purchase 15 minutes of Dr. Fish therapy with your drink order. We opted for definitely yes on the Dr. Fish. There's even a "Dr. Fish Zone" on a raised platform in one whole corner of the coffee shop. First you rinse your feet off in a small wooden tub and then you stick them into the shallow pool where the Dr. Fish await. The Dr. Fish then swarm onto your feet and begin to eat away at all the dead skin on your feet. It tickles like crazy at first and we have some hilarious pictures of ourselves being tickled by the Dr. Fish. You can view those photos here:

http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=41503&l=ec4e5&id=631992912

Needless to say, Dr. Fishes are amazing and I would recommend them to anyone who needs a little foot exfoliation and some cheering up.

Autumn is definitely starting to happen here in Korea and I couldn't be more happy about it. It is no longer humid, but sunny and cold. There's a definite briskness in the air that just feels like the fall and I love it. Not to mention, my fall clothes are so much nicer than my summer ones and now I get to revel in hoodies and scarves and fun colored socks. And it's awesome to be able to walk outside now and not feel instantly sticky. Gone are the days of sweat and humidity; blankets and tea and the changing colors of leaves to come!

Speaking of changes, teaching is getting a whole lot easier. Or maybe it's not getting easier, we're just getting used to it. We definitely don't feel as overwhelmed or swamped or tired as we did before. We find ourselves falling into small routines, picking up new and helpful habits, learning our students and how we need to teach them, and getting used to our schedules. I'm finding that I am really enjoying myself, and I'm also finding that I'm not the rockstar teacher that I thought I was going to be. I mean, I'm not a bad teacher, I'm just realizing that teaching is harder work than I imagined and that a smile and an extroverted personality will not necessarily carry me throughout all of my classes. I am learning the importance of being well-prepared, having big expectations and committing to them, and that sucess doesn't happen in a day. And I have learned that I cannot expect all of my students to love me, but that I can strive to earn their respect and admiration. This one is a hard one for me because I have always wanted everyone to love me. I know that my time spent teaching here in Korea will be one of those experiences that shapes me and adds little (or big) dents into my character.

And lastly, speaking of experiences, there is a high school aged boy that has been hanging around the Center lately. John and I believe that there is good chance that he could be developmentally disabled but we don't know for sure. All we know is that whenever he sees me, John or Johnny he talks to us. He knows that we are foreigners and English teachers so when he talks to us he tries to air all of the English phrases that he can. He's bombarded us with "Hey baby" and "Psst, come over here" and "How ya doing" over and over again. But by far the best phrase we've ever heard come out of his mouth has been "Shut up, Malfoy" (for those of you who might not know, this is a Harry Potter reference). He usually mumbles this over and over in the middle of conversation. At first I didn't understand what he was saying because it's just absurd to hear somebody, especially in broken English, tell you to "Shut up, Malfoy." And supposedly I'm not the only Malfoy, John and Johnny have both been told to shut up too.

Sometimes you don't know what to do...

In my last post, I talked about a class of five-year-olds. Well, I have two of those classes. One is a kindergarten aged beginner class. Another is what we call an ATC (American Textbook Class). That means that these children are geniuses. They know all the basic vocabulary words, phrases, concepts and often complete sentences. For example, today I had a brilliant little boy tell me, "I want to poop." He was no older than four, by American calculations. Anyway, you get the point. They are English phenoms. The trouble with this class is, they are as smart as some 10-year olds I have, but as wild as jungle monkeys.

I don't know how to teach them. I am very discouraged. I cannot control their behavior. They get distracted. They roll around in their seats. They hit each other. They say sarcastic or funny things in Korean to make the other children laugh. I don't know what to do... My superiors see that there is a problem. This situation is very complex and I don't even think I could articulate all of the ins and outs of the problem.

I would like it very much if you would pray for me. Please pray that God would give me some sort of illumination, as how best to teach these children. That's all. I am just very down-hearted about all of this, and need some prayer. Thank you all.

I taught five-year-olds possessives!

I yelled, as I burst into the office triumphantly energetic. JoAnne, the native Korean English teacher, looked at Jonathon and said, "what does he mean, possesives?" (It should be noted here, that I talk too fast for Koreans. I have reassured them, saying I talk to fast for some Americans too. JoAnne, despite her excellent grip on the language, and my efforts to slow down, continues to disunderstand me.) Before Jonathon could answer, I sang, "mine and yours, mine and yours, I taught children mine and yours!"

I was excited. This was on day seven in the classroom. Teaching had turned out to be arduous. We had gone from working zero hours a day, for two months, having quit our social-work jobs at the end of June, to working 8-11 hour days overnight. We have been teaching now for two full weks. It has been greulling at times. For our first two days, I was sick in my stomach, having eaten some Bibim Bap that didn't agree with me. Since Wednesday, this week, both Ferial and I have had colds that have kept us weak, sore and tired. Add to all of that the normal stress of starting a new job, the added stress of that new job being in another country and the insane stress of having to deal with kids, American age 3-14, for 6 hours every day, who by the way, don't really speak your language and would rather be doing something else...

So, teaching four-year-olds, the difference between "my book" and "your book" was, in my mind, an enourmous success for the day. Now don't get me wrong, we are really enjoying our jobs. However, we are looking forward to the day when doing lesson plans won't take us two hours every morning. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays we don't have to be into the office until 1:30, at the latest. However, we are regularly going in at 9:00 on those days, just so we can prepare for classes. We have been told that preparation gets much easier and we relish the thought of being able to sleep in until 9-ish, get up, have breakie, read some Holy Writ, and head into the office after a light lunch.

Life has been good though. Two days ago, I was out in the courtyard, playing "Red-Light, Green-Light" with some 4th graders, because I didn't want to plan a lesson for that class, when a guy walked up to me, who was definitely not Korean. In the middle of yelling "Red-Light," I heard him say, "Are you American?" I was floored...I think I just stood there with my mouth open for a second. "Like, I mean, you're not Canadian...?" he said. My students were frozen in place, waiting for a chance to speeed ahead again. "Yeah, I'm American. You?" "Yeah," he said. I shook his hand, "I'm John." "Jason." "TEACHER!!!!!!" I asked Jason if he could give me fifteen minutes, to get rid of the Bulgogi Boys and he said he would go and get his wife and meet me back outside in twenty.

Long story short, Ferial and I now have a new set of friends. They are married, 26 year old Christians from Indiana. They are a bi-racial couple and love many of the same movies and tv shows we do. Thus far, we have only spent a couple of hours with them, but it promises to be a good friendship, already.

This is getting long, so I'll quickly fill you in on a few other things: We went to Seoul for the first time, last weekend. The photos are on Ferial's facebook. It was a lot of fun, and we made sure to stop by Starbucks, while we were there. I am reaping the benefits of that, as I type. We had dinner that night with a Korean woman Jonathon and I knew from Briercrest, Annie. We ate at a Brazilian Barbecue restaurant - all you can eat meat! In the Bay Area, it would be called a churiscaria, if you want to find one. Amazing food. It can be pricey, but you won't regret it. Also, this weekend is a three-day holiday, which is a rarity in Korea. It is Korean Thanksgiving, called ChuSok. We are looking forward to resting up, kicking a cold, and getting to know the newest crew members on our rocket.

Happy ChuSok!

They play classical music in the parks here.

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.

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:

COME ON IN!
Click here to view the photo-tour.

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.

Soon and Very Soon...

We get internet in our apartment tomorrow. I know you're all a-titter with anticipation.

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.