Nearly two months in here are some picture

This isn't from Korea but it's currently my favorite picture. That is my brother looking freakishly huge and my niece looking cute.


These are some of my kids from the preschool. Two new kids were added this week. That puts the preschool total up to 14 kids.




This is the preschoolers during PE. They have PE once a week and a man shows up to lead them. It's pretty entertaining to watch.



And here are some of the kids I teach in the afternoon. Everyday I teach language arts for about 2 hrs. I get two classes a day and teach four classes total. Which means I see these classes below twice a week.

Quick Video

We had an open house for all of the church families who helped us move. I found these two little guys running around my apartment. I should have seen this coming.

The pictureless post

Places and cultures are all different. I'm taking this chance to highlight some unique things I've experienced here in Korea.

The school where I work is located somewhat near a military base. Not close enough for me to see it but close enough that for one day a week the doors in our school rattle as mortar rounds are being fired across the nearby mountains. On the way to school this week I saw 2 tanks driving in the road coming from the opposite direction. I've never seen that in the states.

Our school is surrounded by rice patties. They are all dried from the long cold winter. As I speak I can look outside my classroom window as the patties are being burned. These burning fields are not 40 yards from the school where children are playing outside. That's something new for me.

Couches. Its not uncommon for a family in Korea to have one. It is uncommon though for them to sit on it. Generally when going to someone's house I end up sitting indian style on the floor rather than on the plush couch near me. This leads to legs falling asleep and me shifting around a lot. It's not a big deal it's just different.

Another difference is in the heating of homes and buildings. Many Korean building heat their floors. Never once have my feet touched a cold floor. Even in the morning when I first crawl out of bed. My toes are warmed.

Groceries store bags. Free, you would think. Not so in Korea. One must tell the clerk how many bags one wants and then must bag ones own groceries. I'm not so good at guesstemating how many bags I'll need so this can be somewhat problematic.

They are many more differences I'm sure. But I have time for only a few. This is what I love about traveling. I get to experience new sights, sounds, smell, and tastes.

New Place

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Here are the pictures for the new apartment that I live in. It's a nice place. Much nicer than any that I've paid to live in in the states.

Everyday I stay busy. Between my preschool duties and my afternoon classes I stay busy from 8 to 6. It's good for me.

I've taught more in the last few weeks than perhaps my whole life. In the afternoons I teach kids ranging from 8 to 12 years old. I teach for two hours with them. I've found that when working with grade school and elementary kids I can tend to be a little bit of a tough teacher. I have fun but I don't put up with much junk from the kids. It's funny because I find myself doing very teacherly thing. For example today I made one of the older boys stay a few minutes after class so we could discuss his behavior. It has started to feel natural for me to teach. I'm far from accomplished but I enjoy it and learn a little bit more everyday.

On the preschool side of my job everyday is fun for me. I'm working with 12 kids and 7 of them are new to the preschool this week. Everyday get to play with and engage them in new ways. Its fun work.

Today it snowed a bit and I got the chance to have a snowball fight with the kids during lunch break, which I probably won't ever do again. The odds get a little sketchy when its twenty kids to one. Not to mention there was about half an inch of snow on the ground. After about ten minutes of intense snow ball warfare there was basically only mud and mush to throw, which didn't stop the snow balls from being launched at me.

This last picture is a funny one. This little boy attends the Korean speaking kindergarten that is downstairs from the one I work in. This week was his first and he spent two days running throughout the building to avoid his class. The teacher seemed to allow him to get away with it. Yesterday, his second day of running, he wandered up to my classroom late in the day. There was no one else there and I was just hanging out. He grabbed a puzzle starting working on it, and after about 5 minutes ended up like this. It was picture worthy.



Thanks to all for your continued prayers and support. All of your comments and e-mails are greatly appreciated.

Emotions

I thought I was a pretty emotionally stable guy. Not too many highs and not too many lows. Someone you could call steady. That's until I started taking pictures of myself throughout my daily life. Here's a snapshot of a day.


This first picture is of me in the morning. As can be seen I'm eager and ready to tackle the day. I would call this an emotional high.

If the last picture was an emotional high I would call this an obscene emotional high. The day has just begun I'm stoked and ready to mold the minds of the little ones.

This is me realizing that my computer is acting up. I'm thinking though that I can figure it out. No big deal. It's just a little internet problem. It'll hook up pretty soon. I'm emotionally level. Neither high nor low but focused on the task at hand.

Here is where it starts to get ugly. I don't know what's wrong with my internet connection. I start blaming Circuit City, and Microsoft, and the chord to my computer. I am in an emotional depression.


This is an emotional rock bottom. I am disgusted. How am I supposed to make it an evening without internet! I mean I have e-mails and sports and videos that can't be ignored. At this point I began muttering unintelligible words. My own language of curse words never before spoken by humans. Gibberish to you, but to me the venom spewed as I sit in my pit of despair.

These pictures are me calling on a greater source of power to help me. I am in an emotionally humbled state.

This is me when my internet works. I have now reached emotional euphoria. This is such an extreme high that I'm pretty sure there is adrenaline involved. This stage is also generally marked by a vocal exclamation of some sort. Perhaps a loud "Yes" or "Awesome" or even "Woo Hoo." In this stage one may find oneself making these exclamation no matter their surroundings.

This is just me taking a meal break. I love to cook. I'm emotionally content and about ready to go back to my computer for some more internet access.

This is me after coming back from the meal. The internet isn't working again. I am in the most severe emotional zone. This zone is called emotional explosion. At this stage I consider throwing my computer out the window or drop-kicking it across the room. It's best that I'm by myself during this stage otherwise someone could get hurt.


This is me after I jiggle the chord and the internet begins to work again. I am emotionally euphoric. This is the stage where one wavers between laughing and crying.

This is a slight exaggeration of how much my emotions differ through the day, but in some ways its not to far from the truth. Isn't it amazing how such simple things can cause such great raw emotion. A car cutting us off, slow service at a restaurant, a snubb by an acquaintance, poor internet connections. Small things that we perceive to be huge slights and inconveniences. Things that in reality are just not that big a deal.

It's humbling to thing that an internet problem can be the reason for such great mood swings. It's embarrassing when I think about it but also challenging.

By the way I'm great here in Korea. Thanks for your prayers.

Life is going well

I've been here now for about 10 days and am getting settled. My days look something like this.

• I leave my apartment at 8:15am
• Have devotions until 9:00am
• Prep for afternoon classes until 9:45am
• Help in the preschool until 12:15pm
• Lunch duty until 1:00pm
• back to preschool stuff 2:00pm
• Get ready for phonics class and mess around on the internet until 2:45pm
• Teach phonics until 3:35pm
• Teach first leadership from 4:00-4:45pm
• Teach second leadership from 5:00-5:50pm
• Go home to eat, sleep, type, prepare

On Tuesday's a local military base does artillery fire across the hill and the whole building shakes when mortars go off. On Thursday nights all of the teachers go out for pizza.

I am especially learning to adjust in how the school works. The preschoolers seem to run the show in the class and I'm really trying to help with class discipline. I've taken on kind of a support role in the preschool. A new school year starts in March and then I'll really have a lot more control of the preschool. I'm hoping to help implement.

Also break duty isn't really an assigned job for me, it's just that there is no one outside with the kids and it kind of drives me crazy. I'm sure someone would go out there if I didn't, but its kind of fun.

Here is a video of the preschoolers I work with. They are pretty cute in this video but the video is a little deceptive. In reality they don't listen to much of what I say. They are kind of testing me a lot so I've been having to lay down the smack.





Also worth noting is that I will be moving into a new apartment. I very nice place that I will be sharing with a fellow teacher. The man who is in one one of my previous pictures giving me bunny ears. It should be a fun transition.

Thanks for your continued prayer support.

I'm getting settled

Although I only had two days at the school this week, I got a pretty good flavor for what it's like and I like it. The preschool kids are smart and spunky and I'm excited to be working with them. The afternoon kids who are a little bit older also look to be a good fit for me to work with.

The school is changing its curriculum in March and therefore things will be in a bit of a state of flux until then. But for now I help in the preschool from 9:45-2 and then do afternoon classes roughly from 3-6.

I spent Saturday in Seoul and soaked up all the sights, sounds, and smells that it had to offer. It was tiring but fun. I experienced perhaps the most incredible hand drying station at the Outback Steakhouse bathroom. It's kind of hard to explain but I'll try and get a picture of it sometime. I also indulged in the sweetness of some Krispy Creme donuts, and they did not disappoint.

The first picture is of some of the students eating spaghetti out of a waffle cone. Which I will never understand.

The next two are of me on my first train ride, and me riding a tram up to a viewing post overlooking Seoul.

The second to last picture is of my dinner from Thursday, real live spaghetti. It tasted good and I was kind of proud that I ate something that wasn't cooked in a microwave. To be honest I thought I'd lose weight in Korea, but I'm starting to doubt that. The foods good and I have access to some pretty good groceries as well.

The next is the Seoul sky line and the last is the preschoolers, piled on top of each other. I couldn't tell you why they are piled like that, but at least they weren't punching each other.