Well, I'm finally finished with the recording project and am feeling better. The past week was not been very productive or enjoyable, for the most part. Felt mildly sick most of the week and then felt like crap Thurs.-Sat. Left school early on Friday and went to the doctor. Got diagnosed with the lovely "common" cold. I'm not sure how I'm supposed to react to that prognosis. I think I was mostly disappointed. "Come on! Validate my feelings of crappiness and all my complaining!" But I guess it's good that I don't have the swine flu. I had English Camp all last week with two groups of students. It was pretty fun. Played a lot of games, did a powerpoint "tour" of American cities and landmarks, and made burritos with them. They weren't as ecstatic about the burritos as I had hoped (or as I was). Mostly it was fun getting to know the students better and help them learn English.

Today (Monday) was the first day of the semester. I wasn't given a class schedule or told what to teach or anything. I didn't know what grades I would be teaching till this morning. Communication is not...ideal. But it's okay. It turns out that I will only be teaching 1st and 3rd year students, which is similar to 6th and 8th grades. And though I was told I'd have a class of 20 students to myself, the principal decided he wanted to go the route of most of the other schools and give me 40 students with a Korean c0-teacher. Lame!! 40 students is a world of difference from 20. My class-control-level just plummeted. Plus, I had gotten used to the level of English the the camp kids had, but they seem to be the better kids. Communicating with the classes today was surprisingly difficult. I got a lot of blank stares. I was thankful the Korean co-teacher was there to translate some things. After an introduction of myself, I taught the 1st year students a short lesson on verbs, especially future tense, and then had them right 3 things they "will do" this coming week. The 3rd year students were much more advanced than the 1st year. I was pleased. I was able to have conversations with many of them. I had them write about their summer. This was quite easy for some, but still difficult for some. There is such a huge range between their level of understanding. It's gonna be tough challenging the top while catering to the bottom. Reminds me of a book I read in college while writing a paper on homeschooling titled "Dumbing Us Down." hmmm...

So, spent some time browsing itunes, myspace, billboard today. Turns out there's a buttload of new music just coming out. Third Eye Blind, Imogen Heap, Skillet, and Mutemath. Just bought Imogen Heap's new one. She is amazing. I don't know how she does all this herself. I'm jealous. Well, I'm gonna end this. If anyone wants to skype on the weekends, let me know. below is a picture of my church. The English service is held on the top floor of the building on the left. Pretty crazy. I think there's around 8000 people at the church. And I'm taller then them all!!! No, that's probably not true. There's probably a few other giants around.

Summer camp tomorrow: Picture tour of America-Cities and landmarks; and ultimate frisbee. Yes! Gonna turn these Korean kids on to the great sport of ultimate frisbee.

I'm getting into the habit of getting home from work and listening to a sermon. The last couple of days I've listened to sermons by Mark Driscoll from Mars Hill in Seattle. His free podcasts on itunes are great. I also listen to Tim Keller from Redeemer Presbyterian in NYC at times too. I recommend both. Today's sermon by Mark was about wisdom. Proverbs says that "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of all wisdom." And Mark was saying that if you want to understand and improve your life, your first item of business should be to learn the fear of God. I try to focus on clearing up all the problems and confusions in my life first. But that will never clear things up. Also, the fear of the Lord cannot happen as long as we fear man. And I fear man quite often. I value and give worth, or weight, to what different people say or think often more than what God says or thinks. None of this is really new. It just hit me today with where I'm at and was what I needed to be reminded of. I had forgotten this. So yea.

Gonna hit the sack.

Well, I need to go to bed. I haven't been feeling too hot the last few days. Even though I've been getting enough sleep, I've been real tired, I have a headache, and my eyes feel really heavy all day. Today was a bit better.

Today, monday, was my first day of English Summer Camp. I have two periods with the 1st year students (14 yrs olds) and two periods with the 2nd year students (15). It went well. We played a game that I call telephone pictionary. Not sure of the real name. But it's really fun and the kids liked it. Tomorrow we are doing a scavenger hunt. I'm also giving them lyrics to a song with all the verbs taken out, and I am going to play the song for them and they need to fill in as much of the verbs as they can.

This past weekend, I went to Lotte World with the new members group from my church. Lotte World is kinda like a smaller version of Disneyland. It was a great day. I didn't really do many rides, but it was fun getting to know some new people, especially a few Koreans. The best part was waiting in line for over an hour to go on the "gyro-swing," getting up to the front and having the attendant open a side gate and push me up against a wall with some lines on it, and tell me that I was too tall to go on the ride. Hahaha. It was awesome. I didn't mind. I wasn't feeling to well so it was probably better. I went on the pirate ship later that day. Above are a couple of pics from the day. I would write more but I really need to go to bed and get over this bug. I bought some cereal and yogurt last night and am excited to eat that for breakfast. Make sure you check out the video below. Freakin' amazing. It was so funny.

Well, I've had Monday-Wednesday off this week. I had thought about going on a day trip somewhere, but I ended up just staying around here. One of my goals for my time in Korea is to learn to play jazz piano, so I made a plan to practice for 45 minutes, five days a week. So these last three days have been filled with playing jazz piano, working on some projects in Logic (my music production software), finishing "Surprised by Joy," and going on some walk/runs in the park.

Last night, I went over to Mrs. Kwon's (the korean teacher who is in charge of me) house for dinnner. She lives up in Anyeong, which is about a 30 minute train ride from here. On the way out of the apartment, I ran into Nikia, who is a girl from Philly that lives on my floor. She was heading up to Seoul and taking the same train. So what is usually a pretty boring train ride turned into a nice talk about korean women, my music, and whether parents should force their kids to go to church. Mrs. Kwon's son was waiting for me at the subway station (by the way, kids of all ages run all over the place by themselves here. You see 6 year olds just crossing the street by themselves. And it's not stanwood. Ansan is a city of a 600,000. Just crazy). So, Kim Won found me at the station and we walked the 1/2 mile or so back to their "home." They lived on the 19th floor of a apartment building that was surrounded by many other apartment buildings. Everybody lives in apartments. I was curious to see what dinner would be like. After beginning a game of chess with kim won, we sat down to eat. We had pork, breaded squash or cucumber, kimchee, rice, and the little fried, whole fish that I had tried last week. I didn't try them this time. In the traditional korean way of eating, you would take a piece of lettuce, put some meat, some sauce, and whatever else you like inside of it, and then eat it up. The meal was pretty good.

A couple of interesting things I learned about Korean culture from this time at Mrs. Kwon's house. High school students have an insane life. They go to school from 8 AM-10 PM!! They have an hour break for both lunch and dinner. And after school, many students go to an academy till midnight! And then they have homework!! This just blows my mind. They can't be getting any more than 5 hours of sleep a night. Education is huge here. Another thing is that Koreans work very hard to have a decent life-style. Mrs. Kwon's husband is a surveyer, and he got home from work after we finished dinner around 9:30. He leaves at like 6:30 in the morning and gets back at 9:30 every day!! Dang! And the women all work too. Even when there kids are young. I was thinking that would be hard to have much of a family life, but I guess that's just custom here. It's making me think twice about raising my family in Korea. Just joking, mom.

Well, I'll finish this up. Tonight, I had the best Korean meal yet. It was a Korean BBQ place, that was all-you-can-eat meat. You go up and grab as much raw pork and beef as you want along with a slew of veggies (including some funky mushrooms that looked like string cheese with a bunch of heads sticking out of it), and bring them back to your table (my legs just love these places where you sit on the ground) and cook them yourselves on the little grill built into your table. It was great! We ate and ate and ate. (pics below) After that, we went out to a bar that has instruments in a corner, and I got to sit in on a song on drums. It was pretty fun. But now it's late (12:43), I have to work tomorrow, and I'm going to bed. Peace out homies.

P.S. It's good to hear that many of you are actually reading this. I'm impressed. Thanks.

A couple of pics at the park today. I was tired. Late night at Noraebang.



Had my first experience of noraebang (korean karaoke) last night. I had heard that this was a quite popular cultural event here, as it is in other Asian cultures. Lyra, one of the other English teachers from America that lives in Ansan had a goodbye party last night, and a group of 15 of us went out to korean BBQ, then to a sports bar, then to noraebong. It was incredibly entertaining. The room, big enough for all of us, had a big flatscreen on the wall with the lyrics and completely unrelated video footage, bench seat on 3 sides, two big books listing all the songs available, and a huge remote to program songs. We were there for more than two hours and it was about 2 in the morning when we left. It was still going strong when we left. I'm usually not a fan of singing in front of people in this format, but it was less intimidating than I had expected. I sang Linkin Park's "In the End" with Lyra. It was pretty hilarious watching some of the others really get into the songs. We all laughed alot. Good time.

I also got to meet a few other westerners from the area that I hadn't met before. Turns out there's a guy named Daniel that lives in my apartment building who's from Bellingham. He's a Christian and seems like a great guy. Didn't get to talk to him too much but hope to hang out with him again before he heads back (like most of the others, his contract is up in a few weeks). And I met a korean guy named Micah (or jihoon kim) that goes to the Korean church where my English church meets. He's really great and I got to talk with him quite a bit. We shared numbers and I hope to spend more time with him. His English is quite good and maybe he can teach me some Korean. Oh, since Lyra was leaving, she passed a few Korean language books on to me, so I've been trying to pick up the language a little more.

OH! One other thing that I forgot to mention last post is that I got cleared by my school to take a couple days vacation in October to go be in my friend Ryan's wedding in Boulder, CO! Super pumped about that. I was hoping to go but didn't know if they'd let me leave in the middle of the semester. But it turns out that's midterms time and they were fine with me leaving. Yea!

Books I'm reading-Suprised by Joy by C.S. Lewis, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind by Mark Noll, and How to Read the Bible for All it's Worth by Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart. I had started the latter two books a month or two ago, but am in kind of a phase right now where I'm not able to digest the heavy, theological, interpretation books, a category which both of these would fall in. So, in need of some lighter reading, I turned to C.S. Lewis' account of his early life and conversion. There are certainly deep parts to this book also, but it's more story than theology, and I find that I usually relate to and feel like I'm right with Lewis' train of thought. The last chapter I read was very helpful to me. I will try to right about it next time. Peace!

11:35 PM, Thursday-Just got back from a lovely walk in the park. The big park behind my apartment assumes a different character at night. There was a low mist hanging over the trees that gave it an eerie feeling. And I hadn't discovered the slew of trails on at the northwestern section of the park that meandered through a bunch of trees and small hills. It was so beautiful. The reason I went out was mainly to pray. I find my mind can focus better when I'm walking. And this park provided spot for that. When I came out of the trees and into the central section of the park, I was surprised at the number of people out at 11 PM. There is a large amphitheater on the high part of the park, with a large, circular paved section around it. On one side of the circle is a shop that rents out rollerblades. It was still open, with four guys sitting outside of it talking, and many people had checked out rollerblades and were riding around the amphitheater. I considered joining them but then remembered I hadn't brought my wallet. So after walking around the theater, I walked back to my apartment through the trees and haze. I felt refreshed and focused.

(Oh, for lunch today, Miss Kwon took me out to a Korean restaurant that specialized in soups and seafood. I got the bean curd stew with seafood. It was decent. Kinda spicy, but bareable. But one of the many side dishes came with it (along with the three different types of kimchee) was the craziest thing I've seen yet. It was a bowl full of tiny, whole, fried fish. Eyes, tails, everything. They were about the size of a ear wig and no more appetizing. I tried them and they weren't too disgusting, but I was perfectly content not having a second bite. Miss Kwon said that she makes them for her family every day!! "Thank you God for not letting me be born into that family. Amen." ) Above is a pic of some of the other foreigners in my apartment complex at dinner last week.

Well, we've been getting hit with a ton of rain due to the typhoon hitting southern Asia. I usually walk the mile to work, but this morning it was just pouring (as it had been all day yesterday), and I was the only person on the streets without an umbrella. I thought I'd go by the grocery store and get one but they were closed (open till midnight but closed at 8 in the morning. weird). So I rode the bus, but I was already soaking when I got on it. I hadn't ridden this bus to school before so I was kinda taking a chance. I got a little scared when it made a turn away from the road that I normally take to get to school, but it turns out it takes a different route to the school.

After school, I came home and took a little nap. I've been very tired recently. I got up from my nap at 6:45 and decided I needed to go for a run if I was going to be at all useful for the rest of the evening. So glad I did. As soon as I got outside, there was a perfectly clear, big rainbow coming from near the park where I was going to run. As I ran towards the park, I noticed a lot of people taking pictures of it with their cell phones. It was an amazing sight and was captivating everybody. When I got into the park, I was out of the tall buildings and trees so I could see its full beauty. The top part was not visible, but you could see a portion of the other end coming out of a mountain top to the north-east. At one point, the main section looked as if it was coming out of this big church across from the park. I wish I had had my camera.

One thing that has been on my mind recently, that is relevant at all time, but especially for me right now, is letting God be in control of leading me where he will, and not feeling the pressure to produce this growth, get to a certain spot, on my own. I tend to put a lot of pressure on myself to "arrive" somewhere where I feel alright and that everything is okay. Not sure exactly what I think this place of arrival will look like. But I don't think it exists. "There's no arrival," as one songwriter has put it. I think I struggle with control. Okay, I know I struggle with control. It's hard for me to trust God to lead me and take me places. I try to force it and be in control of spiritual growth in my life. Sure, we play a part in our spiritual growth. We have choices to make. We can keep God central or let Him just be on the outskirts of our life. But I find a freedom in giving up control of where I'm headed and the changes that will happen in my life. While here in Korea, I have an idea of how I want to grow, how I want to change. And to a certain degree, I am making choices that will foster that growth and change. But there is a bigger picture that only God sees, and He has a plan that is so much bigger than me. And I think I have a lot to learn about enjoying God here and now, while leaving the growth up to Him. I find it easy to focus on the frustration and discontent in my life, and how I can change, and not focus on Jesus. But He wants me just as I am. He doesn't need me to be at a certain place to enjoy and delight in me. Who I am today is enough. He is not discontent until I get to a more mature place. There is no place of arrival in the future where His love and delight in me will be greater or complete. It's complete already. God will never love us more, and never love us less than He does right now. Alright, that's it for today.

(Bought a cell phone today. Trust me, it's an upgrade from the previous one that brought me so much flack. Found another good Korean meal today-Se-oo bokkeum bap. Shrimp fried rice. Yum! I have one class tomorrow and one on wednesday, and that's it for the week. And then all all of next week off. Probably will take some vacation, either go down to the Busan area, or just stay here and do music stuff with my keyboard and Logic.)

Me (and Susanne) in downtown Ansan (or Jungang Dong)


The music market.

Went to church today. It was really great. A girl from my apartment (another English teacher from Canada) took me there. It's an English service that is held at a really big Korean church. Our service is on the 10th floor! The place looks like an office building. I'll try to bring my camera next week. It's all in English, but the pastor is Korean, as is a good majority of the congregation. There were probably about 20 westerners there, all English teachers I think. I like the pastor a lot. I talked to him afterwards for a bit, and he seems very real and down to earth. After the service everybody breaks into small groups, which I think is awesome. Gives everybody a chance to participate and offer something, sharing their thoughts and stories. Why don't more churches do this?

Yesterday was quite a day. I went up into Seoul to buy a keyboard and go to Costco. I had read about this music market in this old building with over 200 music stores. The subway ride there was about an hour(costs a whopping $1.50). I found the place with out too much trouble and was blown away by the volume and quality of the music equipment. There were at least a hundred good size stores, each specializing in one or two things. Some would have hundreds of guitars hanging on the walls. Others would be filled with drum sets and cymbals. There were sound equipment stores, brass stores, piano stores with pianos lining the halls. It was insane. I found the exact keyboard I wanted (M-audio 88es) rather quickly, but looked around some more to see if I could find a better deal. Sure enough, I was able to get it a little cheaper at another store (370,000 Won). Though I also need to get some speakers and maybe a keyboard stand, with the subway as my way home, I could not carry anything more besides the 30 lb keyboard. So, I hopped on the subway and found my way to Costco. The store was about 3/4 of a mile from the station, so I had to lug my keyboard there and back in the 90 degree, humid crazy weather.
Costco was everything I had dreamed it would be.... Got a chicken bake and sprite in the food court before shopping. Then, I set out to find only a few essentials, as I couldn't carry much more home. I found some yogurt-covered raisins, some Tillamook cheese, some bagels, and...oh! there it was, on the end of the aisle, just waiting for me, what I had only imagined in my dreams...bags upon bags of Kettle Chips, lightly salted and heavily loaded with goodness! My quest was over. I couldn't have been happier! My time in Korea was going to be bearable.

And then, the ride home on the subway was long and hurt my feet, cause I was dumb and wore flip flops. But it's all over, I've got my keyboard, and am all set up to begin messing with Logic (my music sequencer computer program) and writing some music. Yea! I'll post some pics. (this post isn't very deep, maybe I'll do a deep one later tonight or tomorrow. Cause I got a lot of thoughts buzzing around my head).

Alrighty. My very own blog. Sweet. The first thing that I need to say is that I rarely read anyone else's blog(sorry), so I feel kinda shameful starting my own and expecting people to read it. I think that you have to been in a certain life stage and situation to really value "the blog." And now being overseas, not in daily face to face contact with people, constantly having deep talks over coffee, I see the value in having a forum to express my thoughts publicly and maybe get some feedback. Cause I tend to think a good bit. And I need to get it out.

So, if you're reading this, thanks. It does mean a lot to me. I'll try to keep it interesting. I've got some sweet videos I haven't put up anywhere else yet, so I'll get on that right now. Peace!