Well, it's Sunday morning, Sep. 27th. I'm not going to church this morning because I'm meeting up with a couple friends and going to a different church in Seoul. I've been to this church once before with another friend. It's really great. The English service has like 1000 people in it, and it's very lively. I'm looking forward to it. And then, after church I'm meeting up with Brandon Mueller (friend from high school) who is flying in today from China. He's been teaching in China for several months, but has a girlfriend here in Korea. I'm super excited to see him. He'll be here for a week so I'm sure we'll hang out several times.

This past week was decent. Teaching was kinda hard Monday-Wednesday. I just found myself very frustrated with the students and also with myself. Sometimes I don't feel like I have very much control, and when the kids talk when I'm teaching, I take it personally. I have this desire for control, which means that I want all the students to be interested and to learn something. I'm realizing this isn't realistic. I want to make my lessons as engaging as possible, but I've got to accept that some students just don't want to learn and I can't really change that. I think Mondays I generally have high expectations, and then I'm usually let down. And then by Friday, I don't have any expectations and get excited about every little thing that goes well. I always end the week on a high note. My lesson for the 1st year students this past week was about hopes and dreams-"I want to be a..." I have them write down their dream and then share them with the class. One boy said, "I want to be a god." And in the same class, another boy said, "I want to be a pastor." So, I obviously introduced them to each other. "Pastor, meet god." In another class, a girl said she wants to be in the mafia. Didn't really know how to respond to that.

The weather has been fantastic here. In the 70's and little humidity. I went hiking last Saturday on what was probably the nicest day since I've been here. It felt great! I went with Paul, a guy from my apartment who's from Kansas City. It was fun. The hike was short; only 30 minutes to the top. But the view was great; 360 degrees of Ansan. I took lots of pics and a couple of videos. One is posted below. After the hike we went out to this Nepalese restaurant that serves great curry. It was awesome. This next weekend is Chuseok, a big Korean holiday. I think I get Thursday, Friday, and Monday off. Brandon will be here till Monday so I'll probably hang out with him a few times. May go hiking. And I've been working on this song on my computer for 3 weeks or so and hope to finish that up soon and put it up so y'all can check it out. I'm really excited about it. It's way different from anything I've done before.

Well, I've got some lesson planning I need to finish up. Here's a couple of pics. Peace, derek

This one is at a Korean restaurant. I forget what this stuff is called, but it's basically really big, really fatty pieces of bacon that you fry up on your table. And then all the side dishes.



This is at Pizza Hut for Melanie's goodbye party. Melanie (back with the black shirt and short hair) returned home to Canada last week. Here's a video from the hike.