So, news from the food Korean food front-Anlee and I discovered a Mexican restaurant in Seoul a couple of weekends ago that has won the title of "my favorite meal in Korea." We went back the following weekend it was so good. And getting there involves over an hour train ride. But worth it. It's similar to Chipotle or Qdoba. Casual with big, fat burritos being its specialties. And their tortilla chips are amazing. Some of the best I've ever had. They are made fresh daily at the store. I plan on being a regular at this place. I'm already four stamps on my way to a free burrito. Here's the website if you wanna check it out-http://www.tomatillo.co.kr/. I found out about the restaurant through a blog called "seouleats." It's great: All about finding good food in and around Seoul. Why this would be so exciting is really impossible for anyone that's never been to Korea to really understand. Finding a non-Korean restaurant can be a challenge, in and of itself, depending on where you are. Being outside of the city myself, it's quite a challenge, unless you want to regularly partake of Pizza Hut or McDonald's. Additionally, most of the "Western" restaurants are Koreanized versions of western food. There are a decent amount of Italian places, but I've only found one or two that were what I would consider good, authentic Italian (or maybe good, authentic Americanized Italian. Not sure if what I'm used to is really authentic). And there are a significant amount of westernish buffets; but they leave quite a lot to be desired. Every time I go I get my hopes up-buffets just have a way of doing that for me-but every single time I realize that my expectations need to be lowered. All this to say, finding food that I can really get excited about has been a struggle here, hence my newfound interest in cooking. So...that gives you a glimpse of why I am so excited about finding Tomatillo. And I forgot to mention that Mexican food is my favorite kind of food. It just doesn't get any better than Mexican street tacos.

My free time has been spent mostly reading in these last couple of months. Let me rephrase that: When I'm not hanging out with Anlee, I've been doing some reading recently. Actually, Anlee and I have been spending some time together just reading our own books. It's really nice to do be able to do two of my favorite things at the same time. I received a few books in the mail that I had ordered off of Amazon. The first one was a biography of Martin Luther. I devoured that book in a week. I loved it. I felt like I really related to a lot of Luther's thinking and questioning regarding church, the Bible, and God's nature. Though he certainly had some faults, and this book didn't gloss over those, he was a pretty incredible man. I've only read two biographies-Martin Luther and Kurt Cobain-and I loved them both.

The second book I got is a history of philosophy written in novel form. It was recommended to me by my friend Jason, who I respect very much. I haven't started it yet, as I am in the middle of two other books, but I am quickly trying to finish those books so I can feel better about starting this new one. I am growing more and more interested in philosophy, and this seems like a good intro to the field which I only have knowledge of through Christian writers such as C.S. Lewis.

The new semester began at school last week. I was pumped to start teaching again, mainly just to see the students after a long winter and spring break. But it turned out that I didn't start teaching till this week. Bummer! But this week has been going great so far. I've kinda changed the nature of my lessons-I'm focusing essentially all the time on speaking; the students repeating phrases after me-and it seems to be going a bit better than last semester. I'm having a blast being a goof in front of the kids to get them into it. And it's working. They have been really engaged. I'm going to be really busy this semester. I have regular classes a week and then I agreed to teach 4 after school classes. I get paid extra for the after school classes, which will be really nice.

Philippines

I have been in the Philippines since Saturday, taking a vacation and visiting my aunt and uncle and cousins who are missionaries here. Anlee came here to Manila with me but she had to go back to Korea yesterday cause she doesn't get as many vacation days as I do. But we had a busy few days while she was here, with my relatives showing us around to several places. I'll post some pictures and write a caption for each to give you an overview of the trip so far.

Anlee and I in the neighborhood in Manila where my relatives, the Weissers, live. This is in the area that got flooded horribly a few months ago, and some houses in this area had water up to the 3rd floor!

These are some dancers showcasing traditional Filipino dances at a market in Manila.

The road in front of my uncle's ministries' office. He runs a ministry called Resources for the Blind (you can see the sign in the pic) that helps the many blind people in the Philippines in a variety of ways. We got to tour the office and then go out to some schools with a blind guy and watch him lead a Bible study. We followed him around, as he walked about a mile, got onto a Jeepney (the form of transportation here), got on a tricycle, then walked down another street. It was amazing. He can get around anywhere with his cane. Bananas! There's so much fresh fruit in this country. It's awesome! And there are smoothie stands everywhere where you can get a smoothie for about a dollar.
This is a pearl market, with over 50 stalls of pearl dealers. Anlee loved it. Supposedly you can buy a salt-water pearl here for $20 that would run for up to $800 in America. Yes!! This is why we came to the Philippines!
This is the view of Manila from Faith Academy, the private school for missionary kids that my cousins go to. It was a really nice school. It had a brand new 900 seat auditorium, a swimming facility, and a nice library that I am currently writing from. I took this picture just 30 minutes ago. It's a beautiful day, around 90 degrees. And back in Korea there's snow on the ground. Can't wait to go back. hmmm....

A view of Seoul from the Seoul Arts Center

Anlee and I at the Seoul Arts Center after seeing the Monet exhibit
"Teaching" at a public school in Korea during the months of Dec., Jan., and Feb., does not include much teaching. The students take the final exams the first week of December but the new semester doesn't start until the first week of March. We have no textbooks to go over, so I play a lot of games, lead some singing (carols for december), and try to come up with some interesting lesson plans for the students. That is, when school is actually in session. The whole month of January is vacation for most of the students. School is in session for one week in February and then the last two weeks are an all-school vacation before the new semester starts. It's really quite crazy, and doesn't seem very efficient. During the month of January I have 1-3 classes a day with two special groups of students that study all the time. These are the same groups of students that I have "extra" classes with in the afternoons. I have got to know these students better than any others. These last two weeks with these kids have been pretty fun. I'm getting more comfortable in front of them and confident in my lessons and just being able to ad lib stuff. I tend to always worry about not having enough stuff in my lesson for the class period, but it's worrying me less now. This week especially has been a lot of fun. The girls in my first year class (around 14 years old) have been super crazy and talkative, but not in a way that they ignore me. They are including me in their conversations (as long as they're speaking English I'm doing my job, right?) and they listen when I ask them to. I did a lesson on the 50 states for Monday and Tuesday. I gave them a blank map and as I went through a powerpoint with pictures and facts for each state, they had to fill in the state names. It was a lot of fun for me and they found it interesting. They're always asking to play games, but I've been challenging them recently with some harder stuff. They get bored, but I can see that they're learning so it's rewarding. And we do play games often too. We did 20 questions yesterday.

January is flying by. Tomorrow is my six month mark. Half-way through my contract. It's really a weird feeling seeing time go by in a completely different country, away from all the normal things that serve as markers for the passing of time: Christmas, school semesters, sports seasons, tv shows, etc. I kinda feel like time has stopped back home and that when I come back, everything will be unchanged.

January has been a good month. Along with the National Museum of Korea visit, Anlee and I went to a Monet/Picasso exhibit this past weekend in Seoul. I have never found much enjoyment in visual art, so I did not have high expectations for this. But I found it quite a bit more interesting than I had anticipated. I found that if I took the time to look intently at some pictures, there is quite a lot to take in, and it can be a fairly satisfying experience. There are, of course, other pictures that I have no desire to look twice at. Most of the abstract stuff just doesn't do it for me. We went to the Museum with two new friends of ours, Samantha and Barry. Samantha is from Malawi, via England and Barry is from Ireland. They are really fun. It's so cool making friends from all over the world and hearing their different stories.

I have continued to read quite a bit. The most significant reading that I am doing is this book called "The Gospel in a Pluralist Society" by Lesslie Newbigin. It's really speaking to me with where I'm at right now. There's a lot of underlining going on. Also, I'm going through the New Testament and writing down every verse that has to do with the workings of salvation; how man actually becomes saved. This is a huge topic. And one that is not very clear. But I really want to get a better understanding of what the Bible says about it and formulate my belief based on that. It's been a good experience so far. I've gone through Matthew and Ephesians.

Well, I'm going to get to reading. This is my one night with nothing to do and I look forward to sitting back and taking in what these books have to offer. I love stimulating my mind. Take care. Here's a video of the snow we had a couple of weeks ago-http://www.vimeo.com/9015475.

Peace, derek

Above-two of my students in the snow
Below-the korean food I eat most frequently, Dongas. Basically a pork cutlet.
Below-Mexican food. Yum!
Below-Me at Buddha's Belly Thai Restaurant.

GOOD FOOD!! I have finally found some good food in this country. Their is an international district in Seoul called Itaewon. It is near the U.S. Army Base in Seoul, so it attracts all the Americans from the base, along with many of the other foreigners located around the Seoul area. It seems like foreigners outnumber the Koreans in this area. And the best thing about this place is that there are many great restaurants of a wide variety. Everybody had told me about Itaewon, but I hadn't ever checked it out until December. I will probably be going there a couple of times a month now, I suspect. These last two weekends, Anlee and I have gone and eaten at a Thai restaurant there called Buddha's Belly. And one of those weekends, we met some friends and went to a Mexican place there also. The Mexican place deserves a few sentences. The guy running the place was actually Mexican, which was a surprise. You just don't see a lot of cultural mixing between hispanics and asians. And then, our server was African-American. All the other workers, including the cooks, were Korean. So, we were getting Mexican food... in Korea...cooked by a Korean... served by an African-American. And it was actually pretty good. I will go back, for sure. I love Mexican food. And it's really hard to find here. The other cool thing about Itaewon is that there is an English book store there called What the Book? I've been there several times now. It's pretty nice. They have a decent selection, and you can order pretty much any book and have it shipped for free. I bought C.S. Lewis' The Weight of Glory a couple of weeks ago.

It is still freakin' cold here. I don't think it's been above freezing all this week. The low tomorrow is 5 degrees F. As you may have seen on the news, we got a foot of snow during one night last week. And since it won't really be above freezing for the next two months, it's here to stay. The Korean solution is to get backhoe's to scoop up all the snow and put it in dump trucks to be hauled away. Pretty funny.

This past weekend, my friend Tricia came up from the south part of South Korea to check out Seoul. Anlee and I had a great time hanging out with and checking out Seoul together. We went to the National Museum of Korea. I think the girls were bored, but I enjoyed learning about the history of Korea. After church on Sunday, we went out to a Nepalese restaurant near my place that serves great curry, and ended having a group of around 10 come with us. We made friends with some new great people and ended up all going shopping together after that. It was a really fun and refreshing day.

And I'll leave you with this story: On Monday this week, I was waiting at school for Cam to go out to lunch. A few of my students were having a snowball fight so I joined them. You know, just have some fun with my students, get to know them outside of the classroom, and show them that I can have fun too. Well, it was going well. The snow had been there a while, so it had kinda chunked up into blocks that were easy to grab and throw. They may have been kinda icy, but that just made them easier to snow. I had been chasing this one kid, Tom, around. I hit him once or twice. All the others were just watching us. During a lull in the action, another student, John, is standing about 25 yards away, his back towards me. I decide to throw one at him. Just before it makes contact, I realize that the throw was a little too high. It hits him in the face. He goes down. I run over to him. There's blood. I lean down, say I'm sorry and try to see where the blood is coming from. It's coming from his nose. That's good, I think. Just a bloody nose. The blood keeps coming, so I run inside to get some tissue to stop it up. I give him the tissue. It doesn't seem to be stopping, so I tell him to let me see his face. Darn, it's not a bloody nose. There's a huge gash just underneath his nose. Pretty deep and pretty wide. Darn! I give him another bunch of tissue and tell him to push it on it hard, hopefully the bleeding will stop. At this point, Cam and one of the Korean teachers come out. Long story short (or shorter), two teachers end up taking John to the hospital and he gets 8 stitches! I felt (and still feel) horrible. He's a really good student of mine. I felt so stupid. Injuring my own students. I will not be having snow(or ice) ball fights with students anymore.