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.