Happy Chusok!

Our Weekly Post:

We have completed our first full week of teaching here in Korea and…well, it has been better than we could have imagined! The students are amazing and we find it fun to teach them. We hope that they enjoy it as much as we are!

Chusok is the Korean thanksgiving. They go to the oldest male’s (I think so) home village and gather together there. It’s a time for family and thanksgiving similar to ours. It’s a big deal and almost everyone travels. We are not, but the foreign teachers (that’s us and the other out of country staff) are getting together on Sunday (actual Chusok) and having a dinner together, so that’ll be nice. We are bringing rice, vegetables, and juice. Should be fun.

Besides Chusok being a wonderful time for Koreans to get together, they are also generous. The main institute in Seoul, where we had our orientation sent each teacher a gift box. So Matthew and I got two. They are filled with different types of soy drinks. Strawberry, chocolate, banana, black bean (we have not tried that), regular, sweet, tropical fruit (this is SO good! Like a smoothie almost), and ginger (not so good). Soy drinks are pretty popular here, and especially with Sahmyook soy products because it’s Adventist. Something extra cool about getting the soy drinks is because God’s timing has been fun. Matthew and I are surviving on limited funds until pay day (Sept. 25th) so we have been very skimpy on what we buy. Our soy milk was starting to run out and I had mentioned to Matthew that we’d soon need to go and buy more—then the next day we get two big boxes of soy products! So God provided soy milk for us just when we needed it! This also happened another time this past week. We were getting to the end of the fresh fruit we’d bought and I was thinking about how we were going to try and get more without spending too much…then the school we are at give each teacher a bag of grapes! And in each bag there are about 4 bunches of grapes—so we have 8 bunches! It’s not a huge deal, but it was a wonderful blessing from God to have those little things taken care of.


(Our soy milk package)

On Friday we were very happy to receive our certificate of alien registration. Our alien cards are essential for many things. Internet and check cards cannot be obtained without this. So on Friday we headed off to the bank to get check cards and get the last remaining money from our banks (about $30.00). To get there we take bus 15. We did this successfully and were feeling very happy about public transportation.

Once receiving our wonderful and beautiful Visa Check Cards we wanted to go to E-Mart. E-Mart, as you might have guessed, is something like Wal-Mart. To get to E-Mart you take bus 23. Now we knew we had crossed the street from the bank, but weren’t sure of what side of the street we were to wait on. I thought we should cross and ask the bus driver, which we did. He didn’t speak much English, so we got on. After all bus 23 has to go around in a circle eventually right? So we’d just ride it until we got back around if necessary. It wasn’t long before we realized we were going the wrong way, but we just thought sitting tight was the best thing to do. So we did. Finally we were the last two people on the bus and the driver pulled into a deserted looking part of town. Since we live in the city there are always lots of people. Thus, when you travel into a region which has few people, it seems...well, almost scary and unsafe somehow. There was a carnival going on, but it felt like the horror movies where the creepy carnival music is playing in the background of a deserted area. Arriving in this town the bus driver opens the door and motions for us to get off. We got off, of course, but then just stood there. Matthew very wisely decided to go toward the carnival and ask someone. A wonderful lady helped us out. The conversation was something like this.

Matthew: E-Mart? What bus do we take?
Lady: E-mart-eh?
Matthew: E-Mart. What bus?
Lady: E-mart-eh?
Matthew: Yes.
Lady: Ah! (She points back from where we’d come on the bus.)
Me: What bus? (Holds up fingers) One? Two? Three?
Lady: Ah! (String of Korean followed this which we didn’t understand.)
Us: *Shrug*
Lady: (Puts numbers into calculator and holds up “23”)

We thanked her in English and Korean and ran toward a new bus headed back where we’d come from. This time we made it to E-Mart. Let me also mention that the bus system here is that when you see your stop is coming you press the button to let them know you want to get off. So we have to really pay attention since we are new and can’t understand Korean.

In E-Mart we spent a lot of time just going through the whole store. We wanted to know what was there and compare pricing with Costco and the other little store we’d been to. We had a good time and met two middle school boys who seemed very excited about Matthew’s height. They then told us that we were “handsome and beautiful”. (It is somewhat of a common phrase for Koreans to know it seems. One day on the way to school, after lunch, a group of high school boys saw me and say hi and that I was beautiful. Maybe they learn it from our American movies??) Anyway, looking around was fun, but sampling food was even better! They had samples in almost every aisle it seemed! Of course we didn’t try anything that look questionable. But we had ice coffee, tofu, grape juice, sweet breads, etc. =) You really have no clue as to just how wonderful this bread is - almost a danish, and the best danish we've ever had! However, keep in mind that we are poor, so almost every food is more wonderful than it has ever been.

Our most exciting purchase from that day was a plant! (There was an adorable rabbit there, but I don’t think America would let me bring it home…) We have decided to buy plants because we want real oxygen instead of smog. When we get paid we want to have a plant for each room (a fair sized one). We have been recently re-disgusted with city life. Last Saturday we swept, moped, and towel dried our entire floor area. It was intense, but the church people were coming over unexpectedly so we had to make it clean. The floor had been making the bottom of our feet black before we cleaned it and it felt wonderful to have a clean house. Well, this week we noticed that our feet were getting dirty again and we leave our shoes at the door so we didn’t know how this was happening. Now we think we’ve figured it out. Since we don’t have AC we leave all the windows open to allow a breeze to flow through, thus the dirty smoggy air flows through and lands dirt on our floor. It’s gross. Truly gross. Matthew and I figured that in the winter it should be better because the windows will be closed, but we wanted some oxygen. Thus—the plants.

Our plant is lovely and it’s wonderful to have it. We were so happy when buying it, and it must sound silly to all of you reading this, but if you lived in the city like this (after being raised in the country) you might understand. =)


(We should name it...lol)


(These are chocolate covered sunflower seeds. Really good actually. Maybe it's because it's a treat, but we had some Friday night at afterglow time...mmm)

Today, Saturday we went to Clubs (Sabbath School) and church as usual. We are fed potluck every week, and we are learning the true meaning of Pot-luck. Matthew told me that he was excited because it was Chusok weekend and he was imagining all kinds of wonderful food they would prepare. After church we went into the cafeteria and were handed ginger soy milk (as previously stated, not our favorite) and a warm white block. This white block is a rice cake (cake is used loosely here) called “songphyun”. Apparently these are made out of rice, beans, sesame seeds, and chestnuts. It is a hard thing to describe. It was warm and kind of flavorless. Almost sweet, but not really. There were also grapes on the table, so I ate those. Apparently they eat these rice cakes only at Chusok…? Don’t know if that’s totally true, but it’s what we heard. It appeared to be a whole meal, but we ate when we came home.


(The pot-luck meal)

Now Matthew is sleeping in the other room and I am typing this up and missing home. I can truly say that I love teaching my adult classes, but nothing is like home. We found out some hard news about some of our friends at home. Please keep them in your prayers.

We will see what tomorrow brings, but that’s all for now. We hope you are enjoying your weekend!

Happy Sabbath and Chusok!