English Village- Teachers' Retreat

Wow, the days just keep getting busier! And it’s not about to let up any time soon. We are still doing updates from a while back so enjoy!



(View from our laundry room)

On September 26th we woke up to the first cool morning we’d experienced in Korea. It was wonderful. Not only was it cold, but there was a beautiful clear sky with the sun rising. We only get clear skies after it rains and it had rained pretty hard the day before.

That morning we left for our teacher’s retreat. All seven of our teachers got into our blue van and headed off to English Village. It took about two hours to get there, but it was nice to not have classes that Friday.

English Village is a place that students go to learn English (I think it’s like an intensive course training). The students are all high school and younger. English Village is also used as a place for different retreats and so we went.



This is the first place we’ve been to in Korea that is in the country. It felt so good to breathe fresh air. I had not really ever experienced truly breathing fresh air before, because I was so use to it at home. But both Matthew and I could tell a huge difference. So those living in the country (or even in a US city) breathe deeply for us, we miss that clean air!



English Village is like nothing we’ve seen in Korea so it didn’t even feel like we were in Korea. It felt like we’d been transported to a difference place.



When we got there we ate lunch and started to look around. And slowly but surely we realized that everything was named after things in Virginia! Matthew was thrilled! Especially when we found “New Market”. This actually ended up being a food market but it was definitely named after his home town. There was even Shenandoah Park! But that ended up only being a really small area of land. Oddly there were also English styled telephone booths. So in essence we went to Virginia and England all in one weekend.



(If you make this bigger you might be able to see the names)



(New Market)





(Displaying Shenandoah Park)



(I couldn't resist)



We stayed in a place called American Dogwood. It’s a dormitory of sorts but it was pretty nice. Minus the fact that we had bunk beds. It’s amazing but a single bed is big enough for two people to fit on, since being in Korea we’ve had lots of practice.

We soaked up being in the country and just sitting around outside talking.














(Enjoying as much of a country life as we'll get in Korea.)

After exploring the area Matthew decided to go and play basketball. Since this was a teachers retreat we were with all the other SDA Language teachers.



We also met up with the people from our orientation group! This was wonderful. It was terrible to leave home and family, but at orientation our group really clicked. But then we were all sent off to different schools and so the teachers’ retreat was a mini-family reunion for us.

While Matthew played basketball I took a walk with some of the girls from orientation. It was great to walk on a road that was in the country, and to spend time comparing stories with our group from orientation.




(Some scenery from my walk)


Something fabulous about reading English as a native speaker is that things in English are very humorous when done wrong.




What does “Good wine needs no bush”? Have to do with anything? I would think that wine wouldn’t need a bush whether it was good or bad. Who knows, I don’t drink wine? But I think this was supposed to have some spiritual application because it looked like seminar titles for an SDA convention.



This is just a picture of the soda machines they have around here in Korea.



That night for supper we had spaghetti! Mmmm, and these delicious muffins that tasted more like take mix than anything else. It was wonderful. You can see our bunkbed in the background.



Most of our time on the retreat was spent in meetings. As all meetings go, some were good and some were not.

Saturday after lunch they took us to a trail to hike if we wanted. We were told that at the top there was a temple and it took 40 minutes to hike up. Then we were told that they’d be back in 40 minutes. So we all began to briskly walk up the trail. This was a steeper trail that at first anticipated. Being out of shape (I am not ashamed to say this because it’s true) it was not very fun. So I told Matthew that I’d rather enjoy the beautiful outdoors that we were rushing past, than get to the temple on top. So we stopped. I am so glad that we did. We climbed down into the place where the stream was and just relished each moment we were there.



(At the beginning of the trail)



(The trail. Yes it is paved and we even saw cars driving up and down it.)



(This guy was a pretty good sized fella..."












(If you can't tell by this point, by all our nature pictures, we've really missed it.)

Eventually our group came back down and we headed along with them. The temple looked cool in the pictures they showed me, but I’d rather have spend our time as we did. God’s nature is breathtaking, especially when you’ve been gone from it for so long.

Saturday even there was a talent show. It was really fun! Our coordinator Cleopatra go up and played, one of our teachers Oscar recited a poem and had a repeating line that said, “But that was yesterday”. It became a joke the whole night. It was great. And then another teacher, and fellow SAU student, Edward did a comedy routine that was based off of current events and the junior textbook we teach out of. It was hilarious. I’d tell it to you, but you wouldn’t get it all. It was amazing though. And Mary, my classmate from BMA, recited a poem she’d written. She was great! It was better than Dr. Seuss!



(Marcus, one of the Junior Directors from the A.O.)



(Cleopatra, our director)

That night they also gave away “Happy Money”, or basically gift certificates. These apparently can be used at different places, but Matthew and I both got some! They had different categories and luckily one was, “Most recently married.” Jaz and Andy (from orientation) got money too, so that was fun.

All in all it was a good experience. The highlights were seeing people and being in the country. If you couldn’t tell, we miss the country.