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.

Sick Birthdays, Tea-Time, and Mission Day

On September 22nd Matthew woke up without a voice. Well…maybe there was somewhat of a voice, but when your whole job is based on having a voice that students can hear, this is a problem. We are only a 7 teacher school and if he didn’t teach the rest of us would be teaching for him. Being the trooper he is, he came to school and taught as best he could.

At lunch time he went to the hospital with one of the Korean teachers, May. It may sound drastic to “go to the hospital” but here there aren’t clinics so to the hospital he went. The visit included translation, a few questions from the doctor and a shot. The shot was in an unusual spot…one that we usually sit on. Those of you who know about Matthew’s hate for shots might further understand how this could be a very unhappy event on his birthday. May told Matthew that he was probably sick because of the pollution. When the director of our school first came to Incheon, he had previously lived in the country, and he and his whole family got sick from the pollution. Plus many of the teachers get sick when they first come. So pollution is already causing us harm. But don’t worry, you should still come visit! May was gracious enough to lend us the money for the visit (we didn’t have our insurance cards at this point) and the prescription. The total was a whopping 23,000 won. Shocking, I know…

Matthew came back to the apartment with medicine in hand and also another package from Mama! Again, God is so patient with us. I was feeling frustrated because I didn’t feel like I had anything healthy and wholesome to give Matthew and we didn’t have any money so I felt stuck. When I opened the box there was granola cereal. Healthy and filling cereal (that also tastes great!). God sent it right on time so that in the days to come Matthew would at least have a healthy breakfast. There was some goodies in there too… =) Thankfully, before we had gone to Korea I had put a couple bags of tea in my belongings so Matthew had that for his throat at least.

We had planned to get a 5,000 won pizza for Matthew’s birthday but since he was sick we decided to wait. And because we had not gotten paid yet I only gave him the small present I had brought from home. Two teddy bears holding hands. A girlie present, but I have an amazing husband who appreciates and loves whatever he receives—even when he’s sick.



The best part of the day was after our 8-9pm class when Matthew showed me a small cake that Neo had brought him. What a great guy! He doesn’t know us that well, but remembered that it was Matthew’s birthday and brought him a cake. Maybe it seems silly to say, but I feel like that was also from God. We didn’t have the money to buy that, but He provided for us so that Matthew could have a cake. I think that is from God and it really warms my heart.



The cake was all inclusive. It came with fake party bottles, two matches, candles, and a knife. It’s great because Matthew turned twenty five, and there were two taller candles (for the twenty) and five smaller ones (for the five). How cool is that?





And even though Matthew was sick we shared a piece. It was mmm-mmm good.



September 22 was what we call Tea-Time for my classes, and on the 24th was Matthews. Tea-Time is just a party day where the students pool together to bring food and we play English games. The class president and vice president organize the food and then we just provide the games.

I brought Bananagrams and Catch Phrase to play. They did pretty good with Bananagrams, I edited the rules a bit to make it easier for them, but I was still very impressed with their word making abilities. Catch Phrase can be hard for native English speakers and so it was really hard for them. So after my Tea-Time day Matthew and I made up our own word game. Similar to Taboo where the person had a bunch of words that they go through and try to make their team guess the words. Matthew’s classes really seemed to enjoy this game so I want to try it next time.

My two morning classes only brought snakes. And all of the classes were so kind and gave the extras to me to bring home. The evening class ordered in pizza! When they were planning on what pizzas to get (they were talking in Korean) one of my students paused their discussion and said, “Teacher, you’re a vegetarian right?” So when I said that I was, there was a collective gasp. It made me laugh inside. But they were so kind and bought one whole pizza with vegetables just because I was a vegetarian! We were all sitting in a circle and the students handed out the pizza. When I looked at my pizza I saw corn, green peppers, onions, and mushrooms. Seeing the onions and mushrooms I literally prayed to God and asked him to help me eat it no matter what, just because I knew how much trouble they had taken to get me the vegetable pizza. Surprisingly…it was good! The mushrooms were crispy and the onions weren’t too bad. I defiantly think that was God. I’ve tried onions and mushrooms before. And even though Emily Ford had gotten me to eat her onions, this was different.

Matthew’s classes also gave him the extras from their parties. We got Asian Pears…delicious! If you’ve never had one, go and try to find some. They’re like apples because they are so crispy and fresh. Mmmm.

Matthew’s class also gave him sugar goodies too…



Hooray for American food!

That Thursday is what is called Mission Day. Once a term there is one mission day. That day all the classes go to the basement, where our church is, and here a sermon from one of the teachers. I guess it is our way of outreach to the students.

Our coordinator Cleopatra spoke and it was really good. I wished some of my students had been there to hear it, but I was blessed by her message. She talked about how you would warm a friend if something was going to happen, and how she considers the students her friend and she wants to tell them about what is going to happen. About Jesus’ second coming. I’m not doing it justice, but it was really good.

For lunch on mission day the school takes the teachers out to lunch. We went to a place called Ashley’s. It said, “Ashley’s: For lassie ladies”. Not sure if they were referring to the women as collie dogs, or if the ‘c’ just fell off for “classie” ladies (bad spelling) or if they meant a totally different word and I have no idea what it is. Anything is possible in Korea.

For example when driving, if it’s possible to do, it’s legal. This can be somewhat frightening at times.

Anything is also possible when it comes to food. This is not always a good things. Ashley’s is a buffet restaurant and happily it had English words and some American looking food. Going through line, I spotted “Angel hair pasta” that had tomato sauce and basil on it. It looked really good so I put some on my plate. Excited to eat it. Once I sat down I twirled my fork around in the pasta and put it into my mouth. I cringed. It was COLD and a weird type of spicy. I still don’t know what it exactly was. I tried to eat more of it, but just couldn’t. So I ended up going back for more French fries instead.

Overall the food was good though, they had ice cream and great pastry things for desert. Also they had blueberry butter. It was really good. Sorry there are no pictures for the past few events, but maybe you’ve actually made it through all this and read it all! Congratulations! And thank you for reading all of it!

Two Weekends Ago

Two weekends ago, we decided that we were tired of being cooped up inside and wanted to go and take a walk on Sabbath. Lucky for us there is Subong Park just up the hill—so even though it was raining we decided to go.



We walked up stairs and up hills…




and down hills and down stairs…

and up hills and around and over until we finally went down and ended back at the main street and walked back on the street to our apartment. It was really nice to get out, even if it was raining.

The next day we traveled on a new bus route to get to Neo’s (Matthew's student) university, Inha University. He gave us great instructions and so we got on the right bus and got off at the right stop. What also helped us get off at the correct stop was the fact that a student with a college textbook got on and so we figured that we’d follow his lead. It worked out pretty well.



Bus 512



Neo is a great student and he took us around the campus and showed us different things. He is only a level one student but his English is great.





This gazebo thing is by very disgusting water that the students throw each other into on their birthdays. I jokingly said that since the next day was Matthew’s birthday we should come back so we could throw him in. =)

There were a lot of cool things at his university:





dragon statues



pretty landscaping, a small circle area that echoed when you stood in the center (not pictured)



and a tree that if couples sat in (and fit) that it was then supposedly “destiny” for them to be together. I think we’re a bit big…but he kindly smiled and said that he thought it was fate for us to be together. Either way, it’s too late huh? =)

After the tour he got us fruit smoothies that were amazing. And only one thousand won! (Approx. $1.00). We enjoyed these and talked for a bit inside the campus.




We told him that later that afternoon we were going to meet one of my religion class students to go out to a park. We invited him and he said he’d come and then asked what we were going to do until then. We didn’t really have anything in mind, so I decided to ask him to come over to the apartment and have lunch/dinner with us.

This was more risky than you might think. Not because he’s dangerous, but because I don’t know how to cook Korean and it could have great potential for embarrassment. So he drove us in his car to our apartment and I made him burritos. He’d never had burritos…. Matthew grills them so we had grilled burritos with our precious chips and salsa. It’s funny how giving someone your food when you don’t have as much as you are use to is more of a sacrifice. I think it was good for us to sacrifice our beloved salsa. Thankfully he really seemed to enjoy the burritos! I think it was the salsa, because he said he loves salsa. Jason and him could be friends. We even had dessert to offer him because of Mama’s package! So he tried Dove Dark Chocolate and after eating it said that it was bitter (Matthew did not understand how this was possible), so we offered him a Reese’s instead.

Then we headed to meet Regina. She and her friend David met us at the school and Neo was gracious enough to drive us to the park in his car! This is a huge blessing for a number of reasons but one of the reasons was that we had about 7,000 won left. So the bus would’ve taken about 4,000 of that. The park we went to is called Wolmi Park. It’s a much bigger park than Subong Park that is up the hill from us. It’s about a forty minute walk to the top, but it’s not too bad until the last ten minutes. It was during this walk that we first started to notice signs that Matthew might not be feeling well.



Once at the top you could choose a couple different directions to go. We went to the tower first.



(Interesting bug lantern posts were all along the trail, and for a while we couldn’t figure out what they were, but then we finally got to the right angle and saw that they were light-ning bugs.)



From the tower you could see quite a bit.



This is the Incheon Bridge that goes from Yeongjong Island (I think) to the Incheon airport, that is on an island. It is still incomplete but is supposed to be finished by 2009. Looks scary unfinished doesn't it?



These are cars from Daewoo waiting to be exported.



And this is Incheon.



And this is us.



Beth-Anne, Regina, David, and Neo. Regina's shirt says, "I love NY more than ever." If she only knew how true that is for me now...



At the park were beautiful flowers. Flowers are a treat to see and we soaked up the beauty.









The sun was setting as we were there and in these pictures you can pretend we are in the country somewhere.

After the tower we went up this other path to where there is this circle with the names of different popular cities in different countries. And the distance to them from the center of the circle. The squares on the outer edges are for NSEW. It reminded me of Four Corners in the United States, even though it’s not really related, it just reminded me the way it was set up.



Then Neo drove us home and we went to bed. It was a really great day and we enjoyed all the time we spent with our students.