Newletter thingy

I wrote this for some Church newsletters a month ago, if your interested read on, if not, thats quite all right.

“Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” (Luke 18:17)

I have been teaching English in Seoul now for two months and I have come to the conclusion that I don't know English. Sure I can talk about what I did today, what I will do this weekend, and at least sometimes I can accurately convey my emotions to friends or family, but I really don't think I know English.

In the last two months there have been numerous times when students have asked me “Why is that sentence like that.” I look at the sentence on the board, ponder respectively for a few moments, and find myself at a loss of words and having to say, “It just sounds better that way” or “its more natural this way.”

Its not easy, try explaining (in a simplified way) the difference between “I worked,” “I had worked,” “I was working,” “I had been working,” and “I have been working.” I know the difference instinctively but its hard to explain the grammatical rules surrounding it, especially to English learners who don't have a lot of experience. Even if I could teach perfect grammar, I still have to teach emphasis and intonation, something that I don't think can be taught through explanation but rather through participation and imitation.

So while language learned from a textbook is accurate it can still sound unnatural. A student who writes, “I prepared hastily for my exams,” may be correct but I think, “I crammed for my exams,” sounds more natural (although arguably “prepared hastily” may sound natural in Britain). Most of the students say they study with native speakers because they want to sound like a “natural” speaker. Essentially they are looking for the subtleties of language and these become some of the most important parts of our class. Sarcasm is one example of this. There are no rules for sarcasm (as far as I know) and it can only be taught through examples, through experience and participation.

Grammatical rules of how we should talk indeed help in language learning, but I see participation and experience with others as the true learning experience. Experiencing the language, discovering its subtleties and building relationships are how we learn language. Children learn from example, they are not taught to talk through endless lists of rules explaining prepositions, verb forms and time clauses, but rather through observation and imitation.

I think that language learning could be an informative analogy for how the Church should be. The world is not going to learn what the Church is through long, grammatical descriptions. We can define the Church as Christ's body, but does that have any meaning outside of the Church where the language of competition, selfishness and war dominate? People are not going to experience the love of Christ through grammatical understandings of what it means to be a Christian, where such descriptions can dangerously become exclusive and damaging. Rather experiencing Christ's gift is about participation in the Church through community, liturgy and relationships. Essentially as Christians we must experience Church to learn about it, just as we must participate in language to become fluent.

Maybe in a few months I will have mastered grammatical English and discover that I am completely wrong. Perhaps language can be taught strictly through books and grammatical explanations. But I still cant help but think of how Children are such efficient language learners, not through studying grammar, but simply through observation and imitation. If we can enter the Church as children and learn through participation than we can truly begin to understand what it means to be a part of the Body of Christ.

Church

I recently had a one-on-one class because some other students did not show up. So instead of going with my plan, I let the conversation go where it led. Soon we were talking about routine, and how in English we use the present tense to describe our routines even though they have all taken place in the past. Ex: I wake up and take a shower, not, I woke up and took a shower. Anyway, so I asked her to describe her Sunday routine to me. I knew she went to Church, but I had no idea how intense it was for her. This is what she described.

She begins church at 9am with worship service. After she teaches the children at children's worship (what I think is our equivalent of Sunday school). After that is lunch, where she sells tea and raises money for missions. After lunch is the youth worship service where she plays piano. After that is Bible study. Than there is supper and after supper she has a volunteer meeting as she helps with the accounting at church. At this point it is about 9 pm. And if this is not enough, on some Sunday evenings she has a youth meeting.

Surprised by this i decided to ask her about her Saturday routine. I also knew from past discussions that she would usually attend church on Saturday as well. While I forget the exact routine for Saturday, it did involve cooking food, handing out to kids on the way home from school, attending another worship service and practicing with the youth worship team. In total Saturdays were usually 9-12 hours of church activities.

I was rather amazed at such energy and time put towards church on her weekends. She told me her weeks are easier than her weekends. You can make your own conclusions. This still amazes me.

Birthday & Thanksgiving

I am now one year older. My birthday has come and gone. It was really good and I felt really loved as I received phone calls, emails and facebook messages. I also felt loved by the people I know in Korea. At Connexus it is tradition, well at least since we have been here, that when a person has a birthday we "surprise" them with a cake. What we do is we all huddle in the kitchen here at the office and turn off the lights and then one person gets the birthday person and we all yell surprise as they enter the room. This usually happens after lunch or after the afternoon classes. Well, it was around 5:00 and my afternoon class had just ended so I was sitting at my desk pretending I didn't know what was going to happen. I noticed some people whispering behind me and some shuffling in the kitchen. But then, as I was sitting at my desk I heard a bang..and the happy birthday song began. This was the first time that we had the birthday cake in the office...so I was truly surprised...
After work some of us went out to this european pub. Thus concludes my birthday.

Once a month we have a Connexus/KAS community meal. This usually means we go out some where. This month we decided to have a Thanksgiving meal made by us and since today is actually American Thanksgiving we decided to have it today. I kind of feel like I have celebrated Thanksgiving over and over...with Choesok in September when we had our holiday, and then when we went to Chuncheon with our church...and now again, but this was the first time that we actually ate thanksgiving food. So, Mark, Karen, and myself made the meal. The chicken was bought already cooked but we did the rest (sadly we couldn't find turkey). I enjoyed making mashed potatoes...it brought me back to my days in Germany. Kyung Jung's (on the very right) wife baked a pumpkin pie that he brought with him to work. It was very delicious.
These pictures are taken in our kitchen/dining room/lounge where we eat lunch and usually supper everyday.
Anyway, that's all. Happy Thanksgiving to my american readers and thanks again for all of the birthday wishes.

The Doctor

We had to go to the doctor yesterday for a check up. As far as I understand it, its a mandatory thing for employees every two years. There is the chest x-ray, eye check, ear check, dental pictures, height, weight, urine test, blood test and blood pressure. Its quite the system they got going on there. They tell us whats wrong with our mouths (usually that we should floss more, like every good dentist would say), give us our ph levels in our urine, our blood pressure, etc.

Supposedly in a few weeks we will receive some mail from the hospital. It will contain a health score out of 100. Last year when other Connexus teachers went they were told they were over or under weight, or other helpful things like that.

I'm curious what my score will be. There's no real reason for this post. It was just an interesting experience. They have a whole system set up where you take your form from one room to another and have another thing checked. It was rather efficient, with one exception. The urine test was rather weird, we had to take a cup to the washroom and after we filled it up, we had to walk through the waiting room, where others are waiting for their check ups. No lid or anything with full potential to slip and urine everywhere. Luckily it didn't happen.

Snow!!!!!

Yesterday I was teaching my last class of the day and was having a nice chat with my two students. Suddenly we heard people yelling outside and commotion going on in the other classes. We thought everyone was crazy and continued on in our discussion and then I happened to look out the window and noticed it was snowing. We soon joined the others in the excitment and went outside to see the flakes. Here is a group of students and staff posing by our Connexus sign in the snow. (we are proud of this sign since we only put it up last week...we need more students!)The two women standing to the left of me are my students. It's funny that the snow didn't actually turn up in the picture...but it really was snowing! A few minutes after this picture was taken it did stop and turned to a kind of freezing rain...which made the streets wet and slippery. Luckly our wonderful boss Jae Young gave us a ride home after our class. He lives really close to us. Today there is no proof that it snowed...it has come and gone.

Long Time no play

It was a cool fall day. Leaves of reds, greens, yellows and oranges blew across the pitch. After a much too intense game of pick up, we started the game, of which all hope rested.

It was a showdown between a conglomerate of Christian peace NGO's (and associated churches) versus a Buddhist human rights NGO. It was set up to be one of the most passive games of soccer ever played. But true to the almost perfect nature of soccer, it was both competitive and fun, aggressive yet friendly and was way too tiring. So much so that my body hurt for the next two days. I have to run more!

It ended with fellowship over a super of Kimbop (kinda like sushi), where the different groups talked a little about what they did and somehow each group ended up singing songs.

It was a lot of fun to play soccer again and it was particularly agreeable about the shape the game took. All the different organizations involved are somehow or another involved in peace work and it was fun to join together over a game of soccer. The setting was also quite aesthetically pleasing. I like the picture of a soccer pitch surrounded by trees in fall colours and above those trees are countless highrises. Its a rather foreign concept to me and makes me think of New York, or well, Seoul.

Anyway, here are a few pictures.


The fans were also quite exceptional. A lot of singing and chanting things I didn't understand.


Our team with their fans.

Sunday

I thought I would post a picture of me and two of my old students. They are now in Mark's class because they moved up a level. On Sunday we met at Olympic Park and had a nice time walking around. They really loved taking pictures..and more pictures. Here is one of the few. I often see Koreans making a peace sign when in a picture, well I thought it was a peace sign... I have heard that it actually means victory. I'm making a peace sign in this picture.

Future and Present

Over Christmas we have a week off and we have been thinking about it a lot lately because we just bought tickets to Japan! We are really looking forward to it. We found a cheap ticket with the train and ferry. We will travel from Seoul to Pusan (second largest city in South Korea) with the train, then take the ferry to Fukuoka/Hakata in Japan, then take the train to Hiroshima where we will spend about four days. Then we will do the same trip back but stay in Pusan for a couple of days before heading back to Seoul. There is the rundown of it all. Yeah for holidays!

Back to the present...We have just begun semester #3 here at Connexus. There are a few new names to remember as well as a few people who have left. At first I found it so difficult to remember my students Korean names but it is getting easier. In some ways it is nice to have short semesters because it keeps things fresh but on the other hand it kind of breaks the groove of the last semester. Most of my classes are pretty small this month with 2-3 students each and they are all feeling like good groups. One of my classes is specifically in preparation for the interview to be a flight attendant. I think it should be interesting. Anyway, I'm feeling good about the month.

Mark and I, along with Karen, another teacher from Connexus, have been taking Korean lessons twice a week. Our teacher is volunteering her time to teach us which is so kind. She is actually a student at Connexus. So, Korean is difficult! For some reason it is so hard for me to retain it all. But it is getting exciting as I can sort of communicate with the workers at the corner store across the street from our apartment or with the women at "Paris Baguette" which is a backery where we are frequent visitors.

Time to get to work. Have a good day everyone!

Weekend - Part 3

After the palace we went to Insadong, toursity place right by the palace, and found this really nice Indian restaurant. This woman is holding a sign that says "Free Hugs". At the time I wasn't sure about the story behind holding these signs but since then I have heard from a friend the history behind it. It began with this guy in Australia who was really depressed and his friends didn't know what to do so they suggested he do this almost as a joke. So he went to a mall and after hugging tons of random people he felt a lot better, and now it has spread over the world! I think it's pretty awesome. Here is Mark giving her a hug. :)
I think this guy is making a rice paste. It's called dahk which is formed into rice cakes. I'm not that crazy about it but it is a very common snack in Korea.
This concludes my weekend posts. I hope you all had a good weekend wherever you are.

Cheers.

Weekend - Part 2

After Olympic Park we took the subway to Changdeokgong Palace. On our way we passed by this store which makes traditional Korean clothing. There were many shops like this in the area. I haven't seen Korean's wearing the traditional clothing except at the wedding we went to and at the touris attractions...our tour guides are usually wearing these clothes. This is part of the palace. I liked the blue roof.
This part of the palace grounds is called the Secret Gardens. I loved it here. It was so beautiful!

Weekend - Part 1

This weekend was really nice. We spent a lot of time walking and exploring new areas and the weather was beautiful.

Will and Ana, Mennonite Church Canada workers from Chunchoeon, stayed over at our place on Friday night. On Saturday we explored some of Seoul together. We first went to this market that is a two minute walk from our apartment. You can buy fruit and vegetables, lots of different kinds of rice cakes, fish and more fish and lots of other things as well. The people working at the booths seemed pretty pumped that I was taking pictures. Well, they were saying something to me and smiling, so who knows.
Fish! Some tables even have some fish displayed that have a slit down their middle so all of their guts are pouring out....very appetizing.
Then we walked to Olympic park and walked around. Mark and I went back yesterday to and went for a walk after church...I actually went again today on my way to work. I can't get enough of it!

sorry

again another mistake.

I forgot another zero on 75000, it should be 750, 000 words in the English language. But this is a fairly subjective stat.

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