안녕히계세요 - Good bye

Well, in two days we will be in the airplane on our way to Canada. It's difficult to believe. These last few days have been filled with many different emotions. I'm really sad to say good-bye to so many people. I like to think of it as a 'see you later.' But I will be really happy to be in Canada again and to see everyone that I miss. I'm curious about what things will be different. Mark and I wrote a bit of a reflection on our year in Korea that we read in our church and also here in the devotion time at Connexus/KAC and as we were doing it was hard for me to think about what things in Korea are different from things back home. Everything has begun to seem so normal...so yeah, I'm curious about what things I will notice in Canada that I have forgotten about or things that have changed.

Anyway, last weekend was a full fun weekend. On Friday we went to a Noreabang (singing room) one last time. On Saturday we went to the beach and ate lots of shell fish for lunch and for supper.
Many people at the beach...

On Sunday we said good-bye to many of the people at our church and afterwards played/watched a soccer game. I watched, Mark played with a group of Connexus students. It was a crazy hot and humid day but I think everyone still enjoyed it. So, time to say a few more goodbyes.
I'm looking forward to seeing you! Thanks for reading. :)

one more post

Well I just finished my last class. I moved out of my desk so the new teacher could move into it. We have moved furniture out of our apartment so we are living out of bags again. Its the end. As with most people who take up blogging when they spend some time abroad, their blogging starts to decline the longer they are abroad until of course it is time to go home. So here is one of my last posts from Korea, probably my last one.
We went on a trip to Jeju last week. It was our second week of vacation this year and we decided to stay in Korea and go to a small island south of the main land. It was good. Here are a few pictures from it.

This is the resort area, we didnt stay here, we just went there to crash on their beach. It ok, but the lifeguards wouldnt let us swim out of the roped area, so it was a little boring.

This is the Jurassic Park beach. Nobody was there, so it was really beautiful. Sand, with volcanic cliffs in the background. Actually all week we were there I felt like if I would turn around I would be face to face with a raptor (this being because Jeju is a volcanic island so it is really lush with vegetation since there are a lot of nutrients from the black volcanic rock that is everywhere). In any case, i want to watch Jurassic Park again.

These are the squid boats that go out every night and attract squid by pretending to be the moon. There were hundreds of them at night, interesting to see.

Waterfalls.

Different waterfalls.

Eating noodles on the way up Halla mountain.

Us at the top of the mountain, thats right, its the highest part in south korea (I have now been to the highest point in two countries; South Korea and Great Britain, i feel special). It is rarely free from clouds since it is a big volcanic crater so the clouds get trapped there. We got to see the crater lake for about 2 seconds when some of the clouds blew away, but basically it was cloudy.

This is a black sand beach which was incredibly hot but supposedly it is good for the body, therapeutic they say. A really nice beach though.
This is the bathroom of our Minbak, kinda like a really cheap motel. It was a little dirty but it was really cheap. The man was a little crazy. He patted my bottom every time I saw him, and one time he thought my fly was open so he made sure it wasn't by trying to put his finger through my closed fly. A nice guy though. My students have told me that a grandpa usually pats their grandchildrens bottoms, i guess its endearing.
These are the volcanic stone statues found all around the island. They are called Harubang, kinda like the statues on Easter Island.

Well thats about it. Whenever my students find out I am leaving they are always shocked and ask me how I feel. I then teach them the phrase, its bitter sweet, explaining I am excited to see friends and family but said to leave our friends here. Rather typical response, I know, but its true. I feel like I always go through the typical emotions when I have lived abroad. Excitement, followed by a slight sadness or homesickness in the 5th or 6th month, followed by the homestretch where every thing is fun because you have finally established meaningful relationships and gotten into a healthy routine. In any case, it is sad to say goodbye, but some of our friends and students claim they will come visit us in the next few years. Here's hoping. We are excited to see you all in Canada! See you in a week.

Some Pictures from the last month

It's been a while since I've done anything on here so I thought it was time. I've become lazy with writing so I'm just going to tell you about some pictures.

Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoons Connexus offers intensive English classes. This was one of those classes and it was really fun one. I taught them speaking, Mark taught them listening, and Marvin taught them writing.
At the end of June our church went on a retreat to a beautiful place in the mountains.
We enjoyed swimming in the little river that was near by. The kids were all really cold and got my towel nice and wet. :)

At the beginning of July both of the Connexus receptionists left. Here we are at a good-bye meal for them. Hee-jung, second from the right was our morning receptionist. I'm sad she is gone.
A couple of Fridays ago Mark and I went to a baseball game with one of my classes. The fans were so in to it and there was so much music and so many cheers that it made it really exciting. There were also these cheerleaders who did cheers on this platform a lot of the time.

They also handed out sparklers to us at one point. It was great fun.
You might have heard in the news that there have been lots of candle demonstrations or protests happening in Korea for the last two months. It is kind of a complicated issue but pretty much many people are really upset with the new president Myeong-bak Lee because they feel he is not listening to the people. Mark and I along with Heather, Joel and Kwang-kyu went to see what was happening a few Saturdays ago. I couldn't believe how many people there were!


Last week Cheryl had her last day with Connexus/KAC so we took a good-bye group picture.

This past weekend a bunch of the teachers went to Chuncheon for part of the weekend. We have friends living there and one of our co-workers lives there as well. Some people went on a hike and here we are at the end of the hike. It was a beautiful place and nice and cool. Lately it has been so hot and humid so it was nice to escape that.
With Ana and Will:
I thought it was odd to have a T.V. with the plants...hmm...
Yesterday I went to Suwon which is just outside of Seoul. A friend (who was also my student)Boerum invited me and Alice, who is a new teacher at Connexus, to go there. Here we are at the Suwon Fortress.

Then we rode this little train around the fortress. It took us to the top of a hill and we thought it would take us back but apparently it was a one way ticket so we had to get a taxi to get back to our car. Not the best train I've ever been on.
At the fortress we tried to do the Korean archery. I was not doing so well so the leader helped me out.
After the fortress we went to a Jim-jil-bong which is a Korean sauna. Everyone is given these matching clothes and there are a number of different sauna's you can be in. My favorite one was the one full of little clay pebbles and you lie out on them. So relaxing. We also tried "doctor fish" which is kind of a foot treatment. The little fish bite off your dead skin...kind of disgusting and it's so ticklish!

Well, that's all for the pictures.

I can't believe Mark and I are going to be in Canada in less that 5 weeks! We're really looking forward to being home again and seeing everyone. We are also a little sad to leave because things are going well here. In two weeks we have a week off and we are going to Jeju Island. We're really excited. It's a really small Korean island just south of the Korean peninsula. We plan to spend a lot of time at the different beaches, hike some mountains and explore whatever else there is to see.

I hope you are well where ever you are.

Beautiful Samchuk

Two weekends ago we had a long weekend in Korea so Mark and I with our friend Kwang-kyu took a trip to Samchuk, a city on the east coast. We enjoyed relaxing on the beach, visiting one of the largest caves in Asia, as well as an interesting park.

Here are some pictures from the trip:
This first one is of the walk to the cave entrance. The cave is called Hwanseon Donggul. Here we are inside...I couldn't get over how big it all was.
It was cool to see the different limestones and other rocks. Too bad I don't remember very much from my Earth Science class.
We were sorry we didn't meet any bats. I think Mark was a bit more sorry than I was.
If you look closely in this last cave picture you might be able to find what looks like the virgin Mary. It's really small standing above the whitest part in the picture...
View of the ocean from an interesting park.

Then we went to the beach, which, I don't understand, was almost empty! It was such a beautiful hot day. I love the ocean!

San-Nak-Chee

Last night after we finished teaching we went out to try a new dish called san-nak-chee. It's raw octopus (fresh out of the tank) cut up and then put on a plate. When it's brought to the table it's still moving! It looks crazy! I think it still moves because the nerves are still alive. When we picked up a piece with our chopsticks the tentacles stuck to the chopsticks...the tentacles also got stuck to the inside of our mouths. That was an interesting feeling. So then you just chew and chew and chew. I heard that a person died from eating san-nak-chee because it was a really long piece and the person suffocated because it stuck to the person's throat...something like that. We only ate small pieces so there was no risk but I still chewed a lot just to kill all of the nerves. Yummy! Well not actually but it wasn't bad.

Korea vs. Jordan

On Saturday we had the pleasure of going to a soccer game at the World Cup Stadium in Seoul along with two Connexus students. I love being in a stadium. I haven't experienced it very often so every time it's kind of exciting. The first half was really good and Korea's best player Ji-Sung Park scored two goals. The second half was a bit disapointing with Jordan scoring two goals....oh well. We still had a good time...a highlight was a wave going around the stadium three times! Yes, three times!
On our way home Mark got stopped by a man who wanted to interview him about the game. Maybe he will be famous...
...side note...I think my English is getting worse....after teaching it it should be better, shouldn't it? But I seem to have gotten into a habit of simplifying my speech too much that it now sounds bad...this is not good.

I'm a bump-a-dump-a-dump-bump

When I was a child I really liked a Fred Penner song called "The Bump." My parents even recorded me singing it. A month ago this song came back to me while we were in Gyeongju. Maybe I wrote a few posts ago how we visited a park with many ancient tombs there. Well, the tombs looked like this: (see picture)...every time I saw one this song came in my head. It brings me back. "I'm a bump-a-dump-a-dump-bump in the middle of the prairie. The land around is flat flat flat..." and I forgot the last part...too bad.

Retreat at Sobaeksan

Last weekend (well I guess it was two weekends ago) the Mennonite Church Canada Witness workers in Korea went on a retreat together. A MC Canada Witness worker from the Philippines also joined us as the guest speaker. It was a really good 4 days with lots of relaxing, discussing, watching movies and some sightseeing.

Here we are visiting the first Confucianist school in Korea. Confucianism is kind of confusing to explain (hence the name) so I'll leave it up to you to research it if you want to know more.
This was one of the classrooms. There were indoor ones as well but I guess on nice days they got to study here. I wish Connexus could get classrooms like this.
Mark got tired of walking. I can't quite explain my actions here, maybe I was standing like that in case he would fall...
Right by the school (I should say it is not used anymore, just a touristy place) was a traditional village with many houses like this. Here is the group together.

We stayed at one of our co-workers host parents country house. It was in a small farming village in the mountains. It was such a beautiful area! We spent a lot of time hanging out in this room.
Here is the outside of the house.
One of the days we went to a riverside beach. Since it's been a dry spring the river was almost nonexistent. You can see a tiny stream in the background. We enjoyed the space to throw a frisbee around. We're playing jackpot in this picture. If you look closely you can see Mark in the red shirt getting the disc right in front of me. I kind of suck at this game.
Still at the beach just enjoying the sun.
After the beach we went to a market to get some more food. Here are some random shots of the market. We see these kind of things a lot...I can't remember if I've posted pictures like this before.

I think these containers are filled with different side dishes like vegetables and fish...maybe some kimchi in there as well.
Here is some dried fish...a lot of it is squid...still not my favorite.
more vegetables:

On Monday was Buddha's birthday. It is a national holiday in Korea and I don't know very much about it. All I know is that lots of lanterns are hung up everywhere, around temples and along streets in towns and cities. They're really pretty at night when they're lit up. So on Buddha's birthday we visited Boseoksa Temple.

We had to climb up a hill to get to it and from the top the view was beautiful!
The last night we went out for some barbecued duck. It was tasty.
As we drove around the area we passed many rice fields as well as ginseng fields. Here is a picture of a ginseng field which is grown in shade.
On Tuesday night we got back to Seoul (Connexus was closed on Tuesday) we were so tired and all craved hamburgers so we went to T.G.I.Fridays. It is an american chain I believe, kind of like Applebees. So most of us ordered hamburgers and after waiting for about 10 minutes the manager came and told us that they only had two hamburger buns left! Can you believe it! It was disapointing but we moved on and still had a good time.