Don't Forget Your Swim Cap!
1. Summer's Puppy!
2. In Korean it translates, "Steamed Chicken."
3. Seoul National Musuem. Or Star Trek Central Port.
4. We made it to South America! We found the Incas!
HAS IT BEEN TWO WEEKS?!? It has, a little bit. I am currently sitting on the nest I made in my living room (minus the heat- oh no that power bill was terrible- I hate you celcius conversion I hate you!) surrounded by chocolate muffin crumbs, an empty glass that once contained orange juice, and the partially read autobiography of Roald Dahl. It's already good, of course.
He says in his book, "an autobiography must therefore, unless it is to become tedious, be extremely selective, discarding all the inconsequential incidents in one's life and concentrating on those that have remained vivid in memory." With that in mind... oh wait Roald, there's nothing consequential in my life right now.
BUT THIS IS A BLOG! NOT AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY!
First things first. 30 Celcius is 85 Farenheit. Who would've thought?!? The rest of the world and the smarter percentage of Americans, that's who.
I am no longer afraid to go to a jimjilbang. (Korean sauna). Why was I afraid at first, you ask? Because everyone is NAKED, that's why! Don't worry though, all women in the same room and all men in the same room. You have to wear some sort of white baggy uniform to hang out in the other rooms. But, there are grocery stores in those places, rooms full of computers to play games (PC Bang pronounced "bahhhng"), and floors with pillows to sleep on. Did I go to one? No! Monday I went swimming with my Korean friend- first realization- WHEW am I that out of shape? Indeed, yes. Even though I was wearing a Reebok swimsuit and a swimming cap (Summer was irritated we didn't have goggles) after a couple laps I was glad that pool water was chilled. I started working out last week (oh, Roald Dahl is just grimacing at me from wherever he is right now) and what did I find under "cardio workout" search on YouTube? TAE BO! The cassettes I was DYING to buy my junior year of highschool! It remained on my "must buy" list along with "wide leg jeans" and "Toni Braxton CD" and was never purchased. Until NOW.
Right so after the swimming it turned out the showers were communal and no one cared. Neither do I, now. What a cultural experience. I am one step closer to being Korean.
I hung out at her house and met her whole family who was super nice, and it was the strangest experience, wanting to talk to her parents and not being able to! Apparently I was the first foreigner to ever come over and we had dinner together. There were about ten dishes on the table with various kinds of mushrooms and greens and kimchi and duckmeat and vegetables and we each had a bowl of rice. Her mom jumped up from the table to find a fork for me (No really, it's ok!) and came back with the TINIEST utensil I have ever seen. It was slightly larger than a toothpick. I showed off and used my chopsticks, but I think I picked up my fork one time to be polite. I terrified her brother by speaking English to him (he's in highschool) and after dinner Summer whispered to me, "My dad wants to buy you a bread but I told him it's ok." And I told her YES it's fine he doesn't need to do that! We finished our movie (about a terrifying water monster living in the Han river in Seoul who throws a girl in a gutter and then by the time her dad finds her it eats her- sorry if you were going to watch that) and then I went home!
So, Monday was FANTASTIC.
We had vacation on Monday to celebrate a Korean girl who stood up against Japan in the 40's, along with a large group of nonviolent protestors in a market, and they were all brutally murdered by the Japanese. But it was the beginning of their liberation.
I started teaching again and WHEW what a week. I've been taking videos in my classes but I won't put any up here because they reflect chaos and perhaps if the government finds them I'll be deported.
What else, you ask?
OH! God is teaching me something. I was listening to John Piper a couple nights ago and he said, "You are not created to BE somebody. You are created to KNOW somebody." What a thought. I'm so busy devising all of my life goals that I forget my life is really in God's hands anyways and who cares who I want to be. I just want Him to use me really and so there's no room for me to attempt and be anyone. That's up to Him. Last night in Bible study (a few people I work with meet together once a week in Tim's apartment to assault his cat and drink hot chocolate and talk about the Bible) we talked about "childlike obedience" (in 1 Peter) and how children don't really weigh all the consequences they are simply obedient. Or disobedient.
There are a million ways I can be more obedient. My susceptibility to materialism is so obvious here because all that matters is how you look on the outside, and so I'm constantly fighting the desire to just buy stuff I don't need. Also at work I try to teach and interact with people in my own power- how foolish- and this week I've been praying as I'm walking or writing on the board or looking over a student's shoulder or sitting in the teacher's room- because people bring out all of my weaknesses and impatience and anger and bittnerness and pride and EWW it's ugly stuff! So I have to depend on God to give me joy where there is no joy and patience when I want to just give up and I have to depend on Him to give me love when I want to protect and defend myself instead of seeing someone else for who they really are.
There's a student in my class named Mark. He's 10 maybe? He's so cute, and today he was wearing a grey sweatshirt that was really tight-fitted on him (this is Korean style, even for the kids), but he's just so frustrating because he never has his homework, and he's failing his tests, and he giggles when I call on him and won't form an answer, and he just seems so behind and I don't know why. He got a D on his report card, when I was typing them up I remembered his cute little face and though, "Really? Should I raise his grade?" and then I looked at the average, a 33, and realized I couldn't, and in class today I remembered why he earned that grade... because he's so unmotivated and lazy and stuck behind. Or so it seems. I was talking to the Korean counselor today and found out he never really sees his parents, he's being raised by a housekeeper who cares very little for him, and every free moment of his time he is at some sort of academy. He goes to four after-school academies. This means he leaves maybe at 7:30 in the morning and gets home somewhere around 10. On longer breaks his parents ship him off to other countries.
So God absolutely must give me patience all the time because Mark needs me to love him and not be disappointed with him or ignore him like his parents and his nanny do.
I am so thankful for my job. But I am so incapable of doing anything positive and lasting without God. Last night a question in our Bible study was, "What things remind you of the futility of life?"
Saturday some friends and I went to Seoul National Museum and looked at an Inca exhibit. Among the rooms full of pots and swords and gold jewelry I found some really awesome mummies. There was a mummified old woman, her orange face scrunched over her braided sweater, her black hair hanging down from a knitted hat with feathers in the top, and beside a mummified baby was propped, wearing the same thing. In front of them was a guinea pig's body (2,000 years old!) and beside them was a tiny mummified monkey and a yellowish-white dog, its fangs sticking out from its smushed-down snout. As you reach the end of the exhibit, there are European paintings of explorers and strange Inca people, holding gold and animal skins, displaying the relics of a culture that would be obliterated and boxed up in museums millenia later for Korean students to peer at.
I ended a sentence with a preposition. It irks me but I'm going to leave it.
Anyways there is nothing we can leave behind in life except what we give of ourselves that sticks to other people. I don't want to give other people trash, or things they will complain about later or remember darkly. In my own power I think I can give very little that's of worth. So, without God giving life and volition to my attempts, they are all meaningless and so was my life.
BUT DO NOT DESPAIR! He won't let that happen to people who trust Him. He will use us, because He said He would, and if we think He won't we don't have faith and we might as well not believe in Him at all.
Philippians 1:6- And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns.
Hebrews 11:6- And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.
He says in his book, "an autobiography must therefore, unless it is to become tedious, be extremely selective, discarding all the inconsequential incidents in one's life and concentrating on those that have remained vivid in memory." With that in mind... oh wait Roald, there's nothing consequential in my life right now.
BUT THIS IS A BLOG! NOT AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY!
First things first. 30 Celcius is 85 Farenheit. Who would've thought?!? The rest of the world and the smarter percentage of Americans, that's who.
I am no longer afraid to go to a jimjilbang. (Korean sauna). Why was I afraid at first, you ask? Because everyone is NAKED, that's why! Don't worry though, all women in the same room and all men in the same room. You have to wear some sort of white baggy uniform to hang out in the other rooms. But, there are grocery stores in those places, rooms full of computers to play games (PC Bang pronounced "bahhhng"), and floors with pillows to sleep on. Did I go to one? No! Monday I went swimming with my Korean friend- first realization- WHEW am I that out of shape? Indeed, yes. Even though I was wearing a Reebok swimsuit and a swimming cap (Summer was irritated we didn't have goggles) after a couple laps I was glad that pool water was chilled. I started working out last week (oh, Roald Dahl is just grimacing at me from wherever he is right now) and what did I find under "cardio workout" search on YouTube? TAE BO! The cassettes I was DYING to buy my junior year of highschool! It remained on my "must buy" list along with "wide leg jeans" and "Toni Braxton CD" and was never purchased. Until NOW.
Right so after the swimming it turned out the showers were communal and no one cared. Neither do I, now. What a cultural experience. I am one step closer to being Korean.
I hung out at her house and met her whole family who was super nice, and it was the strangest experience, wanting to talk to her parents and not being able to! Apparently I was the first foreigner to ever come over and we had dinner together. There were about ten dishes on the table with various kinds of mushrooms and greens and kimchi and duckmeat and vegetables and we each had a bowl of rice. Her mom jumped up from the table to find a fork for me (No really, it's ok!) and came back with the TINIEST utensil I have ever seen. It was slightly larger than a toothpick. I showed off and used my chopsticks, but I think I picked up my fork one time to be polite. I terrified her brother by speaking English to him (he's in highschool) and after dinner Summer whispered to me, "My dad wants to buy you a bread but I told him it's ok." And I told her YES it's fine he doesn't need to do that! We finished our movie (about a terrifying water monster living in the Han river in Seoul who throws a girl in a gutter and then by the time her dad finds her it eats her- sorry if you were going to watch that) and then I went home!
So, Monday was FANTASTIC.
We had vacation on Monday to celebrate a Korean girl who stood up against Japan in the 40's, along with a large group of nonviolent protestors in a market, and they were all brutally murdered by the Japanese. But it was the beginning of their liberation.
I started teaching again and WHEW what a week. I've been taking videos in my classes but I won't put any up here because they reflect chaos and perhaps if the government finds them I'll be deported.
What else, you ask?
OH! God is teaching me something. I was listening to John Piper a couple nights ago and he said, "You are not created to BE somebody. You are created to KNOW somebody." What a thought. I'm so busy devising all of my life goals that I forget my life is really in God's hands anyways and who cares who I want to be. I just want Him to use me really and so there's no room for me to attempt and be anyone. That's up to Him. Last night in Bible study (a few people I work with meet together once a week in Tim's apartment to assault his cat and drink hot chocolate and talk about the Bible) we talked about "childlike obedience" (in 1 Peter) and how children don't really weigh all the consequences they are simply obedient. Or disobedient.
There are a million ways I can be more obedient. My susceptibility to materialism is so obvious here because all that matters is how you look on the outside, and so I'm constantly fighting the desire to just buy stuff I don't need. Also at work I try to teach and interact with people in my own power- how foolish- and this week I've been praying as I'm walking or writing on the board or looking over a student's shoulder or sitting in the teacher's room- because people bring out all of my weaknesses and impatience and anger and bittnerness and pride and EWW it's ugly stuff! So I have to depend on God to give me joy where there is no joy and patience when I want to just give up and I have to depend on Him to give me love when I want to protect and defend myself instead of seeing someone else for who they really are.
There's a student in my class named Mark. He's 10 maybe? He's so cute, and today he was wearing a grey sweatshirt that was really tight-fitted on him (this is Korean style, even for the kids), but he's just so frustrating because he never has his homework, and he's failing his tests, and he giggles when I call on him and won't form an answer, and he just seems so behind and I don't know why. He got a D on his report card, when I was typing them up I remembered his cute little face and though, "Really? Should I raise his grade?" and then I looked at the average, a 33, and realized I couldn't, and in class today I remembered why he earned that grade... because he's so unmotivated and lazy and stuck behind. Or so it seems. I was talking to the Korean counselor today and found out he never really sees his parents, he's being raised by a housekeeper who cares very little for him, and every free moment of his time he is at some sort of academy. He goes to four after-school academies. This means he leaves maybe at 7:30 in the morning and gets home somewhere around 10. On longer breaks his parents ship him off to other countries.
So God absolutely must give me patience all the time because Mark needs me to love him and not be disappointed with him or ignore him like his parents and his nanny do.
I am so thankful for my job. But I am so incapable of doing anything positive and lasting without God. Last night a question in our Bible study was, "What things remind you of the futility of life?"
Saturday some friends and I went to Seoul National Museum and looked at an Inca exhibit. Among the rooms full of pots and swords and gold jewelry I found some really awesome mummies. There was a mummified old woman, her orange face scrunched over her braided sweater, her black hair hanging down from a knitted hat with feathers in the top, and beside a mummified baby was propped, wearing the same thing. In front of them was a guinea pig's body (2,000 years old!) and beside them was a tiny mummified monkey and a yellowish-white dog, its fangs sticking out from its smushed-down snout. As you reach the end of the exhibit, there are European paintings of explorers and strange Inca people, holding gold and animal skins, displaying the relics of a culture that would be obliterated and boxed up in museums millenia later for Korean students to peer at.
I ended a sentence with a preposition. It irks me but I'm going to leave it.
Anyways there is nothing we can leave behind in life except what we give of ourselves that sticks to other people. I don't want to give other people trash, or things they will complain about later or remember darkly. In my own power I think I can give very little that's of worth. So, without God giving life and volition to my attempts, they are all meaningless and so was my life.
BUT DO NOT DESPAIR! He won't let that happen to people who trust Him. He will use us, because He said He would, and if we think He won't we don't have faith and we might as well not believe in Him at all.
Philippians 1:6- And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns.
Hebrews 11:6- And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.
There is a new Italian restaurant on the floor below mine in my apartment building and Meagan and I went there tonight. Although the lights were blinding, it was fancier than we anticipated, and everyone was wearing brightly-colored-Easter-pastel satin vests with black stitching on them. Italian in Korea means overpriced spaghetti in a place littered with colors that were wildly popular in 1994. We split some spaghetti, concluded that we could have made it but at least the garlic bread wasn't coated in sugar (as it usually is) and tiptoed out among shimmery-suited businessmen and fur wearing skinny young women. Whew I just CAN'T get the taste of garlic out of my mouth- how DO they sneak it in there??
Was Star Trek really filmed there?
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