Korean night on the town

After dinner we asked them if we could then treat them to some ice cream. They agreed and took us to Baskin Robbins(not as Korean as Liji would have liked, though they

did have a flavor called green tea). When it came to paying though they refused to let us pay and said the whole night was on them. Very nice people.

There was soo much food. We loved it!

This is a bridge at the park that we went to, it really pretty.


This is the noodle soup that we at after our main course meal, it was served freezing cold.

One of the salads they served us, it had sesame oil, chili pepper and other spices on it, we liked it.

We wrapped our meat in these lettuce leaves, they told us the darker green leaves were sesame leaves.

Dried fish with onion, and lots of chili paste, it was very hot, but I liked the taste, Christina opted to not try it.

Shredded green peppers and onions, with chili pepper.

The dressing for this sald was sweet, it tasted like ground up sweet corn and crushed pineapple. Christina and I both really liked it.

Grilling our meat over charcol right in the middle of our table.

Pictures

We pass these pretty flowers on our way to and from work. Today I matched them so

we took a picture.

We have been so busy during the days; we are pooped at night. This was about 5 minutes

after I was done saying my prayers. He didn't even wake up when I took this. I just let him sleep. He finally woke up after about another 10 minutes.

This is up one of these hills/mountains near our apartment. It's the one with the

exercise equipment.

Update from Christina: Teaching and Gunsan Ward

Liji has been so great with the kids. He is crazy with them. They just love it. His class is so loud. They are just across the hall from me and I can hear them all the time.
Our part of the teaching job at the school is to mostly get the students comfortable with speaking English and getting their pronunciation accurate. The Korean teachers mostly deal with the grammer part of it. A big thing that they want the students to be able to do is form sentences. If you ask them something they almost always just give one word answers. So I ask them a lot of questions during class. I have them answer first with their one word answers and then I demonstrate how to properly answers with a complete sentence and then I have them repeat me. It has seemed to work pretty well. They are gradually catching on and I will sometimes get a proper answer. When that happens it is so exciting. They also want us doing a lot of games with the students so that it is more interactive so I have been gathering a list. If anyone has any fun classroom games to help with speaking please let me know.
I am learning so much here. It is just so different. The communication barrier has definately been a little tricky to get around. But this has given me an opportunity to take a minute to step back and think; ok what is it really that I am trying to convey. Sometimes I can be so unclear in my communication skills and also such a bad listener. This is just going to be such a great experience. I feel so grateful to be here.
At church on Sunday everybody gave us such a warm welcome. Even though most of them couldn't speak to us. They would come up and to us and just seemed to let us know how happy they were to have us. In Relief Society there were only 4 sisters and then me. One girl is my age, her name is sister O (that is shortened from her full Korean name to make it easer for us to say) she just was baptized a couple years ago but as been inactive until this year. The other three sister were like in their 30's or early 40's. Nobody gave a lesson they just had a testimony meeting and they asked me to bare my testimony first because they said they really wanted to hear me speak. So I bore my testimony to them and told them how grateful I was to them for their kindness and love towards me and that I knew this was where I was supposed to be. As I testified of this the Spirit entered and they felt it also. It was just a real neat experience. I already feel so much love for them. The missionaries told us that all of the members in the ward are first generation converts, and there are many inactive. I have never been in a ward with so many that new to the gospel. It is going to be so great. I feel like there is so much I can do and it is driving me to learn the language sooner so I can communicate better. Liji and I are studying the language every morning but it seems slow going. Pray for us.

First days of teaching in Korea

We have taught classes for two days now, so I thought I would tell a little more about our academy, that is what the Korean students call our institution. When we have called it a school, they always correct us.
We teach students from about 8 years old to 16 or so. The kids go to a regular school in the morning, and then come to English + (the name of our academy) after that. I am still not sure how the Korean education system works, but it appears that the younger students get out of school first, and the older they are the longer they stay in school. So we start teaching at 3pm, and our first classes are the youngest students, about 8-10 years old. Our last classes of the night are from 8-9pm, and on Mondays I teach a 9-10pm class. The last classes of the day are the oldest students, 15-16 years old. My biggest class has only had about 8 students in it, I really like that. After teaching classes of 25-30 students, 8 students seems almost like one-on-one.
I like the variety of teaching so many different age groups, but each age has its different challenges. The youngest students barely speak English, so teaching them has much more interactive. I have found that drawing pictures on the board; and acting things out are effective strategies to help them understand what I am trying to teach them. The younger students have a much shorter attention span, if I don’t change pace every 5-10 minutes, I bore them to death. There are also many benefits of teaching younger kids: they are not shy about speaking English, they belt out at the top of their lungs any new word or phrase that I give them, they are so eager to learn. Another plus is that if they are getting restless I can always have them stand up and jump around and wave their arms to burn off some energy. They especially like it when I join them in this activity, to tell the truth, I like it as well. It helps me to burn off some energy, and to wake back up if I am starting to be boring.
The older students have a much better command of the English language; some of them can actually carry out a conversation. It is much harder to read the older kids. With the younger kids, I can always tell when they are confused, or lost. Their faces are so easy to read. On the other hand the older kids are much less animated, so sometimes I think they don’t understand, but they actually do. Other times, I think they do understand, but I have lost the whole class, they just sit there stone faced. It is much harder to gain the older students attention after I bore them. I have tried having them stand up and move around, but they are shy about dancing around the classroom. So I am still working on ways to regain the class’s interest after I lose it, does anyone have any suggestions about how to animate teenagers?
I have also discovered some important cultural differences that I have been blatantly ignoring. It is polite to take your shoes off when you enter a building here in Korea, that we knew. So we went and got sandals to wear at school. I had a hard time finding sandals big enough for me, but I found that if I took my socks off the sandals fit me alright. The first day I just wore my sandals, no socks. On Tuesday, Carol, she’s the assistant principal, and also a teacher, told Christina that in Korea it is rude for men to not wear socks. I am not sure why Carol told Christina because I was sitting right next to Christina. It must be another cultural thing. She did not think it was proper to tell me that I should wear socks, I don’t know. Then she told Christina that it is not appropriate for teachers to sit on the desks, which is another habit that I have. When I get tired of standing, I just sit on a desk for a while, but I guess I won’t do that anymore. I don’t know what I will do because there is not a chair in my classroom for me to sit on. After I found out that I shouldn’t sit on the desks, I started sitting in an empty chair that was not being used by the students.
Despite all of the cultural differences, I am so excited to teach English here. The students are so fun, it is exciting to learn new teaching strategies, and I just can’t wait to get back to the classroom!

20mm cannons on one of the ships we visited

OK, lets play guess what Christina is doing....I will tell you in a later post.

These are the larva that I ate.

This is Christina holding up our dinner, a dried squid, just kidding about the dinner part. Christina gags is you say the word fish, and if she smells fish, she gags harder. You might think she is grimacing to make a good picture, but that is her reaction to anything thtat comes out of the water.

OK, lets play gues what Christina is doing again....

This is our view of the sunset, we see this every evening, it is pretty cool.

View from South Side of Apartment Building

View from North side of Apartment building