What i would give for a boring day!

Okay so life here is soooo busy. This is one of the first times I have been able to sit still lately because I am normally running around and doing different things all the time. Which is great right because I am not bored at all but all the fun and all the stress of work and other things are making me tired. Anyway I think I have easier times coming. Testing at my school is mostly over and we have Korean Thanksgiving soon so I get a few days off of work.

So I am starting to loose confidence in this blog because I am so bad at posting and even when I do post I feel like I cant communicate much.. if anything. The reasons for the bad communication is that I don't understand half of what I see over here myself, its just amazing or extrodinarely different. But hey, I think I will keep it going and just write what I can when I can.

Anyways hiking in Korea is a huge deal. Simply put the hiking here is the best and can you guess the age group that hikes the most? Nope! All the middle aged and older people are the ones who hike in Korea. Yeah how crazy is that? These aren't just normal hiking paths either, there is lots of scrambling and climbing. They are really hard and steep. Apparently the older generations for the most part don't watch much tv and they go on these unbelievably challenging hikes often.

I was truely amazed to see all the Korean middle aged and old people doing these really difficult hikes but there were also a few amusing things. If Koreans go hiking they have the gear. When I say the gear I mean they are decked out in the best hiking shoes, hiking pants, hiking shirts, hiking goggles, hiking sticks, hiking backpacks and more with all the best brand names and a full load on their backs. I am talking like REI top brand quality here. And not just a few people, every single person is in the best gear available.

Oh and when they get to the top of a mountain (yes I mean mountain, not like the little hills or little iron 'mountain' we have in poway) they throw down a picnic cloth and sit and have a picnic for an hour or so. And they dont just have a picnic, they have a huge Korean meal for their picnic. It is pretty amazing. And of course a huge korean meal always includes a green glass bottle or two of their favorite drink, soju.

Here is the picture album i made: http://picasaweb.google.com/drobison100/HikingKorea?feat=directlink

eeeeh I didnt mean to spend much time talking about the hike.. oh well.

Anyways what I really wanted to talk more about is my awesome Korean friends. I have made a lot of really great Korean friends through church and seeing them is always the highlight of my week. I am glad to have Christian influences again in my life and people I relate to really well.

They are the best and I am learing loads of Korean. I am finally able to start using it too because I know enough to ask where things are or just to make very very basic conversation. At church I have a good friend who is teaching me Korean and I teach her English. But the awesome thing is this weekend is Korean Thanksgiving so I have some time off work and we are going to go to a concert with one of the most famous music groups in Korea! Yeah and the president might be there! And it is a TV broadcast too! Yeah how awesome right? Well the group is called Girl's Generation but wait dont think I'm gay, the men here love them just as much as the girls do. Infact my elementry school students love them and so do older people. Music in Korea is much much much different than in the US. Middle school kids are normally into pop music and like the same music as their parents.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7mPqycQ0tQ&hl=ko



And then after that on Sunday it is the day of Thanksgiving (Chuesok) one of the pastors at the church is going to have me over to his house or maybe ther church or whatever for a thanksgiving meal! I can't wait. Maybe there will be a bunch of Koreans wearing the traditional clothes called hanbok's. Who knows? well I should probably blog about those after the fact.

Ok c ya, 안녕히 계세요

Church n' Friends!

I am soooo bad at blogging! Sorry about that. I thought since I now have internet I would get better but... hardly.

The main reason I suck at blogging lately is because I do non-stop studying! Yeah I totally planned on getting out of college and not studying much if ever again. But now I am studying because I actually want to! I really want to learn how to speak Korean but my skills are so basic still that the only thing I can do is look in books until I can get a handle of basic sayings. The progress is really really slow and sometimes rather disappointing because learning Korean is super hard but at least now I have really good motivation which I am about to tell you about.

So I have been looking for a church in Korea for quite some time and I thought finding a church here would be easy because there are so many people here that go to church and there are a pretty decent amount of churches here. I was very wrong. Finding a church is not easy at all because based on a Korean friend advice, many of the churches here are closer to cults and since I cant speak Korean I can't really tell the difference. And more than that, I cant read anything to find out when the service times are or where to go / what to do. It is all really confusing and really hard. Also another thing is, you never know if a church here would be accepting of a foreigner.

So now that you understand the struggle you should also understand how awesome it was when my friend Calvin who you can see in the last blog post invited me to go to his traditional Korean church with him. This was a huge undertaking for him because everything is in Korean at the church and he took it on himself to translate everything for me so I felt comfortable. He is really involved in the church so we went to all the services and he translated for them all and for most of the time inbetween. So he basically translated for me for over 5 hours. Yeah the guy is amazing.

The music was really good. Of course it was all in Korean but every other song I could recognize and I knew the English words to. For the Korean songs I can read Hanguel but I read too slow to follow along so I am really trying to study that this week. There was a few Korean songs that were beautiful and they really made want to speak Korean so I could sing too. Fortunately I had Calvin with me to tell me the meaning of the song. I would just hum along.

The people of the church were so accepting of me! I totally didnt expect people to be hospitable to a foreigner who cant speak their language and is invading their church. But everyone took the time to say hello to which I tried to say hello in Korean back and give them respect. Everyone gave me their names which I remember about 1% of because Korean names are still very new sounds to me; it is always very very hard to remember sounds youre not used to. Infact I must admit out of the 50+ people I met I only remember Calvin's Korean name and one other persons :( Yeah, I need to work on that. But everyone was really friendly and they wanted to speak with me if they could or speak through Calvin.



So to welcome me to the church they had me come up front at the end of the young adult service and they gave me a gift. It was a nice little bound booklet so I can write down any Korean I want to learn. They had me come to the front of the service and stand infront of everyone and they all prayed for blessing for me. It was sweet.

So at the end we had a small groups Bible study which Calvin also translated for me so I was able to stay very involved. It was really nice and it was based of the Purpose Driven Life. The people in the group were very kind and helpful. Infact I even met someone my age in the group! The first 22 year old I have met in Korea. I really really really really wish I could speak their langauge because I want to speak with them directly.




We are 22!!!!



I pray in time God will help me make that happen.

After church we went out for some really tastey food that the area is famous for and no, I have no clue of what the food's name is. Anyways check it out! Calvin took this picture secretly while I was eating.

Seoul!!!!

Okay I am back to posting! Sorry for the long delay, I was really sick for a while so I would just come to work and do my best to survive the day then go home and sleep until work the next day. Thank God that is over with.

But anyway I went to Seoul and it is such an amazing city. Really I only saw one small part of it but I think it is like the time square part of new york. So it was really fun.

I met a Korean friend there that I was hooked up with through another friend in the states and he was super cool. He showed me around and helped me when I took the wrong exit from the subway.

Oh! quick funny prestory. On my way to Seoul after work I hopped on the subway but I left at like 7pm so the subway starts closing down cars after rush hour. Everything is in Korean so I have no clue that my subway car is getting closed down before I get to my destination and then some Korean dude came up and grabbed my knee and said "last stop." So fortunately, once again super nice Korean people saved me again.

So back to Seoul. The main station was super confusing so i went out the wrong subway exit but Calvin (my new Korean buddy) was resourceful and he found me. First off, Seoul is HUGE, like HUMONGEOUS! Yeah everywhere I look the buildings are 15+ stories high for as far as I can see. There are thousands of people on the streets and hundreds of vendors everywhere on the streets. And plenty of 위극인 (foreigners like me) too. There is a good chance I totally did that word wrong, but since I am really trying to learn Korean I like when i get the chance to use it.

Anyway we went to eat this really really good Military Soup i think it was called. Because after the Korean War the people were too poor and didnt have much to eat so the US military had ham and sausages which they gave to the Koreans and the Koreans combined that with their own food. So it is a soup with a very spicy red broth and many different vegtables and ham and sausage. Sooooo very tastey. And of course we had the side dishes too which is some very spicy kimchi (김치) and some japanese fish like things and more. Sooo good! Every Korean food that I have tasted I have really enjoyed so far.

Then we went to a really famous stream in Seoul called Cheonggye (I think). It is a stream that runs through a very well known part of the city. It is basically like a long narrow park that lots of people go to hang out in. During the day families are hopping across the rocks in the stream to the other side and at night couples and friends are sitting next to the stream just hanging out. It is very peaceful and everything is artificial so once again it's very clean and comfortable.

Also there are loads of bridges that go over the stream since it is like a story down from ground level, hmm hard to describe. But yeah you look down on the whole mini-park/stream place from the sidewalk on the street above and you go down a story of stairs to get there.
But back to the bridges. The bridges represent history and on the walls all the way from the start of the stream for probably miles are these very well done asian art style murals in tile that show lots of Korean history and culture. They have lots of the Chinese writing that the Koreans used to use then a explanation in Hangul and then much to my suprise there was en explanation in English too. Calvin and I read them for a while until we got bored at looking at soo many because it goes on for a long time.

So on one of the bridges there is this awesome lights and music show! Yeah all for free and it was pretty cool and high tech. So there are these really powerful mist machines then a lazer light thing that really plays tricks on the eyes as it reflects off the really thick mist. I am sorry my explanation sucks but it looked pretty cool. Calvin and I were just lucky enough to be there when it happened because the signs said we came at the wrong time.

Okay, then we went and cruized around the city a little bit more until we got to another big open plaza area with fountains and a giant statue of one of Koreas really famous generals that fought off the japanese. He invented the turtle boat and fought the Japanese very succesfully until he died in battle... and I cant remember his name : / sorry. Anyways that was awesome and there was a lot about Korean history there which was interesting.

So to wrap up the night we saw where the embassy was and a giant gate! like a freaking huge gate which apparently hosts the Korean national building which is "The Blue House."


Oh and one of my favorite things is there is some new program in Seoul for a transportation system or who knows what? (definately not me) but the mascot for the program is a 'Haechi' which is probably spelt like this: 해치 or 핯이. I think the first one. Anyways you know those asian gargoyle like things that stand infront of their gates and houses, yeah that is a haechi. Anyways check out the picture of one made out of plant.




Well in the end I got home from Seoul and it was a load of fun. Getting home consists of me getting on a bus that goes within 10 minutes walk of my house but I have no clue what stop to get off at so I tell the bus driver where I need to get off and hope he remembers to tell me when that is. It has worked out 2 times now and I still dont have the hang of it, everything in Korea looks to foreign for me, so to identify one place over another from a bus window is near impossible.

Anyways I am really trying to learn Korean and really failing very hard becuase I can't think of any good way to do it. I tried buying a book for it and I have been trying to make Korean friends but time is an issue for me and them. But I am not terribly worried, I will figure it out eventually. I am open to ideas.

안녕히 나ㅅ세요