Friday is for Everyone!

Today is Friday and so that means that there is a lot of team time and little student bonding time, which is fine and all, but....taxing too. 

Our team activity was going to Noodles Tree and then going to Dr. Fish.

Dinner from Noodles Tree

Restaurant 

This Area

Busy

So Dr. Fish are these little fish suckers that eat the dead skin off of your feet and are quite ticklish. No one was immune.

Emilee almost died.

More stuff

That's about it. 

A Lot Of Beautiful People Are Not Smart

I'm so excited! So I asked the woman who owns the coffee shop next to us if she could teach me how to make delicious beverages and she agreed! So during my free time Saturday for about an hour she's going to teach me and then hopefully during my breaks when students are in class I can help her out some. This is actually a really great mission opportunity that I did not expect to have. She's not a believer and so I pray that I may be able to witness to her. But that wasn't the only thing cool to happen today, at least I don't think so. 

Lemon Tea. It's lemon and ginger and honey! 

 So today I'm not teaching again so I had some free time to spend with my house dad. He wanted to take me to Lotte Mart to get some food for our dorm and for an event that's being held at the school tomorrow. The Mart is really cool yall, like people are giving out free samples everywhere and they're all delicious and it's all like healthy food like, oh the meat is so delicious and this fruit is so delicious try try try!

Mushrooms

Carrots 

Leaves from a tree

Kimchi

Fish

Seafood!

 Then they had black out training. Y'all it was not fun. It was really inconvenient and I hated it. But I mean I'm glad I was there when it happened

My camera eats any light and I swear it was really dark here! 

 Well we came back to school and did the bonding thing.
Then we took some of our students out for PotBingSuk which is like an upgraded snow cone. It's really good. We made a bad selection of flavors. Not bad in taste....but in principle, but we had a great time with the students and we think they had fun with us. I do have photo's....just not for you.

Later that night we went to Cafe Reineke which serve coffee and chocolate and is delicious.

Mocha

Honey Bread and Teas

Brownie.

I went home, and went to sleep. I mean I talked to my room mates, but that was it.
Grace and Peace

Ice Cream

Guys I do not know Korean, so today's plan was to by the end of the day have possession of a Korean book for Foreigners. 

Besides that I also had to teach today, but we have a book to go off of now which is great! It's actually really tough being a teacher, but I think t's even more difficult being a teacher without authority. I mean the worse I can do is beat the kids, but their actual teacher can affect their grades. -.- such is the life of the summer missionary. 

Teaching the class went well though, i think some of the students are becoming more interested in what we have to say and what we are doing. Although a few of the 7 slept during our class some. One of the students is great though she's always the first one to answer and her English is great, she definitely helps out a lot. 

Okay so there are ants al over the park in Korean and they were climbing all over my feet and I was really annoyed by it, but then I dropped some of my ice cream on the ground and they did not touch the stuff, I swear. I was so surprised that they kept eating me as opposed to the ice cream. It really got me thinking that I shouldn't be eating this if the ant's don't. I killed one of their own and they ate that instead of this ice cream!

 Well, I'm not learning Korean any faster. So the only option it the Jasil book store. The place is all underground and it's huge, I was really embarrassed to be that white guy taking pictures so I only got a few but y'all it really is really cool!

Everyone in Korea wears shoes. +

Lotte runs Korea, they own Korea

 Short story Short, I got the book and had a day.

Best advice ever.

I hope you all are enjoying my photo's and updates. Theirs actually a lot of cool stuff going on but I can't really write about it publicly. E-mail or Facebook me for more info!
Grace and Peace

Good Lord

Y'all life is rough. I swear it's very challenging here. Even though I feel like I'm doing really well connecting with the students and teachers I feel like I could be doing so much more, but it's really rough. Today I didn't teach so instead I called potential staff members for out camp at the end of the year. I also got to go play ping pong with my room mate, which was a good experience. I really appreciate him, he helps a lot with he language barrier stress.

Jessica making phone calls in English. Yes I have run out of things to take pictures of. 

The coffee shop next to our school has the best owner and the best coffee. 

 That's about it. I had a lot of quiet time today. It was great! I really needed it.

Koreans love to work out, especially the elder people

Maybe I'll throw in some interesting cultural facts:
     1# Korean guys are not afraid to hold your hand in public. It's a bit off putting at first but not totally crazy. It's not gay either it's just like ohh good friends.
     2# Koreans have a crazy aversion to feet. It's like to be born without is a blessing. Just kidding but seriously though I stepped into a pavilion and took my shoes off before and my feet where still dirty but i was like it's a pavilion and the old people were like hahahaha noo nooo gross ugh gross white people!
     3# Korean aging culture is amazing. It's almost like a pleasure to get old. All the people at the park working out during the day are at least 100 and they all use this equipment which would land and elderly person in American in the home. It's awesome. I'll creep for you because I know you want to.
Grace and Peace

Jesus Would Use A Jet

We're finally back on a normal schedule. I teach Monday and Wednesday and help out with whatever the rest of the week.

Breakfast

 Koreans don't really have a particular set of breakfast foods,it's all pretty much the same as the rest of the meals. I like this to an extent but I'm still a fan of fresh fruit and coffee, but that's the problem here. In Korea fruit is so expensive. It's like 20,000\ for a watermelon. I could have sworn I got one for less, but no it crazy expensive, but I've never had a bad watermelon here. They've all been like sugar babies and that's fine by me. I mean I guess you better have a great watermelon for 20,000\.

Lunch

Lunch

 Like I said earlier though, we are teaching today. I teach Vision class, it is the second highest class at the school and the English level in the class is passing, not great but they could live in America for a while and be okay. My teaching partner Stephanie came up with the lesson plan for today and it was really really good. She had it planned out to work with the topic of weather and to have conversations about the weather and it worked out really well. We switched halfway though because we realized that the students were distracted because they were studying for another English test and so we switched gears and stated to talk about the brain. The class is really great and really fun and generally receptive. There are about 7 students in it all from our northern neighbor.

 We were hungry, starving really after class so we went to the coffee shop down the road and split some potbingsou, green tea flavored delicious.

 But Jessica was not a fan of the red bean sauce on top, which is actually pretty good. Sweet and savory, but no she was not a fan.

Later that night Aaron and I went out for Manduk and had a good talk about some of the student and how we can better our ministry with them. There is a lot of junk going on around here in everyone's ministry here and it's taxing on us all.
Pray for strength of the team
Grace and Peace

Your Best Life Now

So today is Sunday, well actually it's Tuesday, but that's besidde the point. Y'all I'm so tired it's not even funny. These students are wearing me out. It's like. I come home from school, and sit down for 5 minutes. Then a student comes home and is like lets go to the park or lets go eat or lets wander around and it's great because I get to spend time with them, but then I come home form that and a different student is like hey... and then the whole cycle repeats itself. I sound terrible because my job here as a missionary is a lot less physically demanding that others who have gone, but it's a lot more emotionally demanding I feel like. Anyway today is not Tuesday in blog land it's Sunday. 

Achasan Mountain way in the back. I was just really happy that I could see it today. 

 Sunday we go to church as a team and we go to Jubilee church. It's a very interesting church, the people are very sincere and have an obvious love for the Lord, but it's definitely different from what I'm used to at home. I think the most unusual thing is when prayer is said the whole congregation prays aloud their own individual prayer. They also do this at the school. It's different, but not as different as some of you would think. We met together for lunch and had Pizza in a cone. I hate to say it...but it was not delicious

Jamsil Sports Stadium on the way to church

Sinsa, still on the way to church, church is like and hour away its not the best.

 We met together for lunch and had Pizza in a cone. I hate to say it...but it was not delicious the salad was good but the Pizza cone was so-so but it was cool to have not Korean food. 

A salad

A Small Cone of Pizza

 After lunch and church I was pretty anxious to head back home because I had a few activities planned to do with my friends/students today. I guess there was a disconnect somewhere because I came back to an empty house. It's really sad too, we were going to go to the river! But in the end it all worked out look! Jiho got me soup!

Bone Soup

On a serious note, I'm really concerned about one of my students, he's not making the wisest choices in life and it's difficult to know his motivation because he speaks very little English, but my Korean is getting better! not worse, despite popular belief. But I would ask for prayers for this student in particular and that language barriers will be removed so I can know how to pray for him better.
Grace and Peace

Just Photos

Figure out what I did!

Emily not approving. 

Bruno from Cali