not going to eat dog!

I had a once in a lifetime opportunity this past weekend. We spent a weekend in a small village in Korea and became Korean farmers for 2 days. We helped the local village farmers with their everyday lives and gave them a rest. We all did different types of farming, but mostly harvesting vegetables. Me and my group prunded tomatoe plants for about 7 hours and the next day I pruned cucumber plants. It was rather tiring, but we were exremely taken care of; offered food and drinks about every hour with random long break periods. Saturday night we all hung out and just ate amazing Korean food with the traditional homemade drink: machali. It is absolutly delicious. Its a rice milk alcohol drink, not sure how it is made, but its quite good! But one sad thing about farmin in this town was the dog farm that we stumbled across. There were tons of cages with dogs in them, just eatin waiting to get slaughtered. These dogs are only 7 months old, but are huge and will be slaughtered around 1 year old. IT is quite different than anything I have ever seen, but its the culture. But all in all, the farming experience was very good and I am so glad I got to experience it!

My Fortress!

I live in Suwon, which is located in the Gyeonggi-do province. It is about 30 minutes outside of Seoul in a quiet, green suburb. Surrounding my town is the Hwaseong Fortress. Hwaseong means "Brilliant Fortress" in Korean. It surrounds the city which is the capital of Gyenggi-do province.
There are 4 entrances, one from the north, the south, the east and the west. These main gates are encircled by minituare fortresses. It supposedly was built by King Jeongjo to honor and house his father who had been murdered by being locked alive inside a rice chest by his own father.

It is a beatiful fortress and at night it is all lit up, with large lights near each of the gates and smaller lights lining the wall connecting the gates. I presume I will be spending much time here in the year to come!

Tibetan and Nepalese Food

We decided to venture out to a part of Seoul and go to a restaraunt called Everest. It its a Tibetan and Nepalese Restaraunt and it is so good. There were about 12 of us that went, a bunch of friends crammed together in one little corner area, what more could you want! A few of the "regulars" of our group decided to order for all of us, for the rest of us had no idea what to expect. I wasn't sure what to expect either, but that has become a common thing for me these days. We first were given this orange colored soup that was the hottest thing I have ever tried, but it was absolutely amazing. It was too good not to eat, despite that we were all crying becuase it was extremey hot. Next we were brought our main course, massive pieces of bread with different curry dishes to dip the bread into. We had a chicken sauce curry, a spinach curry, and a few other types of curry that I cannot pronounce.It was so good, very filling. There were only about 7 bowls so we all had to share everything. Something that is very common in the Asian countries. The meal was so good and definetly a new experience. I'm going to try to be a regular at that place, soon they will know me!

SO NASTY

So, being the polite girl I am I have a hard time saying no to things that are offered to me by others, especially those that I work with, especially someone with higher authority. I was about to sit down to lunch to enjoy my peanut butter and jelly sandwich (typical in South Korea, not) when Jenny, the teacher that I have been teaching English to came up to me and offered me some food. I looked into the container and it was a bunch of anchovies. I almost threw up when I looked at it. I couldn't say no, so she went and put some on a plate for me. And to add to that, she gave me some soup ( I didn't ask what was in it, for I was afraid) and come to find out it was some green plant with chunks of tofu. So along with my PBnJ I enjoyed some anchovies and tofu on the side. I had to gulp down water just to keep everything down.
On my way home from work I saw pigs legs (the calf and hoof and all) along with the bones and skeleton of the animals the beef came off of. MMMMMMMMMM so good.

to friends.

"Even though we've changed and we're all finding our own place in the world, we all know that when the tears fall or the smile spreads across our face, we'll come to each other because no matter where this crazy world takes us, nothing will ever change so much to the point where we're not all still friends.”

I have been blessed with such an amazing group of girls over here in South Korea. Truly, God is so good for giving me these friendships.
I know we will have hard times, fun times, times of laughter and times of tears, but I know that I can always count on these girls.

Thank you so much!

little piece of home

I was walking around my area in Suwon and happened to come across this quaint, cute coffee shop in a back alley. I am so very excited to go there often and become a regular! By the end of this year I want to be able to walk in and have them know what exactly I want! I can't wait. Its a little piece of home, to sit in a coffee shop and do some homework or read a good book. I'm excited for this little place that I can become so familiar with!

NORAYBONG!

The people are quite addicted to noraybong! Translated = kareoking! It is a lot of fun but quite different. There are "noraybonging" places all over. You get a group of friends together, and pay about 5 bucks a person and you get a room to yourselves. Endless amount of songs and an hours worth of great kareoking. You get 2 microphones, and other random instruments. It is so much fun, and a great way to sing your heart out!

Yoido Full Gospel Church

LARGEST CHURCH IN THE WORLD!

Yoido Full Gospel Church, Yeouido, Seoul, South Korea

This church is the biggest churc in the world, (I'm pretty sure). It has more than 800,000 members and translates the services into 8 different languages. I was quite excited to go and see what the biggest church is like. This church was started as a home church and grew over the past 60 years into the largest church. There are 7 services on Sunday, each one packed to the brim. They are very involoved with missions and are very passionate about spreading the Gospel. I was very impressed with the choir. There were a lot of members; they were extremely talented and sung many hymns that I was familiar with. The pastor was also very good. He quoted many scriptures and was reading out of the Bible constantly during the sermon. It was a little hard to pay attention becuase it was a male pastor but I was listenting to a woman translating the service. It was quite interesting. It was a good experience and it is encouraing to see so many people worship the same God!

BUTTERFINGERS!

Butterfingers, about to be a ritual every Satuday morning for breakfast. It is a well-known pancake house in Bundang.

The best pancake ever: mozzarella and cream cheese pancake.. mmmmmmm, delicous!

And more differences!

Just a few different things that I have come across that have rocked my world, but am slowly becoming accustomed to them!

-people have specific shoes they wear in their houses, then specific shoes that they wear into the bathroom. the school I work at uses this exact tradition. I wear "slippers" while working and have to put on other "slippers" to go into the bathroom. yes different. i think so
-the Korean people value fair skin. so different than the western way of things. good thing I don't gotta keep workin on gettin tan!
-people do not smile or acknowledge you when you walk by them. when you make eye contact with someone you just stare at them until you dont see them anymore. there have been countless number of times that I have seen people stare at me and I make eye contact with them, and they keep staring. I am slowly getting used to staring right back at them, no shame!
-at my school, if students are late they have to kneel on their knees in the hallway holding a sign above their head in Korean (I unfortunately can't read it) but I'm pretty sure this punishment doesn't work, but thats their way of doing things so I cant say anything.....
-people do not say any form of "bye" on the phone, they just say yes yes yes mmmmmmmm. pretty interesting, i'm gunna start to do that too!

Rule: have to eat in 1 bite!

So my friend Charissa, who has been in South Korea for a year enlightened the rest of us that this specific meal that she took us to, you have to eat the 'roll' in ONE BITE!

the roll consists of:

pork
lettuce
rice
any sides you want

(needless to say, its one big bite)
so here we all are, attempting to eat it in one bite, and we all won victorously!

Yes, crazy things already!

I got to South Korea just in time to experience my best friend (Tayla's) 22nd birthday, and what better way than to hop in taxi cab and go to a local park and go bungee jumping! Yep, thats just we did. It took us a little bit to get there, for our Korean is not very good (or existant) so that hindered us, but we did finally make it. The park is called Yuldong Park. The park has a lot to offer, bungee jumping, walking, hiking, various parks, etc. One part of the park was called the English Book Park and it had a bunch of particular pieces of art that were connected with childrens books (or so that is what I got out of it)! But we had time to spare so we walked around and enjoyed some of the art, some of it was weird, but still was interesting to see. And when we saw the place that you go bungee jumping, we thought 'oh this is nothing', for it didn't look that high. It was 150 feet, still pretty high when you got to the top and think am I really going to jump off this willingly? So that is exaclty what each of us did.
5....4.....3.....2..... BUNGEE!

Squatting toilets. Really?

I was so lucky enough to be introduced to squatting toilets in the public restrooms. I walked into the bathroom and then inot a stall to find a whole in the ground, and thought to myself, well I gotta do what I gotta do, squatting toilet or not! So, there and then was my first experience using a squatting toilet. Lets not say they are my favorite, but I will have stronger quads after this year thank you to them lovely toilets! (also, it is an underlying known fact that you take toilet paper into the stall because there is none in the bathroom)

Along with squatting toilets, the joy of taking a shower with just a shower head and having my entire bathroom get soaked, is another great experience that I am still getting used to. The shower head is hooked up to the sink and you have to push one button to switch the water from going to the facet to the shower head. I will guarantee that within this next year I will forget to push the button and when I go to use the facet, I will get a little more wet than I planned! But slowly but surely I am working on a routine and by the end of the year I will probably just start to enjoy not having an actual shower!

I do not have the privelege of having warm water or gas at my convenience, so I have to switch the hot water/gas on everytime I use it. The hot water turns on almost automatically, but have definitely forgotten to turn the switch on already, so hopefully I will remember from now on! And for the gas, it definitely would not be a good thing if I left it on, pray that I will remember! (hahahah)

So Ko girl now!

Just made the big move across the great blue to the beautiful country of South Korea. South Korea has only 1 percent of the land area of the US but has one-sixth as many people. (hence there are apartment buildings everywhere). My first observation was that I couldn't believe how many people there are, everywhere, crammed in the tiniest of places. But I am learning to enjoy these differences! I first arrived and couldn't understand anybody or read any of the signs (for the first time in my life I had to LOOK for the English signs). It was quite a shock, but now I am used to not being able to talk to anybody or read any of the signs. Before leaving the States, a lot of people told me different things to look for or to do, which I will will definitely take into consideration while being here for a year. However, one person told me to notice how many crosses are on top of buildings, and at night time they are lit up red. I was told that South Korea is predominantly Christian, but I do not know if every cross lit up represents a Christian church. But after noticing this, I am very excited that I am constantly reminded of Who I serve! I am excited to experience all the other things that people have told me about! And am excited for this next year!