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!