Lindsey's Co-teacher and Classroom

This is Lindsey's Co-Teacher and friend, Oh, Heejeon. She is awesome.

Guess what game we played?

Settlers.

I can't remember who won... it was proly either me or HeeJeon, because I know it wasn't Lindsey.

We had a great night. Cheesecake, Tea, a little music in the background, and a rousing game of Settlers.

This is Lindsey, and HeeJeon's, classroom. Lindsey's desk is the one on the left... the one by the window. Heejeon is the other one.

This is the classroom that Lindsey is always talking about. It has the worst design for a classroom. Large tables that are spaced throughout a really large classroom.

Lindsey will have to comment on this to add more details....

Noraebang

This is one of our favorite places to go, Dunsan. We just have to jump on the bus that stops outside our apartment an ride for about 20mins. I used to think that Public Transit was awful, but now I enjoy it. The busses here are not bad, the drivers could use some practice, but it is not that bad. Here is a pic on the way to Dunsan. This was one of the more crowded times of day.

Here is downtown Dunsan. This is where most Koreans (that we talk to) go to hang out. I'll try to put up more pictures of this later... cause the bright lights are kinda cool and this pic doesn't show them.

This is one fun thing about Korea. The Norae-bang. Basically, it is like Karaoke, except that it is just a small room of friends. There isn't anyone there to watch you so it is totally fun. This place, Smile, is actually what they call a "Multi-bang" meaning it is not just for singing. It has everything: Wii, Playstation 3, DVD, Norae (singing), PC, Internet, Board games, and coffee/icecream/snacks.

This is us with our friends Matt and Jen. I think this was Hey Jude. I was being ridiculous because you can when you are all alone in a little room with the music on. Matt rocked that one.

This was the guy who worked there. He was trying to show us how to plat Wii. Little did he know, that we already knew how to play and he was just talking to no one in Korean.

But they are really nice there so you can't complain. Just nod and smile and wait till he is finished.

Ha.

We went back a few times and took some of our Korean friends. It was fun, to hang out more outside of School and to get to sing and play Wii with them. Heejeon, Lindsey's co-teacher, is a big fan on the movie "Once" (as are we) and so we sang pretty much the whole soundtrack together.

So that is Noraebang. Any questions?

Pumpkin Carving and Domestic Living

Ok, so it all started when one of my Co-teachers (Luke's) asked, "Do you carve pumpkins on Halloween?" I said, "Well... yeah. Yeah we do." She then went on to say that someone from our office (whom I still don't know) wanted to buy one for me so that we could have our 'Halloween tradition'. The next day a really nice looking pumpkin arrived on my desk.

So, on Halloween we decided to crack it open and see what we could do. Our plans to go to Everland (Korea's version of Disneyland) had fallen through at the last minute because of swine flu and all of our friends had already made other plans. So, we decided to make a night out of it.

As we were carving we decided to try to be awesome and make, not only pumpkin seeds, but Pumpkin Spice bread. Both of which are un-heard of in Korea.

Lindsey started with the top and cut a perfect hole. Then she decided that it was too hard and said that I should do the rest. (typical... ^-^)

So after we scooped out the nastiness from the I began on the face. We went for the toothed look this year. A classic.

Our pumpkin had this little spot on it that turned out to be a perfect little upper lip mole for out pumpkin. His name was 'Jack-O' (original I know).

So the eyes, nose and mouth turned into the key ingredient for our dessert...

Pumpkin Spice Bread

These are our creations that night.

In Lindsey's hand you see a small portion of our Baked and lightly salted Pumpkin Seeds.

Directly below that we have the PS Bread.

And to the right we have 'Jack-O.' (ok... we didn't give it the name Jack-O, I just wanted to give it a little bit of personality... because it DID have personality. It spent the next week and a half being poked at by hundreds of Korean kids during Lindsey's classes.)

Here are some of the seeds... ready for salt and some oven time.

This is a little better shot, but we aren't in it so... sorry. Linds says everyone hates shots like this.

OH!!!! My favorite part! We had some leftover pumpkin and so I made some pumpkin pancakes to start our next morning right. They tasted pretty good if I can say so myself.

Ok... this has nothing to do with Halloween or Pumpkins, but it was awesome.

This is one thing that Korea did great. Ice-cream on waffles decorated with fruit, nuts and chocolate syrup. This whole package was about 8 USD. That is three waffles, three scoops of ice-cream, and two cups of coffee. A perfect way to wait for the bus. :)

Chuseok / Zooland

Okay, Okay, Okay...

This is for everyone who is bugging us for pictures. I told you we are terrible.

This is our trip to ZooLand. It was pretty fun. They are crazy here. All the animals are sooooo close to you. We were like 12 inches from a Lion the size of Asland on a little Safari tour they did. And this wasn't the "Jungle Adventure" type thing. Real Animals.

Enjoy.

This is a Korean Pear. It is nothing like the pears back home. Brings a whole to meaning to the term 'She was a pear-shaped woman.'

Also the apples are huge this time of year. Must be some kind of Korean thing. They like thier fruit big.

Revel Day

today was a "revel day". i realize that that is not in any way correct english and that we should probably speak correct english because we are english teachers-but the point is today is a day we should revel in.

i'm learning that living abroad has it's extreme ups and downs. especially in the beginning when you don't speak the language, you spend a lot of time in total confusion- and, naturally, this can be tiresome and annoying.

but, today, was really fun.

today was Chusak. korean thanksgiving day- one of the bigger holidays of the year. so, we were invited to one of Luke's co-workers house's for breakfast. this co-worker actually doesn't speak any english, but her son does- so we got invited. to be honest- i was really excited to be invited somewhere for Chusak, but we had already accepted a Chusak invitation for Sunday, when we got invited to Saturday breakfast- so i was dreading it a little. when you spend 8 hours a day during the week confused- why would i willingly want to be confused over the weekend as well?

but, we went and had a great time. her son was really nice and spoke really good english. the dad had practiced and memorized some english phrases and was so cute about saying them. breakfast was amazing. i know, right now you're thinking "hmm, they probably had pancakes, bacon, eggs, maybe some cinnamon rolls..." Ha! no. We had kimchi and rice! What's a korean meal if kimchi and rice are not served? Of course, there was more than that- really good beef, noodles, cooked fish (skin, bones, and eyes all still present) and about a billion other korean side dishes. it's still weird to me to eat dinner foods at 9:30 in the morning, but it was really good. luke and i mostly eat korean cafeteria food- we are just realizing that this might not be greatest demonstration of quality korean food.

anyway, the family was really nice. they were Christians so they do Chusak a little differently. Chusak is a holiday to thank your ancestors. koreans normally make a ton of food and put it before their ancestors and bow to them. but, christians don't bow- instead they thank God for their ancestors. when we left they gave us a really nice plant, tons of fruit (including korean pears, which look absolutely nothing like the pear i grew up on- instead it's shaped like an apple, but the size of a melon...and it's yellow, not green), and told us to come back again. we had a lot of fun and left feeling really welcomed.

when we got home, we decided to try out our new badminton set (koreans adore badminton). the other day we went hiking on a nearby mountain and found badminton courts nestled in the mountain. so we hiked on over thinking how great we were going to be at this new sport. well to my surprise we suck at badminton. we hit the birdie around for awhile/did a lot of walking to fetch the birdie every time we missed it. meanwhile, the court next to us was doing a great of exhibiting how bad we really were. eventually, we sat down- then, one of the guys (there was a group of 4 or 5 older men- maybe in their 50's) came on up to our court and started playing with Luke. the truth is, they saw how pathetic we were and wanted to teach us how to play. pretty soon the other guys were calling me down to their court to teach me too. we spent awhile learning and then we played doubles (luke and i on opposite teams). my team won. ha.

it was seriously SO fun. we got to hang out with some random koreans, and even use some of the language we've been learning. oh, and we are about 10x better than we were when we started.

have we mentioned how nice koreans are? they seriously are the nicest people! all of them!

we did some other stuff today too- but i think the best part was all that. hanging out with koreans and making friends- despite the language barrier. also, it really gives us confidence when we talk to koreans and are actually able to talk (even if it's only a little).

so, when you have a day like this- you gotta revel in it.

p.s. sadly, our camera (that we just bought) was out of battery for this revel day. but, sometime we will try to take picture of the awesome badminton court.

Our friends

Okay. So, we want you to meet a few of our friends. You met the Callaways, kinda, last post. But, I want you to see who we are hanging out with over here... They are awesome by the way. (and guys if you are reading this.... none of it is fake.)

As you saw in our last post, orientation was a blast. We had a great time and it was the perfect way to start off our time here in Korea. While we where there we got to know a bunch of people that are also teaching in Daejeon. We met two young married couples in particular that we love. We thought we had fun at orientation, but getting to know these guys outside of the "college-life-like" scene has been amazing. We have been able to hang out with them individually and all together. We are all Christians, young, married, internationally minded, and wanting to be like Jesus and not the 'church.' Oh, and we all teach english to kids who don't understand anything we say (which makes for some funny conversations.)

Anyway, let's meet them.

The Mullen Family

So, since you have already seen the callaways in our last post, I'll start with the Mullen Family. This first one is Matt, me and Linds at EXPO park. (Jenn was the photographer). Without too much detail, Expo park was made for the '93 international science expo. There is a lot of cool stuff, but most of it was outdated, still great 'spacey' architecture and a fun day. Matt and Jenn are from Wyoming and are super cool people with a lot of great stories. It is crazy to see some of the pictures that they have, they love to hike, camp, fish, hunt, raft, and pretty much anything outdoors from what I can tell. Matt was an art major in college... we have yet to see his portfolio, but if it is anything like the rest of his life I'm sure I will be in awe.

This second photo is Jenn. Like I said, she had the camera most, so this is the solo shot of her. I love this picture cause it shows a lot about her fun personality. They both are the type of people who are going to have fun, no matter what the situation. (We have a lot to learn from them). Ha. I have to comment about the... sheep/cow??? that she is riding. They are part of the 'outdated' expo stuff. 1000 won for a ride around the big courtyard. They have an assortment of animals you can chose from... as you see in the back, I'm checking out a giraffe and thinking about you Mom. ....Jenn is a 'jane of all trades' (including baking) and a coffee connoisseur.

The Callaway Family

The Callaways are so cool. They are the people that you try to hang out with to tell everyone else that you are 'in.' Although they would never see themselves as that. Kolt and Holly are from Oregon/California. Long story short, they went to College at APU and met there. They have so many similar things in their story as Linds and I. It was crazy our first conversations with them, it was pretty much like we should have known each other before. We even know some of the same people. They love to do international 'love' work. Kolt has some really interesting stories about working with an org who does work with Human trafficking women and helps them start new. Pretty heavy stuff. Anyway, we share many interests and passions

with them.

This first picture is from orientation of Lindsey and Holly. I know that Linds is pretty stoked to have Holly in her life. Holly has an honest quality about her that is hard to find. I think that is why linds loves to talk with her so much. Anyway, this picture was a orientation (no they don't dress the same all the time), from our field trip day. This is some nice Traditional Korean art... aka creepy smile stick.

This other picture is of me, Linds, and Kolt. Well, all of us were there but we are the ones in this pic, so, yeah. This was from the night we all toured around to see each other's apartments. We stopped at a place by our apartment to eat some Korean food. It was awesome... You know it will be a good time when you have to remove your shoes, and sit on the floor to eat. This is a Korean type meal. Everyone sits on the floor, no shoes, and eats a meal out of a common tray. In this case, they cook the food right there so, it is even cooler. This was so much fun and pretty cheap too!

So, I'll finish it off with some more pics. Most of them are Expo park, but yeah... enjoy.

EXPO Park

Those are some big arms...

Art Museum

So, this is outside the Art Museum. Pretty sweet and funny art stuff. Ha. Good times.

Love you all so much!

Luke and Lindsey

Epik Orientation / First week in Korea

An young haseyo, (hello)

Ok, so we are finally updating you and filling you in on our new lives here in Korea. We want to start at the beginning with our first week in Korea. As you know, we came to Korea to teach english, as you also may know, we were not teachers before. - ha - But, as English teachers with our program, EPIK, we were sent to a college campus for 10 days to learn everything we could possibly cram in about Teaching and Korea. Things like classroom management, Lesson planning, task-based learning, Prezi (my favorite), the Korean school system, Korean culture, Korean History, and just about anything else you could think of!

I want to share a few photos to help you take part in our adventure. So, let's do this.

Ok, our 10 day training, lovingly called "Orientation," took place at Jeon-ju University. It is a beautiful campus and we had a great time getting to know this area. The slogan of the University is classic: 'The Place for Superstars." This is, as we have begun to realize, a common Korean trend. Stealing old phrases from english and plastering them everywhere. A lot of

commercials/ads, songs, businesses, people, and yes... universities use cheesy English phrases. It is comical. We just laugh and thank God that we can read something without a Korean-english dictionary.

Ok, so as I said before, we don't have a reliable camera, so there are some shots of us (borrowed from our friends - thanks guys) but not many. So use your imagination a little.

Here is a picture of the dorm that we stayed in on campus for Orientation. Like I said, beautiful campus. We even got to watch some famous Korean movies on the rooftops of one of the buildings. A kind of open air theatre with subtitles in English. We actually loved the movies and are looking forward to getting a DVD player so we can't rent more Korean movies.

During our time at orientation we also got to visit a traditional and historical town Jeon-Ju

Traditional Village. We got to see a lot of cool things and learn a lot about Korean history. I think we went to 3-4 museum type places that was rich with tradition and history. Really interesting stuff.

Jeon Ju is famous for their Bibimbap. Bibimbap is mixed vegetables, with chili sauce, sesame seed oil and some ground beef, all on top of rice. It is usually served cold, as a refreshing lunchtime meal. Korea is famous for it's communal eating. Most meals are shared. Something my family has been doing for years... except that this is a whole new level.

Anyway, I love Bibimbap. This is how you make it for a group of 600 people. Stir it in a huge pot with wooden spoons that look like Ores for a boat.

This was one of the museums that we saw. It has some really cool architecture. One of those things that you have to see in person. But, a picture does help. We were in that group somewhere...

This is at a Buddhist Temple near the traditional village. This was a unique experience. It is crazy to see how their culture has been so much effected by religions. In this picture we are with our friends Colt and Holly. They are from Oregon, but kinda from California too. They both went to APU which is really close to both BIOLA and CBU. One of the other major Christian Universities in So Cal. They are super cool and share a lot of interests... including Settlers of Catan.

Anyway, that is it for now. I need sleep. But, we will be sharing about some other things sometime this week so stay posted.

We love you all and miss you greatly.

Luke and Lindsey

Pictures of Hawaii

Aloha/Anyoung haseyo/Hello,

Here are the pictures that Lindsey promised in the last blog. She gave a pretty good run down about Kauai. But, pictures are worth a thousand words, so I'm apparently contributing about 11,000+ words...

This first picture is of me and my beautiful bride on the beach in Kauai. We went to the beach a lot, but rarely brought our camera. (We have the worst camera on the planet so we had to borrow from my parents... yes that is one reason why we don't have too many pictures of Korea. We have to barter and trade pics with our friends here. They actually bring thier cameras places...).

Here is a quick glimpse into a very fun and kinda difficult (for me) game that Lindsey designed for the ::i'mPASSIONED:: missions small group.

So fun. We had to role play these 3 completely conflicting cultures and try to engage each other.

We had a nice little get away in the middle of our time in Kauai. We stayed at the Aloha Beach Resort. They have some really cheap rates for a pretty nice room. It was nice to spend some time alone with my bride.

I know these are all out of order, but i don't really feel like switching them around... it is late.

This is Lindsey packing for our trip home/ South Korea. It was an exhilarating day.

This is lindsey in the rain!!! It was such a beautiful day.

We got to go hiking to Hanakapi'i... this is most likely our favorite hike in the world (so far).

There is Ke'e in the background.

I don't think I need a comment. Except... You should have been there.

Cool huh??

Hanakapi'i Falls. It is huge... we are about 100 yds away when we took the pic. We literally couldn't get any closer for a full waterfall shot. It was awesome.

Well.... to sum it all up... We had a lot of fun and got to enjoy my family. Our internships were amazing and the people at CCK were/are so warm and loving to us.

We are excited as we look to the future to see what God wants to do, and see how we can join with Him.

Love you guys!

Luke and Lindsey