A Typhoon Changes Everything

Hey everyone, how's it going?

This weekend I was supposed to go to Wando (a city waaaaaaaaaaaay down south with pretty awesome beaches) to visit a friend of mine. However, there's typhoon Sanba making it's way onto our pretty peninsula, so it was too close to tell whether (no pun intended) I'd be able to visit my friend or not.

The calm before the storm

This is what my room looks like, for those who haven't seen it yet

Nevertheless, I showed up at the bus terminal (fashionably late, as always) and bought my ticket. I let my friend know that I was going to be a little late, and he informed me that the weather had taken a turn for the worse. I mean, raining cats and dogs worse. Normally, I can handle rain, but when it pours here, it's a deluge... I figured it wouldn't be fun for either of us to truck around in such weather, so I cancelled the trip and returned the ticket. In retrospect, my friend is completely ill this weekend, so it was for the best that I didn't go visit.

Instead, I went to the Gwangju National Museum. I didn't have high hopes to be honest, because I'm realizing that Gwangju is kind of a backwater town...Nevertheless, I figured now would be as good a time as any to visit one of Gwangju's "must-see" attractions.

It's a bit of a hike to the main building

Some people stop for pictures

The main exhibition hall

Now, when I got into the deserted main exhibition hall, I was greeted with a "Where are you from?" by a well-meaning older gentleman tour guide. I explained that I was from Canada as I was walking over to pick up a map of the building. Unfortunately there were no English maps left, so the man went and got one from the desk. He then proceeded to invite himself to give me a whole tour of the building! This tour consisted of him stopping at every. single. artifact. in the museum and reading e.v.e.r.y. single title written in English (only the titles were written in English). In my opinion, once you've seen one clay pot, you've seen 'em all. By the end of the first floor I was completely worn out and exhausted from our phonics examination that I was praying he would leave me alone. No luck. There was a 2nd floor.

Early bronze (or stone?) age clay pots excavated near Gwangju.
Too bad they didn't learn about efficient pot design until way later;
don't you think these would fall over? Look how narrow the base is.

A Korean shaman

Okay, cat memes have been around for centuries

Buddha statue after buddha statue, painting of a fish after painting of a fish, the tour continued.

Finally, when the tour ended, I told him I had to leave, and I left the building.

And went to the children's museum next door! Waaay smaller but lots more colourful and entertaining. You could make your own clay pot, ring an ancient bell, and play with the exhibits.

Don't steal those dino eggs!

First contact. Meeting a paleolithic Korean.

Afterwards, I came back to the university, met up with Irene and had dinner with Annie and her co-scholar. Now, the typhoon is picking up speed. It's a lot windier and the rain is falling heavier. All elementary, middle, and secondary schools in the province are closed tomorrow. Lucky kids!

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Notes:
- I gotta say, I'm getting very annoyed when people start off a conversation by asking, "Where are you from?" Not even a hello, how are you, what's your name, or nice to meet you.....

- There's someone in my agricultural marketing class who keeps saying "Hello David" to me whenever I walk by or happen to see him around the university. This has become rather irksome, because he's not even introduced himself to me. If you were trying to be friendly to someone, wouldn't you want to at least introduce yourself? I don't even know this guy's name, but somehow he got hold of mine and won't let go.

Eating Etiquette

One thing I've noticed about Koreans is that they all like to make smacking sounds with their mouth when they eat. I think some people would get annoyed with it, but I personally find it adorable.

Also, the phrase "frankly speaking" seems to be in vogue here. Any thoughts on this? I thought, "to be honest" or "honestly speaking" was more popular these days.

I was a judge

So a week ago I was asked to be a judge in my school's English speaking contest. That's fine with me. I was told that I might only have to teach one class the day of the contest, since I would be judging for most of my hours that day.

Yesterday I found out that my classes were not cancelled at all, but that my Thursday co-teacher (a timid young lady) would be teaching them for me! Yikes! She's more than capable, but I wouldn't want to solo teach these classes....

Anyway, I prepared all the materials for her ahead of time and made sure there were lots of activities in case time went by slowly. I planned to meet her ahead of class time so that I could go over the lesson plan and tell her how to teach for the day. She was unfortunately late though and so I didn't get a chance to inform her of what materials to use :P I felt so bad for her...

Anyway, the speech contest is actually a big deal. Why? Because my school will select its 8 best English speakers and send them to an all-Damyang speech contest. The winners from there will go to CHINA for a final speech contest. Last year my elementary school sent 5 students and this year the English teachers are under pressure to get 6 students sent to China.

After the speech contest was over, I went back to the English room. There was still time for my grade 5 class, so I took over for my co-teacher. I hope she wasn't too frazzled :(

Apparently only one student showed up for my grade 4 class. All the others knew I was going to be absent from class, but this girl wanted to see me because she likes me as a teacher. So happy :)

PS - Apparently there's another typhoon coming to Korea this weekend. It'll probably make landfall Sunday night. We'll see how my "visit the beach" plans turn out for this weekend.

Meeting a police officer, disobedient children, and health checkups

Hi everyone! Here's another update from the 35th parallel. 

First of all, we were given an insiders tip about a restaurant district incredibly close to the school. What should we find there but a MEXICAN FOOD RESTAURANT!!! This is so incredibly rare and special... Irene almost cried haha. It's cheap too!

Dos Mas burritos with Irene and CheongHyeon

 In other news, welcome to my school. This is what it looks like when everybody has gone home for the day. Students have their own homerooms and sometimes different teachers visit the classroom for a special class (i.e. the English teacher might visit a grade 3 homeroom class instead of the grade 3 class coming to the English classroom). Everyone wears slippers at my school (I bring my own because they don't have enough guest pairs) because shoes "wreck the floors". I think this has to do with how Korean buildings are usually heated by hot water pipes under the floors, but I think the practice of indoor shoes vs. outdoor shoes is based a lot on tradition. Plus, Korea is a dirty place, so I suppose it would be disrespectful to bring all that crap into your building on your shoes.

The 1st floor hallway. There are approximately zero
swinging doors in this school.

These students are competing to be voted class president

Welcome to Damyang. Emphasis: bamboo

 In other news, I was apparently supposed to have a medical checkup quite soon after I moved into the dorms (that will make it 3 medical checks thus far). I promise I don't have AIDS! I was supposed to go with my roommate last week, but I was busy at elementary school, so I missed it. This is the consequence:

Shame on all you people for missing your medical checks!

 Yes that's right, that paper lists the names, room numbers and ID numbers of all the students who missed their medical checkups (my name is on there too. You can tell it's a foreigner because it's more than 3 characters long). If they don't get them done by this Friday, they get kicked out of the dormitory. Yikes!

In other news, my students drew pictures of me today. At least they didn't have devil tails or pitchforks haha. I'll take what I can get.

Can you guess which gender drew these?

News from home. My dad won a contest put on by my city's newspaper. People were to submit photos of their gardens and environmentally friendly ways of outdoor living, and my dad won a prize! Rightly so, David Suzuki should take note.

Congratulations!

Finally, something of interest to those from Abbotsford. Berries here are expensive! Plus they're rare. So far, I've only seen these blueberries. That means no raspberries, Saskatoon berries, lingonberries, acai berries, cloud berries, elderberries, etc.

These berries cost 11,800 won (about $11 CAD).
They were actually on sale at the time of print for 8,000won.

PS - I forgot to mention! The Gwangju Biennale (shouldn't it be spelled "Bienniale?") is going on right now, which means the art museums are full and there's concerts around the city. Last weekend I went to one of these concerts with several other teachers. It was "world music" and kind of boring (but one lady was singing in Swedish! Didn't expect that!), plus it was dark and I was tired, so I decided to leave.

I left the group and no later than 2 seconds after I turned around, a young Korean man was asking me why I didn't want to stay at the concert. I wasn't really in the mood to practice English, but he wasn't going to let me get away. Turns out he is a plain clothes police officer! I apologized for not having my ARC yet, it was going to be delivered in a few days (police can ask you for that card at any time. Helps them control illegals), but he quickly assured me that's not why he was talking with me. He likes foreigners and wanted to make friends. He showed me his badge to prove that he was legit. He asked if I knew how to get back to where I was staying.

"Actually, do you know where I can catch the 83 bus?" I asked.

He replied that he didn't know, but if I was comfortable with the idea, he could drive me back to the dormitory. He told me that as a Korean police officer, he has a duty to be nice to foreigners and assist them when they need help. "Fine with me" I thought, and we were off. I bought a drink for him at a convenience store, since he was being so generous in taking me all the way back to the university. He told me that surprisingly enough, he's bad with directions and parked kind of far away. Whatever, I'm used to walking everywhere in Korea. Turns out he parked on the other side of a long, dark, narrow, poorly lit, overgrown, behind a building, dirt path. He realized what an awkward situation this looked like, but I reassured him that I saw his badge, so I know he's legit.

We walked, talked, found his car, and he took me back to my dormitory (which was actually quite fortunate because it started POURING). We've met for coffee since then; he's a real nice guy wanting foreign friends to practice English, and I'm wanting Korean friends. Deal!

My First Week at School

And what an eventful one! Let me give you some quick stories:

I'm on the bus on my way to my first day at school.

The first day I arrived, I met the principal and the other staff members at my elementary school. I was instructed by TaLK people to always greet everyone and say goodbye to them at the end of the day.

After a fun speech in Korean, my co-scholar and I were shown out of the principal's office to my classroom, where I would be meeting my students for the first time.

My classroom is pretty well equipped in my opinion. I have a smart board (I giant touch-screen TV), a few whiteboards, and some computers. As well, we have a really well-stocked library and lots of different resources like games (Bananagrams specifically, but I heard the students don't know how to play it yet), flip charts, giant dry-erase boards, and a few globes.

So I was told that I would be teaching grades 3, 4, and 5/6 during my stay in Korea, and that's exactly what I got. My first class is four grade 3 students, my second class is around ten to twenty grade 4 students and my last class is, so far, three grade 5 girls.

My first day was fun but very exhausting! My grade 3's are my bad class, they run around all over the place and beat each other up. One student doesn't like English, so she hides under a desk and plays with her cellphone during class.

My grade 4's are good students so far, they seem to like coming to class and seeing my strange, foreign looking face.

My grade 5 class is my favourite class. They're old enough to be "too cool for school" and sometimes they act like it, but I try to make that class as chill as possible, so we can just hang out and subliminally study English. I try to make it low pressure. Plus because they're older, they're capable of more intelligent, deep thought than my other students.

Currently, I teach Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays (the best schedule in the province in my opinion), and on Tuesdays and Wednesdays I teach with a Korean co-teacher named Seon-Ha. Thursdays I teach with another co-teacher named Eh-Ji. My co-teachers have been very helpful and I think we all work well together. This makes me happy because there are other TaLK teachers with lazy or unhelpful co-teachers.

Last week's topic was "About me", so I could get to know my students and find out what they like. Here's an example of some of my grade 4 students' work:

Draw yourself!

Don't worry, Ted doesn't need to see a counsellor. He was, however, seated at a table of other like-minded grade 4 boys. Needless to say, I have a few drawings like these ;)

Just for laughs, here's another example of a different teacher's student's work (I saw this on Facebook):

Grade 2's answers can be so mystifying...

Indeed, I'm excited for my job here. I like working with my students, and I hope they like learning from me. Upon reflection though, I don't think my job here is really as a teacher. I was hired to teach a little bit, but mostly to get these kids motivated and interested in learning English. They learn expressions and implicit grammar from their regular teachers (kids start learning English here in grade 3 by the way) and my job is to make them want to learn such things. Therefore, I get to have the most fun with them :) I'll take it.

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Now for some small stories:

- On Friday, I made arrangements to go observe another English teacher's class at my school. I wanted to see what a regular Korean class looks like, so they let me come and find out. Regular school classes here are fairly large in my opinion, maybe 25-30 students. The bad ones have to stand at the back sometimes for punishment, and the good ones are just adorable. I observed a grade 3 and grade 4 class, and saw some of my regular students. I was standing at the back during the lesson and some of the kids would turn around to sneak a peak at the foreigner ;) I gave them a thumbs up or a smile and got one back in return. The English teacher recognized the opportunity this presented.
"Please practice the dialogue with me" the English teacher asked her students. A few hands went up.
"Who wants to practice the dialogue with David teacher?" The teacher asked. Almost every hand went up. :)

- Later on Friday, I observed an English class with grade 5 students, by standing at the back and taking notes. At the break time, everyone got up and rushed around me, eager to ask questions. "Where are you from?" "What's your name?" "How old are you?" Surprisingly, a lot of them wanted to touch my nose, so I indulged them. Perhaps they've never seen a western schnoz like mine before... When I was sitting down later on, some students would touch my hairy arm and one student tried to smell me haha. I felt sorry for those around me, it was a really hot day and there's no deodorant or anti-perspirant that can hold a candle to a Korean summer.

- Because I was at my elementary school over lunch hour (normally my classes start some time after lunch), they invited me to eat at the school cafeteria. Let me tell you, this was probably the best thing that happened today. Now, here at my university, we have a school cafeteria, but it's pretty awful. The food is cheap and there's very little flavour besides chili. I suppose as a result of the cafeteria here, I had the impression that Korean food isn't very tasty and is somewhat incapable of being savoury. I'm happy to report to you that this is not the case! My elementary school cafeteria showed me that Korean food can be extremely delicious and full of flavour. It was definitely in the top 5 best meals I've had in Korea.

- After school was over, I was walking back to the bus stop to catch my bus back home to Gwangju. I noticed a few of my students were gathered around each other on the sidewalk. "What could be the matter?" I wondered. Then I saw all the blood. One of my students must have tripped or something and scraped his knee up real bad. He was holding his wounds with some wet naps (every Korean carries these on their person at. all. times.) and holding back the tears. I quickly walked down the road and found a grocery store and went inside to find bandages, but I couldn't locate them. One of my students was also in the store (it looked like her mother was working there) so I tried asking here where the bandaids were, but she didn't understand. However, after an amusing game of charades (you should try demonstrating what a bandaid is, it's hilarious) they found what I was looking for and I brought them back to my injured student, who was grateful and hobbled along his way. I told him to "be careful!" in Korean (chom shim eh!), but later on I found out I said "let's have lunch".... I think cho shim eh is more correct haha.

- This is unrelated to school. Recently, I was voluntold to be in a commercial for the Gwangju biennale in 2015 (or something like that). They excused me from university classes and sent me down (along with the other North American students at CNU (i.e. 2 people)) to get makeup'd and lip gloss'd and be on TV. If I ever see it on YouTube, I'll show the link here.

- Last week after I was finished teaching, I caught the bus back to Gwangju with Irene and her co-teacher. Since we were together, we decided to have dinner at McDonald's. While we were there, an old Korean man with fairly good English skills struck up a conversation with us (more specifically me). Apparently his daughter lives in New York and he has been there several times to visit, so he was very happy to meet more foreigners. He wanted me to get a Korean girlfriend while I was here. At that point, some other teachers I know from the TaLK program also came to McDonald's and came to chat with us (and by extension, the old man) for a few minutes. The man was getting ready to leave, so I took a photo with him and he gave us some yogurt and went on his way.

- What makes the preceding story even more interesting is that the next day I was eating at McDonald's again, on my way back from elementary school, and the same old man was there! Not only that, but more TaLK teachers came in (and I had to tell them that I don't eat at McDonald's every day, even though it looks like I do haha).

- Last night my roommate invited me to go have fried chicken with his friends in their dorm room. Fried chicken is actually quite delicious here... I was very happy :)

Thanks for reading! Sorry it's so long.

PS - I couldn't find a place to insert this photo, so here it comes. My friend took this photo (again, I saw it on Facebook)

Typical Korean commters

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Update:

- Yesterday my roommate and I were talking about Korean name meanings. My last name is Doerksen, and if you pronounce Korean-style like "Dok-shim" then it means "People who live alone" lol.
My first name is usually pronounced Daebidu but after talking with my roommate, I think I'll go with the Japanese pronunciation of Daebitto, because it means something like "big rain sword/blade". Who would have guessed.

International Kindness

Friday

I had some of my university classes today. One of them was cancelled but I must have missed the memo, since I showed up to an empty classroom.

After school, some friends of mine took me to a Uniqlo (Japanese clothing brand) store which had just opened up in the city. I don't know how widespread this is, but at this particular store, they sold pants extra long, and when you were in the fitting rooms, they would measure them for you and tailor them within the hour. For free!

Another interesting note about shopping in Korea (at least, at this Uniqlo). Since the store had just opened, they were having a few sales on things. Occasionally, one of the floor staff would yell out something in Korean, and immediately, all the other staff members would echo the same thing. I was curious so I asked my friend. He said they were saying something along the lines of, "This item is so cheap, you should buy lots of them!" or "This item won't be on sale for much longer!"

After shopping at Uniqlo, we went for samgyupsal (I think it's pork belly. You fry it at your table and wrap it in a lettuce leaf. It's delicious!) and they gave me a toast! They welcomed me to Korea and hoped I would have a good time here. Didn't expect such a welcome :)

My roommate went to his hometown today, to visit his mother (he's a really good son, he phones her like 2x a day). She's apparently pretty lonely since both her son and daughter are away at college, and because she is a widow. I showed my roommate where my house is on Google street view, and he was really impressed. Granted, it made me super homesick, because I hadn't seen a picture of my house in awhile.... Regardless, he showed me where he lived as well.

He zoomed in over the tiny town where he's from, and then moved the screen off into the mountains... and kept going.... basically, he's from a tiny mountain tribe in the middle of nowhere XD hahaha, I wouldn't have guessed that!

Saturday

I woke up with a massive head cold :( So I stayed inside all day and ate chicken soup ramen and orange juice, plus some Cold FX pills and Halls.

Sunday

I didn't know how well I would be in the morning, and evidently I needed rest, because I woke up too late to go to church. Nevertheless, I thought I would make the trek out there for next time. I went to the Gwangju World Cup Stadium, since it's very close the church I want to attend here, and walked around the venue.

After visiting the world cup stadium, I went to U-Square, which is the bus terminal for Gwangju city. They had a big movie theatre upstairs (4D for you movie buffs), so I'm hoping I will visit again soon :) Maybe when the Hobbit comes out.

Afterwards, my friend messaged me and asked me to come for coffee in the coffee shop near the dorm.

Here's a free aside: Coffee shops are all the rage in Korea. Coffee is a status symbol in Korea, so people want to make cool caffes for people to be seen drinking their cool caffe in (see what I did there?). In fact, a lot of coffee shops here are little family owned business endeavours. It's really quite interesting, but they all kind of blend together after awhile (especially because the decor seems to be similar).

Regardless, I hung out with him for awhile and then we went to the school's cafeteria to eat. Unfortunately, this cafeteria is one of the worst representations of Korean food ever... it's way more often miss than hit.

After dinner, I went to hang out/lesson plan with Irene and Courtney (fellow TaLK teachers) at... you guessed it! A coffee shop!

Turns out not everyone has such sweet living arrangements/friendly roommates like I do... so if you are the praying type, please pray for God to reach those who are mistreated while abroad, and those who feel excluded. It's neither fair, nor tolerable.

Monday

Today was my first day of real, live, university classes here at university. It was pretty good, I am really excited about my Agricultural Marketing class. Plus, as a bonus, my Teaching American and British Culture class was focused on Canada today! After our final class today, Irene and I went to eat lunch with Miyuki, a Japanese exchange student. We had tonkatsu today! (pork cutlet) It's one of my top 5 favourite Korean meals.... it was very enjoyable!

After school, I went to pick up my student ID card from Shannon and Natasha (international student coordinators here). They told me that I, along with Irene and Kayla, will be starring in a commercial for CNU. Since Irene, Kayla, and I are the only (!) North American students at CNU, we all get to be in the video.

This evening, I went to Damyang with my co-teacher, to locate our elementary school and figure out how to get there from the bus stop. It's a fairly nice school, but we didn't go inside today.

After our clandestine visit to the school, we went to find a nice place to eat in Damyang.

We totally found it!

In Damyang, they have a river that flows through town, but instead of Jochiwon where they let it rot and did nothing to make it livable, Damyang made cycling and walking paths along the river, plus they added natural looking water features to alter the flow (read: mini waterfalls) and to bring people closer or even into the water (read: stepping stones, ramps, steps that are big enough to sit on). In other words, it's a really awesome, livable space.


But more about the restaurant (I feel like all I write about is food....). It was this little guksu (handmade noodles) place along the street overlooking the river. They had platforms outside and you just sat down (that is, cross-legged) at a table and ordered. It was very peaceful.

Those were probably the best noodles I've had in Korea. I've had Korean ramyon (instant noodles) a few times, but that stuff is meant to survive nuclear winter, whereas guksu is meant to be eaten, so it's much easier for your body to digest.

Anyway, tomorrow is my first class, so I'm nervous, as is my co-teacher. Luckily, the clock never stops ticking, so if things go badly, there's always an end to every class! Maybe it's not good for a teacher to be saying such things....

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Miscellaneous cultural notes + experiences!

- There's an interesting relationship here between foreigners and Koreans (it seems all about race, not where you live). For example, sometimes I wonder why people come up to me and talk to me, or want to be my friend. I'm finding it hard to estimate whether they're interested in me and my personality or whether they are looking to practice their English skills. To be honest though, it's kind of a win-win situation. I can help them achieve their hidden goals of practicing English, and they can help me achieve my goals of building a network of friends here.

- Kids here are pretty cute (perhaps I won't say the same thing after tomorrow's class). There was a gaggle of girls giggling and gleefully laughing when I was walking around my elementary school. My co-teacher said they were peer-pressuring each other to say something to me lol ;)

- I ate dinner with someone the other day. Today, I was in a bit of a hurry and was focused on getting to the dorm and blew right past him! He even said hello to me, but I didn't realize who it was until I was long gone :( I'm going to have to find him and apologize.

- A fellow international student, from Indonesia, was late to Korean class this afternoon. Why? Because "[his] roommate is crazy!!" Apparently his roommate was drunk and danced around the room naked last night, keeping poor Calvin awake.

- Some people are either being polite or are actually genuinely astonished.... but I've gotten some comments on my good proficiency with chopsticks. Either way, I thought everyone in the lower mainland has had some experience with chopsticks before...

- This one is kind of a more depressing note: A lot of the friends (well, that is, only the guys so far) I've made here have similar goals. What are they? To become a CEO, to make lots of money, to become a high level manager, to make lots of money, to live in Gangnam (an affluent neighbourhood in Seoul), to make lots of money, etc. Either way, it just seems empty to me, and it makes me sad. Granted, I bet there's a lot of Canadian undergrads who would have the exact same goals.

- This one is kind of funny/embarrassing/strange. Every once in awhile, when I'm out and about here, I will see some 50-60+ year old white people walking around. Sometimes it'll be a couple, other times it'll be just a single person. Either way, I always wonder if they are tourists or English teachers, or whatever they may be doing in Korea. When I see older people together as a couple, I always feel an urge to ask them if they are okay, if they need help :P I never ask though, lest they say in response, "Whatever do you mean? We're fluent in Korean because we've been living here for 40 years! We're Korean citizens!" Or something similar haha. It's just such a weird experience.

POE Orientation: Deployment

So I realize I haven't updated in awhile; sorry about that! There have been so many things happening!

Here's a quick recap:

Wednesday

This was the big day! Our elementary schools were sending representatives to come pick us up and take us to where we would be living. I think most everyone in our group was nervous. These were people we have never met before. Would they be nice? Would they be mean? Would they protect us? Would they work against us?

On top of that, I think a lot of people were sad to leave the big group. Believe it or not, I feel that we've really bonded over these short few days together. We are the only family we have here in South Korea!

Stuart and I, a fellow lover of comedy

Nathan and I, he is placed in Boseong 

Leah, master of pop culture references, and I

Jacob and I

Torontonian Leah and I

Kirk, my roommate at SBC and Torontonian, and I

Megan, a neighbourly Seattleite, and I

These awesome folks are all Canadian! (Except Tom, front middle, he's British).
Winnie is photobombing in the background.

All the Damyang teachers. We're the best Damyang teachers there ever were!

Bianca and I

Steve and I

Winnie in boss/friend mode, and I

Keonna and I

Could somebody tell me what this is? I could see it from my dorm room window.

Everybody's got their own kimchi pots here. "Ancient Korean family recipe!"

Ali and I

Manny and I

Brandon and I

The opening ceremony started and we all filed in dramatically and took our places on the stage. They had a few opening words and then kickball-team-selected us to our schools. After the opening ceremony we all ate lunch with our new staff members/bosses. I ate with my vice-principal and it was fairly awkward. He didn’t speak much English and the cafeteria food wasn’t that great, so I was a little self-conscious about leaving food on my tray. Either way, once the lecture was over, my mentor teacher and my vice-principal talked with Shannon, the international student coordinator at CNU, the university I’ll be attending while in Korea. Of course, the entire conversation was in Korean, so I didn’t really catch any of it.

What I did catch however, was final glimpses and goodbyes to people as they were whisked off to places unknown, possibly to never be seen again (well, maybe so maybe not).

The next thing I knew, they put me and my luggage in a cab, and we were off to the immigration office here in Gwangju. Guess who we saw there? Lots of other TaLK scholars, who were also getting essential paperwork done J

After spending a little time at immigration, we were off to the university. Once there, we registered our fingerprints so that we could get into the cafeteria and into our dorm buildings. I was introduced to one of my “international buddies” here and he helped me set up my internet, and I met my roommate, Jungook again. Then, another person helped Irene and I get on an international student campus tour. Koreans are such lovely people; I absolutely love people watching here.

Afterwards, some more international buddies took us out for supper and we met up with Kayla (a previous generation TaLK scholar here in Gwangju)! We had the BEST meat I’ve had in Korea so far. I kept asking the name of the food, and they kept telling me, but I forgot it L Regardless, it was absolutely delicious! I ate as much as I could, because you never know when you’ll get such protein again here.

Finally, Kayla took Irene and me to Homeplus (similar to Superstore or Wal-Mart) so we bought some supplies for the week and bleach!

And then, a really interesting roommate story! It was 11pm, and I was thinking about going to bed or cleaning for a little bit. I got a phone call, and it was my roommate! “Hello?” He said. I replied. I heard some people laughing and carrying on the background. “Sorry, I’m drunk!” he said. I asked, “are you okay?” He gave the phone to one of his more sober friends. “Jungook wants you to come to _____ bar. It’s in ________. Do you know?” he asked me. “No, I don’t I have a class tomorrow morning, so I was planning to go to bed. Maybe some other time!”  I said.

And then I hung up the phone and cleaned for a few hours. Our bathroom was pretty bad when I got here, and I’ve been instructed to use bleach to get rid of the mould, so that’s exactly what I did. Let me tell you, it looks pretty awesome now J

Thursday

I got up and went to my class. My roommate must have come in some time during the night because he was still sleeping like a rock when I got back from class. After lunch he was up and about and apologized for the inconvenience of drunk dialing me last night. Not a problem, I thought it was kind of funny actually. Apparently though, when he gets drunk, he gets drunk enough to black out. That is not funny. We’ve talked about our lifestyle habits already though, and he said he wants to reign in excessive alcohol consumption, which is very commendable. “What time do you want to get up tomorrow?” He asked me. A little confused, I said “7:45.” “Okay! Let’s get up at that time!” he replied.

And that’s exactly what we did!

Now folks, let me give you a little aside here:

These past few days have been a bit of an emotional roller coaster. I was scared to leave my new family at orientation and I was nervous about life here at the college. I didn’t know how long it would take to make friends (usually it takes 3 months for me to make a fairly solid friendship) here, especially considering the language barrier. I was feeling lonely, so I prayed. I prayed a prayer of trust and petition. Knowing that God has directed my steps thus far, I know that He will continue to prepare the way for me. That includes relationships! However, I still petitioned Him for friends.

And He answered. 

I feel like I’ve made 10 good friends within only a few days here, and I can’t believe it.

Let me tell you: if He can do it for me, He can take care of you too! Stop trying to make things work by yourself, it's exhausting! Give Him your life's reigns, even though it's scary. It's well worth it.