Sapshido!

Last week Riley and I participated in a mission trip to one of the small islands off the west coast of South Korea called Sapshido.  The trip was part of a larger mission that had a medical team, a hair salon, and a maintenance team.  We were part of the English ministry group that had an English Camp/Vacation Bible School.  It was only a three day mission trip, with the last day saved to explore the island.  Riley was in charge of the music and I was in charge of crafts.  We also had a English learning session.  Preparing for the trip was interesting due to the amount of "This little light of mine" being sung.  As for crafts, we were doing Noah's arc and the tower of Babel.  Noah was easy, we just made rainbows and chickens (see picture), but what can you do with the tower of Babel?  I thought we could do gumdrop and toothpick towers, but they don't have gumdrops in Korea.  So, we did marshmallows!   More on this later.

We left early in the morning and took a ferry to the island.  The ferry was pretty much the same as the ones in the Outer Banks, just more crowded.  Most people did not take their car.  The seagulls still followed the boat, and some were very good at catching shrimp fries (common Korean snack) in mid-air.

Once we got to Sapshido, we piled in the back of a very hot truck and rode across the island to the main town (it took about 15 mins).  It was almost like being on the mainland, there were rice fields and mountains.  The only difference was the sudden appearance of a beach if you looked in some directions.

Island life!

We ate a fishy lunch, then headed over to the local Elementary School to start our VBS.  This was a very nice tiny school.  There were only 24 kids in the whole school, and most of them were in our VBS as well.  The first day went alright.  One of the groups was a little sleepy, but they did good with crafts.  I now appreciate what my friends who teach have to deal with.  Preschoolers are really well behaved for some reason.

Some of the kids had never really seen foreigners before, at least not in person.  They didn't understand why we couldn't speak with them.  They seemed to have a good time, though.  They really liked singing "Making Melodies in My Heart."

Chickens and rainbows!

Coast of Sapshido (can you see China? Its past the islands.)

After we got back and had dinner (by the way, the church kitchen ladies came with us and cooked.  The fed us so full that I think I gained weight on the trip.  Kitchen ladies everywhere have the same goal, feed everyone until they can't move.)  Then we went to the beach to watch the sunset.  It was really pretty, none of my pictures did it justice, so I just included a picture of the beach.  The water was warm and there were cliffs as well as beaches.  It sort of reminded me of Maine, but with more beaches.

Then we got back, had some debriefing, and went to sleep.  The next morning was really nice.  All the farmers started work early before the heat set in.  We had a Korean breakfast (kimchi, rice, beef and vegetable soup, eggplant stuff) then went to the school to get started.  The second day was much nicer, I think the kids were more awake.  We found out the marshmallows were foreign to even the teachers on the island.  They had read about them, but never had any.  I just wish we could have made smores (side note, Korea does not have graham crackers).  Marshmallow towers do work, they just don't last very long.  This actually fit the tower of Babel story really well since they never finished their tower either.

After the main sessions we had recreation outside, i.e. GIANT WATER FIGHT!  Everyone got water guns and had fun just getting people wet, but then some of the boys figured out it was easier just to fill up a bucket of water and dump it on people.  Specifically the teachers.  It felt really good actually, it was really hot.

Side Story: Riley was unable to participate in the water fight due to falling on cement the day before and scraping up his leg.  One of the most entertaining parts of the trip was watching the majority of the medical team grouped around Riley's knee watching one of the doctors bandage it up and giving advice.  So instead of water, he played with bubbles.

After the water fight we went back and ate lunch (once again delicious) and get ready to paint a room.  I'm not sure what this building was used for, but the church had a large room with a small kitchen attached to it.  We just cleaned and painted the kitchen part.  Lots of scraping, lots of primer (walls here are mostly cement), then lots of paint.  It didn't take too long.  The inner door was filthy, so I started wiping some of the dirt off and it was a beautiful traditional Korean door with solid wood in a grid.  If someone just washed it and put some stain on it, it would have looked amazing.  We didn't have time to do much but just wipe the door off.  The room looked a lot better at least.

Then another delicious supper and off to bed.  One of our group got up for the 3:00am Korea vs Brazil soccer match, but most of us just watched some Greco-roman wrestling and went to bed.
In the morning we had "Western breakfast."  It ended up being potato salad sandwiches.  We knew they were trying, and it was better than kimchi, so we ate them without complaint.  Then we headed to the beach!  The tide was out when we got there, and there was a giant expanse of crabs!  Tiny crabs that hid when you walked by, but popped up again if you didn't move.  I also caught some hermit crabs, and investigated some type of jellyfish-like creature I still can't figure out.  Most of my time was spent watching the tiny crabs feed on sand.  Then people would come over to see what I was staring at and the crabs would all disappear and I would look a little crazy.

After the beach was time to go.  We had to finish off the rest of the potato salad sandwiches so they wouldn't spoil (they were much better in the afternoon), and then we took the ferry back and ate another meal of various species of seafood (crab, shrimp, whelk, clam, fish, and unknown). 

It was a great trip, we experienced new areas, foods, and people, and hopefully there are some preschoolers who now know the word rainbow!

Olympics

As you well know, its time for the Olympics!  This time, I actually have my own television to watch them on!  I love Olympic season because there is always something good on tv.

However, in Korea, you don't watch the sports Americans dominate in, you watch the ones Koreans dominate in.  These are very different sports!  There is only a little bit of gymnastics, diving, or track and field.  Instead, the tv is full of Judo matches, fencing, archery, taekwando, and handball.  There is sometimes swimming, and I've seen a little beach volleyball, but there is no pommel horse in sight!  There was badmitten, but they've stopped replaying the women's team for some reason...

Inevitable Job

"You are an American English speaker?  Would you like a job?"

"We want to speak English with an American accent."

"Will you edit my paper?  I'll give you 50,000₩..."

As Americans living in Korea, we hear these sorts of things all the time.  Riley and I have been offered countless jobs teaching and tutoring English to all ages and situations.  I don't think people believe us when we tell them that we have no teaching experience and you probably don't want us to try to teach anyone English.  Most don't understand that just because we speak English, it doesn't mean we know how to teach it.  I do not remember all the words for grammar (like progressive tense?), or how to teach phonics (cat=kat).  I didn't even know what an idiom was until I came to Korea and was asked about them.  I suppose since the majority of foreigners here are English teachers, they assume all foreigners are born to teach English automatically.

The American accent thing is really interesting.  We have many friends from Europe and Africa who speak English fluently, either bilingual or as their only language, but they have a much harder time getting a job here.  For some reason, Koreans like the American accent better.  We have a Korean friend who learned British English, and she sounds really really neat when she speaks English.  However, she doesn't like her accent because its not American.

Even though we have gotten out of teaching English jobs, there is one job we cannot escape, editing.  I have edited thesis, brochures, speeches, presentations, applications, resumes, and essays many times since coming to Korea.  Sometimes they are for friends, but it seems more often they are friends of a friend.  These are not just Koreans either.  I've edited English writing of friends from China and the UAE as well.  The topics have ranged from Chinese-US trade relations, to lotus species, to reactor systems.  At least in editing writing I don't have to worry about explaining why a sentence sounds funny.

So, if you are a native English speaker in a foreign land, expect to have someone say "will you please check my grammar?"

Cousin?

I have discovered that when I mention a relative such as aunt, uncle, or cousin, people want to know exactly how they are related to me.  Then I have to try to remember how second cousins and removals work and describe the relationship.  This is because in Korean, every type of relative has their own name.  Your mom's sisters are a different name than your dad's sisters.  "Cousin" is not even a word they can really understand since your aunt and uncle's children have a different name depending on you mom or dad's side.  I don't know how second cousins work, but I suspect they have their own name too.  I have not memorized these at all since none of my family is Korean and I just use to opportunity to describe my family.
Another confusing aspect of naming relatives specifically comes in siblings.  Since I am a girl, I would call Laura (my older sister) Unni.  If Laura was Riley's older sister, she would be Nuna.  To Ruth, Riley (her older brother) would be Oppa, and if she were a boy, he would be Hyung.   Younger siblings are less important, so they are usually just called by name. 
If you have a friend more than a couple years older than you, you are supposed to call them by these names as well, not by their actual name. 
This gets very confusing.  I miss just calling everyone "kinfolk."

Rainy Season

A couple weeks ago I was woken up at 5 in the morning to FLASH! BOOM BOOM RUMBLE RUMBLE...  Welcome to the rainy season!  Even though that has been the only loud thunderstorm thus far, it rains almost every day.  Its one of those steady rains that is less than a downpour and more than a drizzle. 

The good thing about all the rain is, its almost always cloudy so the sun doesn't come out a lot to make the world into a sauna.  There are breaks in the rain.  Yesterday we woke up to a steady rain, but by the time we were ready to go to work it had stopped.  Then, it rained again that evening, stopped for a while, and started raining again this morning. 

It also doesn't help there is a typhoon on the way here weaving its way around Japan to hit only Korea.  Daejeon is in the middle of the country, so we will just get more rain and probably won't even notice its a typhoon.

The rivers are very happy and some of our rock bridges have disappeared.  But even then, its not as bad as we were expecting, we just take our raincoats with us where ever we go.  Raincoats are not the fashion here.  People only use umbrellas, they even bike with them.  Koreans get very concerned when we start to walk in the rain with only raincoats.  I think historically the rain may have carried bad things in it during the war, and this idea carried on in the minds of the adjumas and adjushies.  The rain is fine now, but raincoats are still "American style" rain protection!

Middle of Nowhere

Last Saturday I got the opportunity to join a group from my church and travel to a corner of Korea to help fix a floor.  Our church had a mission training course that Riley and I attended for the past 11 weeks.  Also in attendance was the pastor of this small country church.  When our church found out he needed help getting a new floor down, they organized a group to go fix it.
We drove 2 hours, 1 down the highway and the other weaving around mountains.  As we got closer, we went up and around a mountain, and a beautiful valley appeared.  It was a drizzly day and everything was green, it looked like a cloud rain forest with rice fields. 
We tackled the floor by putting plastic squares down to raise the floor so the damp wouldn't get in.  Then we layered it with plastic and vinyl and put all the furniture back.
They fed us delicious home cooked Korean food for lunch that had lots of fresh vegetables like zucchini (know here as "green pumpkin"). 

Misty mountains over rice paddies.

Just being in the middle of nowhere was so beautiful.  I got to catch little green frogs too!  I don't know how to get back there, but if I had a choice that was where I would live in Korea.

Kam Ja Tang

Kam ja tang

I have tried a new Korean dish lately and thought I would share.  Its called "Kam ja tang" with "kam ja" meaning potato.   Its main feature is the meaty beef backbone that is boiled with potatoes, mushrooms, dumplings, and greens (I think these were radish tops).  It has a soup in the bottom that is delicious, but the dish can't be called a soup since the food sticks up over the top of the bowl.  You get a mixture of wasabi and soy sauce to dip the meat in.  I like the potatoes dipped in it too. 
Yay for Korea to create a delicious dish out of leftover parts of meat!