Four Days 'til home!

The last couple of weeks have been the worst for me since I have been in Korea. I love my students so much, but dread going into work every day because I don't want to have to deal with my supervisors. It has seemed like everyday they have done something that has been belittling, demeaning or disrespectful. The thought that I have six months left there has torn me up.

I will fly home for my 8 day visit on Thursday!!!!!!!! It has been sooooooo hard to wait these last few weeks. My mom has showed me the snow when I have been talking to her on skype and I am so excited to finally be in it. (I know that for those of you who are in it you are probably sick of it, but it will be a novelty for me.) We have gotten about an inch or two of snow at a time here, but it is always gone by the afternoon. This week my students were really hyper because of the flurries outide. I told them about the 50 cm of snow that Minneapolis got in one storm. (My classroom is named "Minneapolis" so my kids like to know about it.) One of my students almost jumped out of his seat saying "yeah, and the, the field, the stadium fell!!!" It was so cool that one of my Korean 7 year old students knew about what had happened at the metrodome.

Okay, so back to going home.... I will fly in on the night of the 23rd. There are so many things that I want to do when I am there:

- Number one: see my family and friends

- Anything to do with snow: skiing, sledding, snowman making, snowangels, even shoveling!

- Go to Target! I have this list of "American" stuff to stock up on. I even have lists of stuff to get for other people.

- See the dome. I don't know if this will be possible, but I want to see the ruins

- Watch a football game

- Christmas card contest (Okay, I know this will happen, but I can't wait for it)

(sidebar: I sent Christmas cards 2 weeks ago, and it usually takes 8 days. It seems as thought that the last thing I sent took MUCH longer, so you'll get a card, it will just be late.)

- bake something (anything, I don't have an oven here, and just want to use one)

- sleep in my own bed

- take a hot shower (for some reason, I haven't been getting hot water in my apartment for a few months)

- drive a car

- talk to a random person in ENGLISH!

- meet Oliver!

- Smell a real Christmas tree

- (Don't judge) watch "Mama Mia" with my mom

- many more things that I can't think of right now.

See many of you this week!

Love you lots.

"sigh....."

It has been a tough week here. There has been a major scandal at my school that is hard to explain in anything less than a novel (probably just because I tend to ramble on about things). I'll try my best to explain the just of it quickly. (Of course, I can't make any promises.)
There are two supervisors at the school. Both of them do the bare minimum. They leave the school multiple times a day to get coffee or for exercise breaks. One of them has been talking about how much she hates her job and that she wants to quit for more than a year now. The director of the school (basically the principal) has been working really hard to make the school better for the teachers and students, and he has really made a lot of improvements, and had a lot of great plans for more. He has gotten a lot of feedback about the supervisors. His plan was to not renew one of thier contracts when it ends in February (the one who doesn't want to be here in the first place), and offer a transfer (and actually a promotion) to the other one. The two supervisors got wind of these plans, and together went to the owner. The told a bunch of lies about the director, and got him fired. (His wife worked at the school too, so she left with him.) The whole thing happened in a matter of hours. It was announced to us by one of the supervisors, who obviously lied about how the whole thing went down. All of the foreign and korean teachers are furious at the supervisors. The parents are too. (There was a big meeting about which Korean teacher 'leaked' the real story to the parents.) When the parents of my class came in for a meeting with the owner, they actually kicked the supervisor out of the meeting. The hardest thing right now is that the supervisors work in the same workroom as the teachers. We all avoid the room now like the plague, and the supervisors are avoiding having to face us too. No one wants to be at work anymore, and we are clinging to our students to remind us of why we are here.
After having an intense anger festering in me for a few days, I think that it is finally ebbing. I talked to some people at church who really encouraged me to forgive. I don't know how I am going to feel about that when I get into school tomorrow, but at this moment I think that I can go into work without being fureous at these people.

Here are some of my favorite student quotes from the week:

• (When explaining how foreign people look different from Korean people) "Foreign people have red dots all over their face" (to be fair, so do some Koreans)
• One of my students wrote "toetruck" instead of towtruck. (okay, Todd didn't think it was very funny, but I laughed pretty hard trying to imagine what a toetruck would look like.)
• (from a student wearing a coat with fur around the hood) Elika: "Teacher, what is this?" Me: "It's fur sweetie" Elika: "What kind of animal is it from?" (after checking the tag) Me: "It's fox fur." (a short pause for her to digest this information) Elika: "Teacher, I have a dead fox on my head!" (this was repeated several times, to any teacher who would listen to her.)

18 days 'til I'm home for Christmas!!!!!!

Christmas Countdown!

I have officially started my countdown for when I go home for Christmas. 25 Days!!!! The Christmas trees are starting to go up around here (In the mall, and at the church). We even got some hail/slush that kind of looks like a trace of snow on the ground. I am working my students pretty hard to get them ready for their Christmas show, and they even know most of their lines already. I even just saw a Coca-cola Christmas commersial on tv (litterally, I saw it as I was writing this). Everything just feels cheery. I am ignoring the fact that I still have to do Christmas shopping for now. I have zero ideas, and already got the "Korea" stuff for people last year.



Last Sunday when I woke up, my kitchen floor was covered in water. It was coming out of my hot water heater, which is mounted on the wall behind my washing machine. I talked to the guy at my school who takes care of that kind of stuff on Monday morning (he was very crabby when I approached him, so I fealt bad bothering him with it). He took my key to go check it out. He came into my classroom later that afternoon, and said that there must be something wrong with the washing machine. I said: "I haven't used my washing machine for a few days. I think that the water is coming from the pipes behind it." He said: "Okay, the washing machine repair man will come at 11:00 tomorrow morning." (What? Thanks for listening, you'll feel silly when the repair man comes and says that there is nothing wrong with it......but of course I just smiled and thank him.) The next day I got a note saying: "The repair man came and said that the washing machine is not out of order. However, he did find a problem with the water heater behind it. The landlady will have a repair man come tomorrow." (Once again, smile! Thank you so much!) He had left my key with the landlady so he gave me the spare one that the school has. As it turns out, the key didn't work, so when I got home I had to turn around and got back to school to try to deal with it. They called the landlady and got my key back. As it turns out, the landlady just gives the keys to the restaurant on the first floor, and when repair men come they just get the keys form there. (Is that normal?) After many days of sopping up water, my floor is finally dry and the water heater isn't dripping any more.



I spent yesterday working at a booth for Mountain Child at an international confrence. When I got there, I discovered that all of the exibitioners were outside in a tent! It was probably about 30 degrees outiside, so we spent much of the time huddled around the kerosine heater. It was a really productive weekend overall.



I missed being with the family on Thanksgiving. I hope everyone had a great time.

My favorite student quote of the week: (We were reading a new story that had the word "parent" as one of the vocabulary words. This is a very basic word for my students, and I know that they have a complete understanding of it)
Me: "Who can tell me what parents are?"
Jason: "Parents are a type of bird"

Oh yeah, just so you all know, the North Korean attacks were pretty far away from me. Nothing to worry about, I'm in no danger.

Love you all, see some of you in 25 days!

Oh November....

November is the craziest month of the whole year at my school. We have four busy months each year, but November has even more stuff going on than other months. We have big tests and report cards like our busy months, but we also have parent meetings, administrative observations of our classes, and Christmas programs to prepare for. I thought that I had been prepared for my Christmas show. Since our program was canceled last December, I was going to use the same script, music decorations and props that I prepared for last year (for "The Grinch who Stole Christmas"). I guess another teacher decided she was going to do the Grinch, but didn't tell anyone. As a result, she thought about it for a few days before she found out that I had my Grinch show prepared. She claimed that she had the show first (even though I had been planning it before she was even in Korea). There were a couple of hours of really uncomfortable hours before I decided that it wasn't worth fighting for and I gave her all of my stuff. I ended up writing a new play, that I hope will be really fun. As a result of all the stuff that has to get done this month, I don't think that I have left work before 7:30 in last few weeks, and Have worked two Saturdays to do open houses for the school. (Yes, I know that all of you works long hours too.)

One interesting thing that happened last week was "Pepero Day." A pepero is basically a long cookie stick that is dipped in chocolate. Pepero Day is on November 11, (11/11) because the date looks like four pepero sticks. Really, the company that makes peperos was able to create a holiday when everyone has to buy thier product. All the kids bring in peperos for all the other kids, and the teachers are loaded with peperos of all kinds. It is an absolutely rediculous holiday. This picture is just some of the peperos that I recieved.

The leaves don't get as beautiful here as they do in Minnesota. We don't get whole hill sides ablaze with color. Most trees turn a dull brownish yellow color. There are a few trees that get bright colors, but they are very sparse.

I have been working more and more with Mountain Child, which is the organization that I went to Nepal with. I did a workshop with them today, and will be staffing a booth at some coming conferences. The more I am involved with them the more I see the importance of their work. I am excited to be working with them now, as the organization is new and growing in so many ways. They are starting to get short team missions teams from all over the world. I think that they have 16 teams booked in the next six months from the U.S., Australia, South Africa and South Korea. We have found major sporting brands to sponsor Mountain Child, universities to partner with, and even a celebrity spokesperson. Check out what my passion is growing for at http://www.mountainchild.org/

Thank you everyone at home for throwing my mom an amazing surprise birthday party! She really didn't think that is was going to be just for her.

Congratulations Brett and Cassie! Oliver is beautiful. I hope you are enjoying your first weeks of parenthood.

Halloween

We had our Halloween party at school on Friday. The kids all got to dress up and have a ton of Halloween fun all day. There were six stations around the school that they went to. There was a haunted house, pin the tail on the donkey/pumpkin, mummy making race, pumpkin bowling, and the "monster dance." I spent the whole day in the monster dance room. It was basically a cake walk where we made the kids dance the whole time. It meant that I danced for two hours strait for the kindergarden program, and another two hours for the elementary program. The funny thing was that I didn't get tired at all, but I did loose my voice.

After lunch the kids got to go trick or tricking around the block. The parents were spread out around the whole way. I have never heard so many kids complain about having to carry too much candy.

On Saturday I did a party for the whole elementary sunday school program at the home of one of the parents of some of the kids. There were 20 kids there, and they had a ton of fun. They spent four hours getting to know eachother more, playing games, and eating pizza and other junk food. By the end of the weekend I was beat and ready for a break. Unfortunately, that break will have to wait until next Sunday.....

Happy Halloween everyone!!!!

Happy Birthday Isaac!

Nepal Part 3

The day after our long van trip, we hiked for eleven hours. We stopped for lunch in a village that had a small church with about eight members. The paster and his congregation were all persecuted and looked down upon. In addition, they are cut out of all the village share cropping, which is how most people survive. We were able to share the gospel with two groups of about 20 people. Both groups had people who were very accepting of us, and asked a lot of questions. We gave out medicine to everyone there, and left all the extra with the pastor of the church, so that people would come to him when they needed help. The people asked us to stay longer and tell more stories, but we had to get to the next village. Our destination for the night was a village that they had tried to reach before but hadn't made it because some of the people in the group couldn't make the climb. There was one believer in that village, and they had promised to visit and han't been able to follow through. We were determined to make it.

The hike after lunch that day was crazy. We basically had to go strait down, cross a river, and then go strait back up another mountain. When we started it was a little foggy, so we couldn't see the mountains around us. Unfortunately, our guide knows the way by looking at the mountains. We ended up heading in the wrong direction on a non-existing trail. We made our way down the side of the mountain for about an hour, pushing our way through bushes and underbrush, before we got to a point where it dropped strait down about 200 yards to the river. As it turned out, we had to go back up where we came from and take another trail down going the other direction. When we got to the trail that we were supposed to be on, it was rock stairs going strait down for about 3 hours. It make it worse, it was raining, so the rocks were slippery. My pastor has a bad knee and he hadn't put on his brace, so he was really having a hard time. Finally we made it to the river, and a really sketchy looking bridge that we had to cross. After crossing the river, it was strait up to the village, which was on the top.

The beginning of the trail going up was going through rice paddies. It was clear very soon that our pastor wasn't going to do very well going up. He thought that his knee would be okay going up, but it he was in a lot of pain. In order for us to make it to the village before dark, he sent us up with one of the guides, while the other guide stayed with him. We made it to the village just as it was getting dark, but still had another half an hour climb up to the village center, and then back down to a house for us to stay in. It was at this point, when we were walking through a remote village in the pitch black, following our 20 year old guide and some local boy, that we realized we could disappear in the middle of the Himalayas and no one would have any idea where we had gone. Of course, everything ended up fine. Our pastor made it about an hour later, and retired to our humble quarters almost immediately.

The next morning we got time to get to know some of the villagers before we shared the gospel with them. We played with the kids a lot. One thing that we learned was that if we can capture the hearts of the children, we have a lot better chance of reaching the parents. I gave stickers out left and right, and we played frisbee with a some of them. When we finally started preaching, we ended up with a group of about 60 people, all listening intently. They were so happy to get even basic medications. When we headed out later that morning, they were handing us flowers in bunches. There was even an older man who started dancing for us. I was an amazing feeling to know that we had caused so much joy in these people's lives in just a few hours. Looking back, that village was the one that will stick in my mind the most. It was such a challenge to get there, but it would have been worth hiking five days for the experience.

We went on a Field trip to some place out in the country yesterday. (Yes, on a Saturday, to make up for the day of school that we missed because of the typhoon.) The kids had a ton of fun. The first thing that they got to do was search for and collect chesnuts from a small field. They picked the field clean, and all took home small bags full of them. The best part was getting pictures of them. The school has a website that parents can go on to see pictures of the classes, so it is important that I get pictures of all of the kids while we are doing anything. The students had given me some chesnuts to hold on to before they had bags to put them in. In order to get pictures of a few of my students, I had to call them over, and throw the nuts out for them to scramble for. It was almost like feeding the squirrels or something. I'm not exactly sure how you deshell and cook the chesnuts when you get them home, but the kids didn't really care.

After the chesnut hunt, they brought the kids out to a field with a small stage and sang songs and did dances and fun stuff like that. The poor kids were wearing their school sweat suits and the sun was beating down on them as they jumped and danced. Some of them were as red as tomatoes, and sweating buckets. The teachers were all going around with waterbottles dumping water in kids mouths.

After we had lunch, they brought us over to a tiny little "mudpond," which was a small cement pool built into the ground, with about 5 inches of water in it. There were mudfish, which kind of look like little eels, swimming everywhere. The kids got to take off their socks and shoes, and wade around trying to catch the fish. I had one student who was absolutely terrified of getting in the water with those fish. I asked if she would get in if I went in, totally thinking she would say no way, but sure enough she said okay, and I had to take off my socks and shoes, roll up my pants and get in that water. I carried her in, but she freaked out whenever I started to put her down. Eventually she let me put her down, but the moment a fish swam over her foot she jump on me again. Other kids had a ton of fun. The boy in the picture that is holding the fish ended up basically sitting down in the water and playing. We found out later that his mom, knowing her son, had sent an extra set of clothes with him, something that we were really greatful for.

the boy with the Yankees cap on is a three year old who was on the bus with my class going to the field trip. At one point I took his hat, put it on my head, and made him say "Go Yankees!" to get it back. He ended up giving me his hat again and again just so that he would have to say "Go Yankees!" again and again. I also ended up with three other kids giving me thier hat so that they could have a chance to say it. This was one of my favorite parts of the whole field trip!






Nepal Trip, Part 2

On our first day of "treking," we were going to take a couple hour jeep ride to a village, and leave from there. Jeeps there are kind of like taxis. They are available for hire, and usually leave the larger city once or twice a day to head out to the villages. The first jeep that we hired made it about 50 feet before breaking down. They then spent about an hour under the hood, and got a mechanic out. We drew a crowd while they were trying to get it working, including this little boy in the red shirt. It finally got started and we headed up the mountain. We made about another 200 yards before it broke down again. We finally called another and had another jeep come down from the village up the mountian. They said that they would be about an hour. That hour ended up being more like three or four hours. We finally got going up the mountain 5 hours after we had started. The road going up the mountain was like nothing that I have ever been on before. There is really no way to describe to you how bumpy and uncomfortable it was. We were sitting in the back of this jeep on two metal benches, haning on to a bar mounted on the roof with all our might. The road had ruts that were 2 feet deep, and the mud was crazy. If you know what the driveway that goes up to my dads house is like, think about a road that is ten times worse, and goes on for 6 hours. We got stuck in the mud multiple times. Everyone just got out and pushed. If we passed someone who was walking up the road, they would just jump in the back , or climb on the top, which creeped us out at first. I have no idea how someone stayed on the top with out falling off, but multiple guys did it. One time we ran out of gas. A jeep who was headed down stopped to give us some. We used empty water bottles and a big kitchen bowl, and leaves that were used as a funnel to transfer it from their jeep to ours. I can't say that I have ever done anything like the jeep rides that we had there. They were long and bumpy, often times we were 2 inches from the side of the road that dropped hundreds of yards down the mountain, and people were jumping in and out as we went.
We finally got to the village that we were going to stay at that night right as it was getting dark. This is the home that we stayed in. It was a very nice home in the village. We found out that it had been built 150 years ago. The building had been built with rocks that they had stacked and cemented together, and the roof was very typical sheets of metal. It was the families home, but they cleared out two of their rooms for us to use. The room that I was in was about six feet by eight feet. We fit four of us in it! We were extremely sore that night, but it was from bumping up and down on metal benches for hours, instead of treking like we had expected!

Nepal

I got back from Nepal at the beginning of the week. The whole experience was completely amazing and really changed my whole perspective of the world.

We spent the first night in Kathmandu. The children who live in Mountain Child's Children's Home came to welcome us that evening. We had an amaznig praise and worship time with them, and then had time to play with them and get to know them a little. Some of the children have such amazing stories. All of the kids at the home (called the RANCH, Remote Area of Nepal Children's Home) were taken from villages where they were in situations of immediate danger. One child contracted an eye infection while living in the village. Having no doctors, her parents brought her to the local witch doctor. The witch doctor, deciding that she had a demon in her, poured boiling water over her face to exercise it. Another boy has a father who remarried after his mother passed away. In their culture, when a man remarries, his children become slaves to his new wife. He was living in a cage when a group from Mountain Child came to his village and brought him back to the RANCH. Many other children would have otherwise been sold into the sex trade industry if we hadn't brought them to the home. All of the kids had such amazing stories and amazing passions for their faith. They all called me Stacie Auntie, and I had a few letters from them waiting for me from them before we left to go treking the next morning.

The next morning we started treking into the Himalayas. We hiked into areas of the mountains that have no electricity and no water. They cook over fires in the middle of thier homes. In the villages, we stayed in peoples homes. They literally cleared out their rooms so that we would have a place to stay. We were able to share the Gospel with people who had never heard the name of Jesus Christ before. It was completely overwhelming, and it was hard to figure out where to even start. We had an amazing local guide named Ram who translated for us. Everyone spoke Nepali in addition to their own regional dialect. Ram was great at filling in all the things that we were missing when we shared. We also passed out really basic medications and did first aide for the people who needed it. When we left the villages, many times they gave us all flowers, and danced as we left. A few times they asked us to stay longer and and tell more stories.

Everywhere we went, I gave the kids little glittery heart stickers. They absolutely loved them. Often times after I gave a child a sticker, they would dissappear for a couple of minutes, only to return with a crowd of children looking for the person giving out the stiky shiny things. The kids were so adorable. It was heartbreaking seeing the sores and illnesses that they had, and not being able to do more. Half of the children in the Himalayas will die by the time they are 8 because of contaminated water. There is so much more work to do in this area of the world.

The treking was amazing. We spent hours hiking though jungle terrain. Everyone got some leaches. I was lucky and only ended up with four. The other hiking team averaged about 100 leaches each. The views that we had were breathtaking. I have so many pictures that it is almost rediculous. Most of the time the higher peaks were covered by clouds, but there was a short window a couple of mornings where we could see the snow-capped mountains peaking above the clouds.

I could go on telling stories for pages and pages, but think I will stop here. Maybe I will continue telling more specific stories and sharing pictures. Those of you with facebook can check out the pictures that I have posted there. The program that I went with is called Mountain Child. It was started by my pastor 13 years ago. You can check out their website at http://www.mountainchild.org/. The website doesn't mention anything about it's ministry because it is illegal to evangelize in Nepal, so he has to keep it on the Downlow.

Happy Birthday Leeann!

Chuseok

Yesterday we had our Chuseok party at school. Chuseok is basically the Korean Thanksgiving. All of the kids got to wear their homboks, which are the traditional outfits that they wear for special events. They were so adorable! We had a wonderful day of games and activities for the kids. First they got to make Seongpyeon. Seongpyeong is a kind of like a ball of squished rice, filled with sugar and sesame. The kids had fun making the dok (squished rice stuff) into little bowls, then filling it and closing it up. Of course, the most fun was eating it. The next thing they did was decorate some masks. After they finished, I brought them on a prade around the floor to let them show off their masks to the other classes (and to let them get out of the classroom and have some fun). Next we made jaegis, which are basically a korean style hackysack. We also played a game with sticks and a board that you move your players around. Of course, I ended up with one crying student because her team didn't win. The last thing that we did was go out to the park to take pictures. It was really hot, so of course the kids were sweating like crazy in thier homboks, and complaining the whole time. We had to be out there for a pretty long time because they had to take individual class pictures, and a picture of the whole school. Overall it was a great day, where everyone had fun.



I leave tonight to go to Nepal. I will be there until the morning of the 27th. We will encounter some pretty harsh conditions, but I am extremely excited. I tried my best to pack really light since I will be carrying everything on my back, but my pack is still pretty full even after I removed a lot of stuff. Hopefully I will return safely in 9 days!

Typhoon Kompusa

Last Thursday Typhoon Kompusa hit Seoul. It was supposed to hit at 3:00 in the afternoon, but it hit early at 6:00 in the morning. When I went to go running at 7:00, it looked just a little windy,

so I decided that it was safe to go. It did feel pretty windy when I was out, but it really didn't seem like anything big. I saw at least 50 trees down that morning. When I was out, some guys came by in their truck and stopped. They rolled down the window and yelled "Dangeroushi, Dangersoushi, go home!" I didn't really get it, so I just kept running. When I got home, I found out that they canceled our kindergarten program for the day. I still didn't quite get it because the storm had passed and it was sunny by 10:00. Apparently the government recomended that kindergartens close for the day and other schools start 2 hours late. The roads were pretty bad. There were guardrails accross the freeways and trees down everywhere. I went for a 50 kilometer bike ride up to Seoul that afternoon and passed houndreds of fallen trees. There were also shingles all over the place, even in places where there weren't any buildings within 100 yards or so. 5 people died in the Seoul area, including one person who near where I live, who was killed by a falling tree at about the same time that I was out running that morning....

I leave for Nepal in 13 days. I am super anxious about it. I am nervous about the actual work that we are going to do, but really excited about hiking in the middle of nowhere. We'll see how it all works out.

August 29

I'm sorry that I haven't posted in a few weeks. I always post on Sundays, and I haven't been home at all the last two Sundays. Work has been time as usual. We has a field trip on Friday that ended up being quite a dud. We went to Seoul Children's Park, which has a small zoo, a play area and I guess a bunch of other stuff. Our bus drivers didn't know how to get there, so we ended up getting there way later than expected, after driving in circles. We missed the puppet show that we were going to watch, but went to see an animal show instead. The show was great, and the kids loved it. The problem was that it was a little long. By the time it finished, we only had 20 minutes to see the rest of the park. We got to walk by the elephants, lions and tigers, and then had to go back to the bus. We ended up being at the park for a total of about an hour, and on the bus for over 2 hours. The poor kids didn't understand why we couldn't go into all the other places that we had to rush by to get to the bus.

Some of my favorite quotes from the past few weeks:

"I think I am just a little bit insane." (This was completely random, out of the blue)

"One time my dad went and talked to the police, and when he came back he wasn't allwed to use his car for a week."

"A frame is a picture's house"

We learned about different kinds of sentences in grammar class. On one assignment, I gave them a type of sentence, and a person. They had to write that type of sentence that the person might say. Here are just a few:

(Exclamation, Father) "Yeah! I'm staying home with my daughter!"

"Oh no, my bread is done!"

(Command, Grandfather) "Don't run and don't cry."

(Command, Boss) (This came after spending a good amount of time explaining what a boss is, mostly by using the director of the school as my boss as an example.) "Drive me to the airport."

"Don't give the students any homework today."

"Teach the children what boos means."

These picture were taken on Halasan in Jeju. The trail that I took down kind of followed this stream for a few kilometers. Every turn the path took produced yet another beautiful, peaceful view. Every time the stream showed up again, I couldn't help but think "Oh, it looks just like something Bruce would make." I realize that in reality, it's the other way around. Bruce makes stuff that looks just like nature. Just the fact that I had that thought so often is a testiment to how talented Bruce is at what he does. The other picture is the top of the mountain, which is currently a dormant volcano.

For now I am getting prepared for my trip to Nepal. I still don't know exactly what we will be doing. Our team is preparing skits and stories to show the villages that we visit. We will be sleeping on the dirt floors of villager's homes. We will be bringing basic medical packs, and doing first aid. The places that we are going don't have schools or any medical posts. You can only get to them by hiking. There are six of us going. Other than that, I don't really know much about the trip. I am super excited. I leave in three weeks!

This week was a crazy week at school. We had five new teachers start on Monday. None of them had any orientation period. They all just had to jump into teaching right away. On Wednesday, one of the new teachers didn't show up for work in the morning. He didn't have a cell phone yet, and wasn't answering his home phone. We had to cover his classes for him. Meanwhile, someone from the school went to his apartment to try to find him. They found a note that said that he had gone back to America. I guess that happens every once in a while, but it had never happened at my school before. Now we don't have a teacher for his class, and the parents are un an uproar. We are in a scramble to find a new teacher, but the whole process of hiring a teacher takes a lot of time. Personally, I couldn't believe that anyone could be as irresponsible and inconsiderate. It's guys like him that give English teachers a bad reputation here.

More about my vacation:

My five day vacation started with a train ride to Busan. I took the KTX, which is a bullet train. I thought that it would be kind of cool, but the truth is that you don't feel like your going any faster in a bullet train than you do in the subway. It doesn't even looke like the land is going by that fast. The trip took a little less than three hours. Busan is on the South-east coast of Korea. When I got out of the station, the first thing that I saw was this fountain. It was really cool. I took my stuff to the hostel, and decided to go for a walk to explore the area.
I ended up going to Igidae Park, which is just a long strip of rocky coast between a mountain and the sea. You can walk for kilometers along the rocks, and it was absolutely beautiful. I hadn't been to the sea since I had gotten to Korea, so seeing it was amazing. The park is on a small peninsula that used to be some military post or something until just a few years ago, so even though it is an amazing place to go, the government refuses to advertise it at all. There were very few people there, and I only saw a few foreigners. The only downfall was that I hadn't expected to do any hiking-like activities, so I

ended up walking for about 5 hours along these rocks in my flip-flops. Needless to say, my feet were hurting a little by the time I got back that night. The next morning I went over

towards the most popular beach in Busan. I didn't want to actually go to the beach, because it was so rediculously crowded and touristy. Instead I went to the APEC House, which I guess they held some confrence for worldwide leaders at in 2005. It is a cool building on a great little island. I guess that after the confrence, they just turned the building into kind of a museum and it hasn't been used for anything else. APEC was close enough to Hyeundae Beach that I ended up going anyway and just walking along the water's edge. The water fealt great, but there were so many people that there was no chance that I was actually going to attempt to find a place to sit and go swimming. That afternoon I got on a flight to Jeju! More about Jeju to come....