Saturday, January 2, 2010

God did NOT create the earth to kill time

This was one of the points in my sermon that I heard in church this morning. But I will get to that later!

Lots to tell...This break sure has gone by fast! I've done a lot of sightseeing in the past week. On Wednesday, I went with Molly and her sister to a cafe where you can sit and have tiny little fish nibble away at your feet! It is supposed to clear away the dead skin on your feet. Took me a few times, and some deep breaths to be able to keep my feet in the water, but after a few minutes I was able to do it! It tickled sooo much, but I found that if I swung my feet a bit it didn't tickle so much. We had some awesome lattes and cappucinos before we got to experience the
"Dr. Fish" for 15 minutes.


The next day was new years eve. We went into Seoul, along with Marissa, who is a friend of Molly's from the US who came to visit for a bit. Her boyfriend Luke is teaching in Korea, as well as Dustin, who is a friend of Marissa's and who teaches at the same school that Molly does. Saebomi (not sure of spelling) was an exchange student from Korea who lived with Marissa's family for a year in high school. She also joined us for the night! We checked into the hotel (that Molly and Karen's mom had so graciously rented for them, I tagged along!) and then set out for the evening. We went to this part of Seoul where there is a giant bell that they ring at midnight, and where there must have been thousands of people! There were news camaras and concerts and it was a lot of fun. I was a little afraid that I would get trampled, because we were all packed in so tightly, but luckily that did not happen! However after the bell rang and we celebrated, we were hopping a fence, and I kinda slowly fell to the ground, but my foot was stuck in the fence and I was sure that it was gonna snap in half! Lucky for me Molly was right there and was able to push it out before anything major happened. After leaving there we went to a bar for a bit, and the Marissa, Luke, Saebomi and I went to another part of Seoul. We met up with some friends of Lukes from the city that he teaches in, and after stopping at a restaurant for a bit we headed over to a noribong. These are really popular here, and are little kareoke rooms that you rent for just you and your friends, and we had an awesome time belting out songs for a couple hours. Around 7am we headed back to the hotel, where we crashed. It was a very fun New Year's!

Yesterday we went into a Korean Folk Village, a little area with lots of performers, vendors, food and etc. It was really cute and fun to see the performers dancing, a man walking on a tightrope, and an equestrian team doing tricks on their horses.

This morning I went with Dustin to a Methodist church, about an hour away from us. We first went to a childrens service that is taught in English. Dustin will be teaching a small group of the kids within the next few weeks. After that we went to the adult English service. That was a lot of fun, and there are a lot of different types of people that were there. Lots of Koreans, Philipinos, Chinese, with just a few Americans and British. Everyone was very excited to meet me because I was new, and they were also super excited to see Dustin, because he had been back in the States over Thanksgiving and Christmas. After the service we broke up into smaller groups for about 15 minutes to talk. I was asked if I wanted to joing the "singles" group haha. It's not like a singles network in the US, it is just for people who are unmarried, not necessarily looking for someone to date! Church was fun, and I'm sure that I will go back soon. During the children's lesson we learned though, that God did not in fact create the earth to kill time. I thought it was so funny that they used this phrase in this context, so I just had to add it in!

I was very proud of myself because I got back to Dongbaek by myself! I haven't taken the public transportation alone much at all, it can sometimes be confusing but Dustin explained it to me really well. While waiting for the bus an older man behind me started talking to me. His English wasn't that great, and he was kinda giving me a creepy vibe and kept hitting me on the butt with a notebook he had in his hand ( I think it was unintentional, but still creepy). When he asked my name I told him it was Sarah, I figured there was no need for me to try to repeat my name 8 times (it is hard for them to pronounce). Then he introduced me to his wife and he seemed a little less creepy. Still, when he asked if I was married I told him that I had a husband in the US. Then, we he asked for my phone number, I kinda sorta made one up, but I did enter his into my phone when he gave it to me. I feel a little bad to have lied to him, but I'm sure I'll never see him again, and I figured may as well just give him a wrong number than run the risk of him calling me all the time. After he invited me over to their house (today, you come now!) I politely declined, saying I was meeting with a friend, but maybe some other time. In Spain I had a man at a bus stop invite me to come live with him. "My wife died a long time ago, so you can come live with me if you want" he had said. Apparently, the older men love me! Haha oh well!

Can't believe break is already over, I'm glad I took advantage of it because it will be a loooong time before I have that long of work off again! Classes start up again tomorrow, but my students won't come until Tuesday, so we have one last day to prepare and get everything ready. I can't wait to start teaching!

Hope everyone is well!
Also for some reason this blog is being tricky, and after I attached the first picture(which I'm sure is sideways)I was not able to post anymore. Will try again soon though!

1 comment:

  1. Haha cute title! I've always wanted to try those fish pedi things! Love you!

    ReplyDelete