I LOVE KOREA

We never thought we would utter those words. Sure, there's good things about this country, plenty of them, but we were surprised tonight when we said it, "I love Korea!" So what made us feel this way? The other day I had a terrible time trying to get my bike to change gears and I thought it was just a little too cold for the bike. Today it happened again. I thought maybe the clutch cable needed to be adjusted. So, being the "fix it till it breaks" type guy, I broke it. I turned the screw a bit too far I guess and it snapped. AWESOME! The bike is in the basement, so Jen and I push it up the ramp so I can walk it to the shop. "Where's the shop?" "I don't know, do you?" Hahaha, I hate this country.

I walked over to the security guy and asked him, in my best Korean tongue, "Motorbike, place, where-yo?" "I don't know." Awesome! Ok, I'll push the bike down the street until I find one. I wandered to one side of the parking lot and then to the other. The security guard must have felt sorry for me, because he came out of his security hut and asked what happened to the bike. I showed him the weak link and he walked off. A couple minutes later he walked back with a phone number. He motioned for me to call them and I laughed and said, "I don't understand Korean" again in my best Korean. So HE called and told me that they don't have the cable, but would call back in an hour. Apparently they had to buy the cable from somebody else. It's already 6:30 and the sun is getting farther below the horizon. Jen and I took the dog around the block and to the store.

While I was waiting outside for Jen to come back, the mechanic called me and said a bunch of stuff I couldn't understand. I caught, "...first floor..." so I said ok and started walking toward the house. A minute later he called again and all I heard was "...hurry, hurry..." so I said ok and began running to the house.

Anyway, to keep a long story from getting longer, the cable broke at 6. The cable was fixed before 8 and it only cost me 15,000 won. The US equivalent would be around $10 with the atrocious exchange rate currently.

Think about it, these guys:
1) Rounded up the correct cable to fix the bike,
2) Drove to my apartment so I wouldn't have to push the bike to the shop,
3) At 8:00 PM on a Friday,
4) Replaced it in 15 minutes,
5) for $10 and a thank you.

I LOVE KOREA!

Living in a Whirlwind

Sometimes you just have to MAKE time for things, and that is what I am doing right now. I feel guilty that I have not kept up any of the new and exciting things going on in our lives on our blog. So, I am taking 5 minutes to update YOU.

First of all, I was offered a job in October as an ESL teacher at a small international school in Seoul. It is about an hour and a half by public transportation and I thought it was a job I could "work into" over time. Turned out it was available immediately, and due to several circumstances and prayer we believed this opportunity was of the Lord. So we made plans for me to change jobs as of January.

Since then, we have decided to go ahead and make the move into Seoul. It will be easier for Cory to commute to his same school then for me to get into the city during rush hour. In addition, I signed a contract for a year and a half . . . so we'd be moving there by summertime anyway.

In the last few weeks, I found out that the school is going to be losing a 4th grade homeroom teacher and wanted to know if I would be interested in taking that job as of January. OF COURSE! In fact, that was what I figured I'd be working towards anyway. Get in as the ESL teacher, move to homeroom the following year.

Well, I am thrilled to say I will be taking the 4th grade homeroom as of January 5th. I am also pleased to let you know that our weeks of apartment searching has come to a close. We found a GREAT place and will be moving in 6 days. Yikes.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, but we have to work. I've got major deadlines for our English newspaper and a baby shower to host on Saturday. So, the packing will wait until Sunday, at least! LOL! But I am SO thankful that we will be moving way before Christmas! I can't wait to decorate our new place!

Hope that updates you a little. My 5 minutes is spent, and I've still got a "to-do" list. Don't we all? :) Check out this link to the school if you have time: www.ccslions.com

Interesting Article

This guy is challenging the eligibility of Obama and McCain to run for the office of the president. I'm surprised we haven't heard more about it, but it's an interesting article.

Fall in the City

We haven't made it into the country to enjoy the fall weather at all, but here are a few pics we've managed to take.

We took Snickers for a drive first, sandwiched between Cory and I on the motorcycle. We stopped at a park on the side of Ilsan for a walk through the beautiful fall colors.

Snickers and I pose in front of a man-made pond, Ilsan in the background.

A shot of the area we are looking to move to in January. Namsan Tower (a.k.a. Seoul Tower) sits high on the hill. My new school sits beneath it to the left side of this picture.

Konglish - Obait

Well, one of you got it right. Obait is the Konglish word for ........................VOMIT!! That's right! Vomit! You'd be surprised how often we hear it during school and class. Congratulations _______! (Insert your name here if you chose the right answer.) Good luck next time.

New Zealand Day 3

Enchiladas, nachos, and Pepsi! It was a perfect dinner for us while we waited for the ferry to the South Island. We had driven the whole North Island in just a couple days in what we realized afterward was a mad dash to get as far south as possible before having to turn back. After dinner, we hopped back into the van and drove to the ferry terminal.

This is the cheapest way to transport goods between the two main New Zealand isles. It took about three hours to get across. We were both amazed about the size of the ship, as well as the capacity of it. While we waited in line to drive up the ramp, we watched a dozen tractor-trailers drive into the boat and TURN AROUND INSIDE so they could drive straight out on the other island.

At 11:00 we drove off the ship and quickly started looking for a place to sleep. After about an hour, I gave up and pulled off the road onto a side road. We woke up the next morning to a beautiful sunrise while sheep grazed in the vineyard. After breakfast we got back on the road. The weather was getting noticeably colder, so when we saw George hitch hiking 60 km from the nearest town we had to pick him up. He had been working in Wellington on some fishing boats, but the fishing season had just ended so he was on his way down to Dunedin (20 driving hours away) at the bottom of the south island to find some different work. He was a great guy. Fun to talk to, and he gave us some info on New Zealand.

(George didn't mind letting us stop to gawk at the seals on the beach.)

A few hours later we arrived in Christchurch. Christchurch is a beautiful seaside town on the east side of the South Island. Christchurch was a planned colonial British settlement in New Zealand. The plan was to build a community around a cathedral which would be modeled on Christ Church in Oxford. The cathedral still stands in the heart of the tourism district. Christchurch also has a history of involvement in the exploration of the Antarctic Continent. Several countries including the U.S. use the airport here to get to the different bases on the frozen continent.

After sightseeing, we drove up the coast a few minutes looking for a nice seaside place to sleep. What we ended up finding was a parking lot beside a rugby field. It was pretty quiet, but not so beautiful. The locals were trusting (or apathetic) enough to leave the doors to the locker room unlocked so we were able to sneak in and take showers and do some basic grooming with HOT water the next morning. It felt so good!

(Our view the next morning, after a five minute walk through a construction zone.)

Otobai

Nice work folks, most of you got it right. It's the Konglish word for motorcycle. It seems to be the word "autobike" when transliterated into Korean and said carelessly (that's why there's no "k" on the end). Look for the next word soon.

What do you think?

Updated Wednesday, November 5th at 12:57
Sorry folks, the link broke. They must have sold out of them (Missed opportunity). Try again, I've posted the link to a similar item that costs three times as much.

Original post below:

I'm thinking about buying one of these. It's only $8 and I'm sure there'll be a huge lawsuit about it followed by a settlement that I can cash in on. Consider it an investment.

Modes of Transportation

By Foot - For just over a year now we have been perfecting our skills at figuring out how to use public transportation in and around Seoul and our own city of Ilsan. We were originally told that our schools were within walking distance from our apartment, so that's how we started - on the 4 good legs God has given us. That didn't last long - it took us 35 minutes at a brisk pace to get to my school, and Cory's is 5-10 minutes beyond that. The first day I had blisters from where my strappy Guam heels were cutting into my feet!

By Bus - So we quickly learned a little about the bus system. At first, you just find a bus that you know will end up where you want it to - so for school it was easy. However, the bus routes are almost 100% written in Korean. Learning to read Korean became more and more necessary. Cory picked it up quickly and I think I am finally at a point where I can read or at least recognize what I am looking for. I am pleased to say that now we use the bus system quite easily. Not that there haven't been a few mistakes along the way! :)

By Subway - Traveling in and out of Seoul is about an hour by subway. We are about a 10 minute walk from the nearest station, so it's pretty convenient. The church we have joined is in Seoul, so we began taking the subway every weekend. Cory would go into the city on Saturday nights for the praise team practice and then we would travel down on Sunday for church. From door to door it took us about an hour and 15 minutes. That's a lot farther than I've ever traveled for church every Sunday!

We've had our share of interesting subway experiences. Although I've never seen anything that made me feel unsafe, there have been many times I have felt my personal space being infringed upon! One of the most memorable times was after watching FC Seoul play LA Galaxy with David Beckham. After the game every foreigner and Korean Beckham-lover in Seoul were trying to cram onto the subway trains. We thronged to get into the subway station, thronged to get to the train platform, and thronged to get on a train each time one came through. Here is a shot that doesn't quite do it justice . . .

ALL of that to say this. We now have a new mode of transportation. Cory was thinking scooter, but we ended up with this Daelim Daystar motorcycle! Isn't it nice looking? Our pastor here has a scooter and advised Cory that they don't get as good gas mileage as a motorcycle, and we knew we would be traveling just under an hour one way to get into Seoul several times a week.

Not only is it FUN, but it enables us to get to the city so much faster. We feel much more capable of joining Bible studies during the week and are saving money when we both go down on it rather than taking public transportation. It is getting a little colder these days, but in January our situation is going to be changing a little anyway. More about that later.