Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! I hope that you each have a wonderful day that is full of good food, good company, lots of laughter and lots of thankfulness.

It has been a bit of a rough day here in the Republic of Korea. Everyone is still unsettled by the North Korean bombing. I have a couple of students from Cambodia, and they are upset by the stampede that happened a few days ago. There is just a lot going on. A lot of pain and confusion for a lot of people.

It was especially nice to be able to take a step away from all of that stuff going on and talk to my students about thankfulness. It was nice to remember that there are so many wonderful things happening in each of our lives.

There were lots of things I missed about Thanksgiving in America. I missed seeing my family, and having a long weekend. I miss having an official kickoff to the Christmas season. But in some ways, it was really nice. I have really been able to stop and think about all of the things that make this day special that don't revolve around the NFL and cranberry sauce and stuffing. Those kinds of things, the things that are really important, transcend all sorts of language and culture barriers.

I hope that you enjoy your NFL and turkey today! But I also hope that you have the chance to really stop and think about all of the things in your life to be thankful for -- big things AND small things.

North Korea

As most of you have probably heard, North Korea caused some trouble here in South Korea today.

I'm fine, everyone I know is fine... But it is still strange to be in the middle of the place where those newspaper articles you are reading are happening.

Please pray for the families of the two soldiers who died today, and for wisdom for all of the people and countries who are now deciding how to react to this situation. This is a highly sensitive issue for a lot of people, and I don't have a lot of information. I'm not going to say anything else about it here, I just wanted to let you know that I'm ok.

Subway Adventures

It is weekends like this that I really miss having a car. Yesterday morning I met two of my students (Natalie and Jin) to go to a market in Seoul where they sold a lot of musical instruments. Our goal was to find a cello for me. I am happy to report that we did find one, and I like it a lot! I had forgotten how stressful it was to shop for an instrument though...

We found a store that looked like it had some good quality instruments, and there were a few in my price range, so I started trying to talk to the salesman. I was really glad that Natalie and Jin were there to help translate. There were only two cellos that were in my price range that I wanted to put through the paces. It was quite the ordeal. I was trying to figure out how each cello was built, what kind of wood was used for it, and what sort of shapes were happening on the inside. 

Then, we tried a few different sets of strings and a few different bows on both cellos. It is absolutely amazing how much difference a set of strings and a different bow can make in the sound of an instrument. We finally got everything translated and figured out, and I'm quite happy with the instrument. 

After that, we went to look around a traditional market that was a few streets over. Natalie and Jin are going to spend a month in New Zealand, and they wanted gifts for their host families and I wanted to do some Christmas shopping. I almost finished my Christmas shopping though! It required quite a bit of creativity to find something that wasn't fragile, heavy or ridiculous for everyone, but I think it will be ok!

When it was time to go home, I was carrying the cello on my back, Jin was carrying the largish box that had the cello stand in it, and Natalie was carrying our collective shopping bags. We had about an hour long trip on the subway, and we made quite the spectacle. It would have been so nice to be able to throw everything into the trunk of a car!

When I got home that night, I made a birthday cake for one of my friends who was having a surprise birthday party tonight after church. All things considered, I think it turned out pretty well! I only had to go to four different stores to find all of the ingredients that I needed! ::sigh:: It is times like that I really miss Wal Mart!

This morning I taught my English Sunday school class, then went to an organizers meeting for Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday, then went to English church and the birthday party. When I left, I had my large Bible, my Sunday school materials, meeting materials, and the cake. And I had to carry that all the way across Seoul on the subway. I suppose that things like this build character, right?

If you happen to be reading this on your Monday morning, perhaps the mental picture of me wrangling a cello and a chocolate cake through the Seoul Metro System will make you smile a little bit ;-) I hope you had an equally interesting weekend!!

Fall Colors on Suraksan

So I've had these pictures for a long time, I just keep forgetting to post them. I climbed the mountain next to my apartment a few weekends ago with one of my friends. It was really beautiful up there! We hiked for about four hours, all said and done. The day wasn't terribly clear, so it is a little hard to see the city in some of the shots from the top, but without further ado, I give you Suraksan.

There was some Korean guy who had climbed halfway up the mountain to read his newspaper on the side of the trail. 

So this is what the trail looks like at the bottom. It isn't too steep, and overall, it is a rather enjoyable hike!

Then, about halfway up, it turned into something like this. This definitely required a bit more motivation and planning of footing.

The last third of the hike was this. There are small steel spikes embedded into the rock to help you keep your footing, and you basically pull yourself up. 

Just before it got really steep, there was this guy selling snacks. I guess he got bored and lonely up there though, so he made friends with the birds. 

My apartment is somewhere down there. 

Heading back down!

Here is a panorama I put together of what the view from the top of the mountain is. It is beautiful up there!

When we were hiking back down, we kept hearing this music. Finally, we turned a corner, and there was this guy down in a ravine playing a saxaphone. Unfortunately, my memory ran out about five seconds before he finished his song, but it is still pretty cool!

Korean Weddings

Yesterday I played piano for a Korean wedding. I wasn't entirely sure what to expect. The groom apparently works at my university, although I hadn't met him before. There was a quartet of people sang, and I accompanied them.

Most weddings don't happen in a church. There are these buildings called "Wedding Halls", and they are exactly what they sound like. The wedding hall we were in had five stories, and each story holds a wedding about every hour. The room is all set up with chairs and such. It was a really formal room, but a few things seemed strange to my Western eyes.

There were lights that functioned like stage lights. They changed color, and lit different backdrops and some of them sparkled as they hung from the ceiling. There was an aisle, but instead of having an aisle-runner like at a church wedding, it was a plexi-glass insert with some fake rose petals under it. It also had a light under it so the whole aisle glowed.

There was no wedding party. There were these two girls who were dressed in identical outfits. I'm not sure if they were friends of the bride and groom or if they worked for the wedding hall. At the beginning of the ceremony, they both stood at the front and bowed very deeply to the audience. The mothers of the bride and groom came up next. They were wearing hanbok, the traditional Korean clothing. They bowed to each other, then they each lit a candle and the girls escorted them to two chairs in the front. Then they bowed while the groom walked down the aisle. He walked down by himself after a lady who worked for the wedding hall announced that it was time for him to come, and everyone applauded. The groom bowed to everyone who was there too.

There was a cellist, a violinist and a pianist who played. But the music was very strange. They would play for about 15-20 seconds while someone was walking down the aisle, then as soon as that person got to the altar, they would stop. It didn't matter if they were in the middle of a measure, or if it was a good chord to end on. They just stopped. It drove me a little crazy ;-)

When the bride came down the aisle, they did play the traditional "Here Comes the Bride" song, and her dad walked her down the aisle. But there was none of the "Who gives this woman" kind of moment. As soon as they were at the end of the aisle, the groom took over and the dad sat down. There was some talking that I didn't really understand, and the group of Koreans I was with didn't speak enough English to translate it for me.

When they took their vows, they didn't stare deeply into each other's eyes. They raised their right hands and looked at the pastor. They weren't even touching each other while they took their vows. When it was time to kiss the bride, it wasn't really a real kiss. It was more of a photo-op moment, I think. The bride and groom posed until the photographer told them he got a good shot.

At that point, the bride and groom went and bowed to each set of parents, and that was pretty much the ceremony. After the ceremony was over, all of the guests were in pictures with the bride and groom. They did the normal pictures with the family, then someone pulled me up onto the stage to have a picture taken. This is particularly hilarious because I don't know either the bride or the groom, and I was the only foreigner at the wedding. I guess it is trendy to have the token foreigner as part of your wedding photos ;-) So, I'm going to show up in the wedding album of some random Korean couple and they can show their kids the foreigner who came to their wedding, or something like that ;-)

Then we all went to lunch. You don't give a gift or have a registry in Korea. Instead, there is a desk where you give an envelope with money. In exchange, you are given a meal ticket that gets you into the reception. We all walked across this bridge thing to get to the reception. There was a whoooooole lot of food there. I only recognized about half of it, but everything I ate was pretty good.

All said and done, the wedding and reception took about 75 minutes. It was pretty crazy!

Pepero day

In the Western world, yesterday was a day to remember the sacrifices made by so many soldiers over the years. It is usually a day marked with an air of seriousness and respect.

In Korea, yesterday was Pepero day. Pepero (or Pocky as they are known in Japan and America) are long, thin cookies that are dipped in chocolate. There are multiple varieties of pepero that you can buy. There are the original ones, chocolate almond or chocolate peanut, white chocolate, "naked" pepero (which is where the chocolate is inside of a hollow cookie straw) and some that are quite gourmet. I even had one student give me some that were homemade.

Pepero day is on November 11th. There are several theories floating around about why those is. The date (11/11) looks like four pepero sticks, so some people think that it was manufactured by Lotte, the company that makes pepero. The other most popular theory seems to be that some girls in Busan (in the Southern part of South Korea) would give each other pepero with the wish that they would grow to be tall and thin just like a pepero.

Regardless of how it came to be, Pepero Day is an unofficial holiday of some importance. You can buy pepero EVERYWHERE in the days leading up to it. You are supposed to give pepero to your friends and significant others. I got pepero from quite a few of my students. I have a large bag of them sitting next to my desk. I would take a picture to show you, but the batteries on my camera died, and I haven't found where to go to get new ones yet.

The only unfortunate thing about all of this is I don't really like pepero that much... So what should I do with all of these peperos????

Time Zones

Time zones confuse me. They make my life complicated. I guess that I had good training for living in a different time zone than all of my family and most of my friends. I grew up in an area where I worked in one time zone and went to church in another. My neighbor on the left ran on "slow" time and my neighbor across the street ran on "fast" time.

The time zones have struck once again. Just when you thought you were starting to figure out the difference between where you lived and Seoul, daylight savings time happened. So, here are your new guidelines.

If you live in Eastern Time: Add 2 hours and switch the AM and PM. If it is 8:00 pm for you it is 10:00 am the next day for me.

If you live in Central Time: Add 3 hours and switch the AM and PM. If it is 8:00 pm for you it is 11:00 am the next day for me.

If you live in Mountain Time: Add 4 hours and switch the AM and PM. If it is 8:00 pm for you it is noon the next day for me.

If you can't figure it out, you can always look at the clock on the right side of this blog. It will tell you the current time in Seoul.

Good luck! I know I'm going to need it to figure all of this out again....

The Oven, Part II

I had some of my students over tonight for dinner and a movie. While they were here, I took the opportunity to have them help me translate some of the bells and whistles on my oven. It turns out it is a lot more than an oven! Here are a few of the settings:

Roasting meat
Broiling
Home Baking (which is apparently a special setting for cookies, cakes, bread and brownies)
Steaming
Auto-sense cooking
Microwave
Oven
Grill
Fondue (which is supposed to be for melting things)
Fermentation (Who knew that an oven could also be a yogurt maker???)
Dehydrating (perhaps anther use for the leftover bananas?)

It has special settings for defrosting meat, auto-cleaning, a special fan setting to help remove smells from the oven. You can change the settings to reflect what kind of tray or pan you are baking with. You can even adjust the oven based on which level of the oven you have the rack in. It's pretty crazy.

I suppose that it isn't quite the pink easy bake oven I wanted when I was a kid, but it will have to suffice. At least it came with flower decals on the door, right?? I'll probably never, ever use most of these settings. But isn't it nice to know that they are there??

A Campus Tour

It was a beautiful day in South Korea today. It was really cold this morning, but the afternoon warmed up nicely and the sky was an incredibly vivid blue. There is this small garden on top of one of the buildings on my campus, so I went up to take some shots of the campus and surrounding mountains.

This is the name of the garden. But I don't think that is what they really meant.

That's more like it... Those pesky ls and rs....

This is the gazebo where I sometimes ate lunch when the weather was a little bit warmer. It is also in the roof garden. 

This is the garden. It isn't too pretty now, but based on the kinds of plans up there, it will be beautiful in the spring and early summer! The building with the green and white stripe is a hospital, and I think that most of the other buildings are apartments and offices.

This is looking down on the campus. This is the building that I teach in. 

The cool circle thing is the entrance to the student center and cafeteria. This is also the entrance to the all-important nap room and snack room!

My building again, and the computer building. 

These are all apartment buildings, and this is a mountain that you can see from campus. It is next to the mountain that I climbed a few weekends ago. I promise I'll get around to putting up pictures from that soon!

There is a little stream that runs adjacent to campus. There are walking paths on either side of it.