Worship Team, the end of intensives and even more food

I don't really know why I always feel it necessary to write my three points in the title, but hopefully at least some of you find it useful (especially since I have a tendency to ramble!)

Anyway, this morning was our first practice with the worship team at the community of JOY, and it was one of the most awesome experiences EVER! We got to the church a little early, and only Mr. Yang was there (who, if you remember, doesn't speak English), but we were soon joined by Julie, who's been acting as our unofficial translator these past couple of weeks. After that, people started arriving quite quickly, and we soon had a pretty good crowd gathered. Mr. Yang showed me where to set up while Shannon chatted with Julie, and before long we had a full-fledged practice on our hands. It was definitely very different at first, what with the practice being almost completely in Korean, but we managed, and had a wonderful time while we were at it. The tricky part was figuring out how Mr. Yang was mapping out the songs, but we adapted pretty quickly. The great excitement for us was just the chance to be singing with a worship team again, and doing what I love most.

After practice, we were invited out to lunch with the team, and had a most delicious meal of 칼국수 (kalguksu), which is basically mussel noodle soup with spicy dumplings. I've personally never had mussels before, so this was doubly new, and it was fantastic! During lunch, we had a chance to get to know the members of the worship team a little better, and they're all really awesome people. Everyone was really nice, and we learned a lot about many in the group. One of the guys, whose English name us Romeo, is a jewelry designer, and he's graciously decided to design a line of jewelry specifically for the worship team, and is going to give everyone on the team a piece as a GIFT, starting with Shannon and me! Shannon will be getting a bracelet and I'm getting a ring, and Romeo said he should have them done in a couple weeks (we'll post pictures as soon as we get them, so you can see just how beautiful these things are).

The last thing on the docket is the impending end of intensives. Shannon has already finished her classes, but I've still got two days left, and I can definitely say it's been a wild ride. The little ones that I've been teaching are hilarious to work with (and like to play the game "teacher, do you know..." as a way of testing my knowledge of Korean during our break times). The last few days have been an unending quest by Layssa, the little girl in my class, to get a million copies of my signature. Hopefully she's not planning some sort of identity theft scam, but then, unless she actually gets a hold of my wallet, I don't think I have too much to worry about.

After the last two days of class, we have an extended weekend, and we're still not sure what we're going to do, but we are hoping actually to make it up to Seoul for the first time while we've got the time off. Either way, we're quite happy to have another long weekend before we get back to our regular schedule.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPod touch]

The Lunar New Year

So here I am, sitting on the subway, trying to decide what the rest of my weekend is going to look like. The last full week of intensives is finished and we've got a four-day weekend to recover before we have to go back to school for a short week.

This weekend is the lunar new year, or the Chinese new year as we were used to hearing about it back in Canada. It's not at all the same kind of celebration in korea that it is in china, but it is still one if the most important holidays on the Korean calendar.

There are lots of other places that explain it better than I can, so I'll just give the basics: Koreans reckon their birthdays by the lunar calendar, so the lunar new year is essentially everyone's birthday. As such, the new year is cause for what amounts to an annual family reunion. Everyone vacates the cities and travels to the hometown of their oldest living relative (which makes traveling to, say, Seoul for fun all but impossible...But more on that later), where families have a number of traditions that they carry out. These traditions range from kids wearing traditional Korean outfits bought specially for the occasion to everyone eating a special soup that signifies your growing one year older.

The other big excitment from the weekend was the fact that I was finally able to get myselfva guitar, and Shan and I are now set to join the worship team at our church starting next weekend. I think I'm mist excited about this because it's been since June that I was last on a worship team and not just playing for myself. When Shan and I got home from shopping yesterday, I played so much that I actually blistered my fingers for the first time ever since starting to play (that's just how long it's been since I left my guitars in Tim's care back in Canada)!

I think our plans for the rest of the weekend will include much sleep and hopefully some geocaching tomorrow, if the weather stays nice. I've still got a couple travel bugs that I have to get placed before their owners start to worry. (For those unfamiliar with geocaching check out their website, http://www.geocaching.com/ and feel free to join in the hunt. All you need is a gps and a sense I'd adventure!)

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPod touch]

Intensives, churches and pure deliciousness!

I've been made aware that many of our pictures and posts involve food in some way, and this one, it turns out, will be no different. But more on that later.

It's been awhile since we've given an update, and the simple answer for that is 'Intensive Classes'. For those of you following me on Twitter, you've probably noticed that most of my recent updates have involved my intensive classes in some way, and that's because that's really most of what there is to report.

This month Shannon and I have an extended schedule that involves early morning classes in addition to our regular afternoon/evening schedule. However, there are only four students for this intensive month (since Korea's economy isn't much better than North America's right now), so we only have two classes each. 'Because I'm the man,' I get the earliest classes, which I'm completely content with because I've got two of the cutest and smartest kids EVER. I have two classes with James and Layssa: one for conversation and one for writing, and these guys are so smart, we went through three writing books before they found one that wasn't 'too easy'. Oh, and did I mention, they're NINE?! They actually carry on a conversation in English better than many of my teenagers, and they're hilarious to work with, too.

Shannon's classes are with two of our teenagers, one of whom has been struggling with her regular classes. Hera's main problem is that she is very shy, and even more so when it comes to speaking English, but since the start of intensives, she's really broken out of her shell, and she's speaking a lot more, even in her other classes, and improving dramatically as a result.

It's almost sad that we've only got 10 days of intensives left, but at the same time, the extra hours are really starting to wear on us. Shan's gotten a little sick this week, and we're really praying that she'll be back up and running at full strength before Monday hits and we have another full week of long days to run through.

The other major thing is that we've had opportunity to visit another church in the city (which also happens to be much closer to home). The church is called the Community of JOY, and it's part of the English ministry of a huge Korean Methodist church. The Korean church has 5 services on Sunday, at 2000 attendees per service! By contrast, their English service has only about 70 people, and they're actually mostly English-speaking Koreans who attend. We were connected with one of the foreigners in the church by our good friend Leslie, who attended the Community of JOY back when she was in Korea, so that was a great connection point when we were meeting people after the service finished. Everyone there was very friendly, and the atmosphere was one of real community, like we're used to at home. Lisa, the foreigner who helped us find the church, also told us that there are many ministry opportunities in the church if we're interested, and we're even meeting with one of the English-speaking folk on the worship team this weekend to see how we can get involved musically.

An interesting side note is that many of the people involved in the music ministry for the Community of JOY do not actually speak English. They're members of the Korean church who feel led to be a part of the English Ministry and so they choose and practice English songs for the English service, but often their English is very limited. Worship team practice is completely in Korean, but for the English lyrics to the songs. When I learned this, I was actually really excited, because it gives me a great opportunity to learn Korean in a properly immersive environment. Hopefully, after we get a chance to get more information on getting involved musically, I'll be able to join the existing worship team (or eventually put together one of my own!).

After the service and small group, we were taken out to lunch at a restaurant nearby where we had the chance to try something new (I told you I'd get back to the food eventually!) - 돼지갈비 (dwaeji galbi). It consists of pork ribs marinated in (what I assume to be) soya sauce, which go on the grill in your table (much the same way as 삼겹살), and when it's cooked you wrap it in a lettuce leaf with garlic, pickled raddish and anything else that they happen to provide as a side dish. As I noted in the title, the combination was pure deliciousness! And this Sunday, we're being taken out for something that translates roughly to 'ugly fish', which we can't wait for, as it'll be our first experience with Korean seafood.

We're planning our first trip to Seoul next weekend for Solnal, the Lunar New Year, so your prayers would be most welcome as we travel outside Daejeon for the first time. I've got my sights on a guitar from the Musical Instrument Market (technically, it's called an Arcade, but either way, it's got guitars), so we'll let you all know how it all goes. Till then, we really appreciate all your prayers, and the little notes of encouragement we've been getting.