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]