Finally, our first trip out of the city!

And to answer your first question: no, we're not going to Seoul. We're on the bus heading out to a little town called Hong Seong, where our friend Lorie lives. She was so kind as to come and visit us on our first weekend in Korea, so we're off to visit her.

(As a bit of a sidebar, I will admit that blogging on a bus is a little bit more difficult than on the subway, mainly because the bumpy roads make my little iPod bounce around a fair bit.)

We're quite excited to be going on our first inter-city adventure, although we're a little scared that we're on the wrong bus. We bought our tickets assuming we were leaving 20 minutes later, but the girl at the ticket window said there was a bus leaving right away! So we go to the bus that's in the process of pulling out of the lot, tap on the door, and ask the driver, "Hong Seong?" and without a word, he takes our tickets and we get on the bus. So, here's hoping we actually make it to Hong Seong...I guess we'll find out in a couple hours!

(I'll post again with the results of our trip on the way back)

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPod touch]

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]