I gotta go so I will post the pictures from the expo later this week.

Have a wonderful week

Tiger World

This is a pretty famous Sports complex. I was pretty impressed seeing the outside. It is pretty expensive to enter, but hopefully I get the chance to go before I leave here. You can see the slope on the top of the building, that is a down hill indoor ski slope, there is also a swimming pool, a horse racing track and a golf course in that building. It is pretty cool, each of the rooms are obviously heat and cold controlled depending on the sport. Ingenious is the word that comes to my, like my roomate says they are spatial geniuses. They don't let space go to waste since there is so little of it here.

some other pics including the junior pastor and the other students and teachers...

Sabbath (Saturday) Afternoon

After the baptism we decided to to go the Bucheon Expo, but there was an entrance fee so we decided since it was still the sabbath we would go to the park instead and then after sunset we would then go to the expo...also after 8pm it was free to enter. These pics were from the park.

Brian....getting ready to present Emma with a bouquet of flowers and he also sang You Raise me up to both of the candidates

Jennifer my roomate, Debra and I

Other pictures from baptism.

Emma and I...

Emma's baptism

Here is Emma's baptism, before and after. By the way the students all choose an english name to go by to make it easier for us to remember their names.

John's baptism

This is John as he is being baptized, before and after.

Baptism

On sabbath two students were baptized. Emma who is a level 3 english student and John is a level 2. The school is based on 6 levels and the students are separated according to their english ability. I can communicate easily with these two students so it was wonderful to see them make the decision to get baptized. They are a part of the All Day English Club, which means they are at the institute all day from 8am-6pm M-F and on Saturday they are a part of the church activities in the morning and then they have a sabbath afternoon activity. So pretty much they are there 6 days a week. To us foreign teachers it is a really long time, but these students are committed to learing English. Ok back to the baptism...this is the baptismal pool. We used the SDA church that is not far from the institute. As you can see everyone was making sure it did not overflow.

This week

This week I'm feeling much better. Thank you for all your support and remedies. Cathy thanks a million for the books, they will keep me going for a couple of months, as I only get to read at night just before bed, or in the afternoon if I take a nap. I will try to spread them out over time.

Walkway

The walk to and from our apartment is very beautiful. I decided to take pictures now that the leaves are still green. In a few weeks they will turn color and I will take pictures again from the same place show the season changes. I thought that was a pretty cool idea!!!

Korean food

In this picture you can see my roomate Catherine (Korean name-Lee Hye Jin) eating some Korean side dishes. She hates taking pictures but I managed to get this one. She is eating sweet potato stems...yes stems, sesame leaves which she wraps in rice, the stems from garlic and onion, pickled radish and cabbage also known as kimchi. Koreans don't waste anything when it comes to food. She also had these peppers that were not hot along with the leaves. She seemed to enjoy it all.

Cooking class

This week I didn't do too much because I was sick...actually I still am sick. The teachers were supposed to teach the students in the english club how to make easy american recepies. Connie did popcorn, Jennifer did a vegetarian hotdog spread, Harry did deviled eggs and I was supposed to do nachos, with salsa. I was at home in bed while my roomate did my food. She said it was a great hit. They cleaned the bowls.

Dinner

After we returned from Daebong we decided to go have dinner. We went to a traditional Korean restaurant to have "shabu shabu" that just means everyone is eating from the same pot. The vegetarians had their own pot and the meat eaters had theirs. The pot was very hot and spicy. They first put in a bunch of vegetables for a few minutes to cook, then they eat the veggies. After that they put in the meat and noodles eat that course, and the final course is rice with vegetables and egg. I really enjoyed it except for the fact that not only do you take off your shoes and leave them at the door of the restaurant but you also have to sit low down crossed legged....I can't sit that way so it was very difficult for me to find a comfortable position. I still enjoyed it nevertheless.

Twice a day the water recedes and leaves only mud. The Koreans go into ankle deep mud to collect shell crabs, oysters and little tiny fish that live in the pools of water. We were walking on this bridge at about 4pm and they told us the water will return at 5. Of course we were very worried because we did not know how fast this water would be returning; we did not know if it would come in as fast as a tsunami or just a trickle. I was curious but very worried at the same time. We walked for about 45mins to a light house on the other side of the island, took some pictures and made our way back before the water covered the walkway that we were on. The walkway in the pictures that you see gets totally covered by this water. It reminds me of the children of Israel crossing the Red Sea. It was really cool to see.

First day trip

Today we went to a really cool place called Daebong. It is on the western coast of south Korea. I was told that twice a day the water recedes and you can walk along a walkway. I of course did not believe it,I thought they were not explaining it correctly due to the language barrier; but I actually saw it with my eyes. when we got there the water was out to sea. The koreans have built this long walk way so you can go from one side of the island to the next

The apt.

So this is where I live. The living room, kitchen, my room, a lucky for me I hae my own bathroom; although it is nothing to scream about. Notice the shower head in the top left hand corner? yes, this is my shower, everything gets wet including the toilet seat etc. strange, but at least the bathroom gets a washing down everyday. The first day I got here the bathroom was very moldy, I guess from the last missionary that was here, she kept the door closed so it would not dry between showers. I have however remedied that situation by buying some bleach and a spray bottle and spraying all the moldy areas. The mold is now gone and I keep the door open to let it dry between use.