Christmas is coming!!!!

I'll be heading to the states to meet Christmas head-on this year =)

check this out for a good chuckle-- they give "medley" a whole new meaning!

pretty amazing!

First snow!

I was Just heading out to finish some last minute grading when what to my wondering ears should sound, but the giggles and screams of dignified adults completely undone by magical white flakes falling from the sky!

Yes, first snowfall! With an added bonus-- thunder and lightning! Since it was dark, flashes across the sky were even more amazing and the white wonderland lit up for a moment.

In the midst of running around like kids dreaming of a snowday tomorrow, we had snowball fights, made a giant snowman (the middle was bigger than the base, so we decided it was American style-- everyone is so skinny and little here!), and snuck into the cafeteria for some lunch trays to try out as sleds.

What unexpected fun!!! Who knows, maybe that dream of a snowday could come true....
Then again, maybe I should just go to bed!

Happy Winter to you all!

2 months and counting...

that's how long it's been since I wrote here!

A wise blog reader once said:

Better a short
little blurb to be read
Than leaving it empty
--we might think you're dead.

OK, so maybe I just made it up... we've been studying poetry in AP English-- don't be surprised if you find this little gem in the next literature anthology.

No, I'm not dead. When I returned to school in August, it was a crazy, disoriented month before all the new staff and class schedules were finally in place. Since then, there have been MAJOR policy changes and new programs introduced on a regular basis. Just finishing the first quarter, I think I can now say, we've reached some sort of stasis for a while. My own disorganized randomness in the personal world of my head has added to the chaos, so I hadn't realized how much time passed so quickly! I hit the ground running, after a great (long) summer of visiting and traveling with friends&family-- and haven't stopped yet.

So, I have little that can squeeze through the constricted aperture of a muddled writing-brain right now, but I am alive and I realize some of you still check this page even though I've given you no reason to be so faithful. Thank you for stopping by and I will try to follow the bloggy advice from the poem in future days and weeks.

Here's some pictures until then...

We went to Everland for the Chuseok holiday

We also had our school's Fall Festival, complete with candy, music, games and costumes!

Princess Fiona here.

The view from my window "in the tallest tower"
not so Far, Far Away

Home sweet home...

Hi

**** disclaimer: this post will not even come close to covering all I should have written over the past month and a half, so don't expect too much. Really, I know that my blogging license should be revoked for my lack of communication, but if you've looked around at all, it's pretty obvious that no license is required, so even the slouches like me who can't seem to jot a few words now and then are not apprehended by the blog-police and dragged off to Internet prison, along with all the other electronic miscreants, where Al Gore drones on about the environment for the duration of our well deserved worse-than-prison sentence. So, I hope you'll just accept the apology for my lack of writing and hope that I get my act together as the school routine possibly puts my world into more order-- or not. I'm a repeat offender and there may be no hope of rehabilitation... ****

yes, well, it was a busy summer with lots of travel, tons of catching up with family and friends, and a trip to London & countryside of England. It's been full, long, fast, and fun!!! It's good to be back in my own bed, the suitcases are unpacked and now all I have to do is makes sense of the resulting piles =)

Thank you all for your travel-safety prayers-- God answered them on numerous occasions when things could have gone quite wrong! Diving back into school will be an adventure as we navigate some major changes, joining back in at church will be steady all weekend, and jumping back into Korean life is as smooth as last year at this time...

Life is good, God is always protecting, growing and challenging me, I've received great encouragement and energy from my friends and family, and it's time to start the second year of this big adventure! I'll keep you posted.... really =)

Hello again!

I promised to update this page very soon... well, it's beyond time now!
After completing one school year in Korea, I'm back in the States for a visit.

As you scroll down, you'll find many updates, some pictures, and stories from life on both sides of the globe as I recall the last few months in Korea and catch up on the previous year in the lives of my family and friends.

For those of you in Korea just joining me on this page, scroll down to be introduced to some people in my world here (more pictures and less English to deal with ^^).

Love you all!

Interviewing myself...

So you've been gone from the country you've called home all your life for almost a year and I wonder... Have you changed at all?

hmmmm

• I can use chopsticks much better now!
• I like spicy food and fish (didn't think I liked them a year ago!)
• My sense of direction is much better now...
  
• this is due to a heightened consciousness to detail-- when you can't read all the communication we take for granted every day, you can't afford to be oblivious like I have been most of my life =) It's a little like the sense of seeing becoming more acute when the sense of hearing is lost-- except even reading lips won't help me in this language I can't understand =)
• I don't see the complicated illegal immigrant issue in the same way I used to-- Some of my good friends are illegal and as their opportunities are even more limited in their home countries, they are willing to take their chances to support thier families with no other hope (and when they are caught, they praise God for His provision and for being restored to their families, and we all pray that God will open a legal way for them to return) I don't venture to say that the issue is parallel to the US problem now, but it used to be so black and white in my head, and now it's not....
• I am more comfortable with the ambiguities and mysteries of life, faith, and culture-- The Bible is absolute truth, but there are so many things in the West we consider to be "right" that are really just cultural. Besides that, explaining away a mystery doesn't solve the mystery, it just allows us to be at peace with something we can understand-- even if it's not entirely true.
  
• Now that I'm back in the States, I begin more sentences than I'd like with "In Korea, we..." It's becoming obnoxious to me already, so it must be driving everyone else crazy!
• I'm just a tiny bit more decisive. "In Korea I..." ... don't have time to second guess everything and whatever I don't decide on quickly just won't get done, purchased, or whatever. I think this has led to the next one...
• I live life more and think it less! I took many journals with me and I've used them to jot down thoughts I don't want to forget, but it's not so much of a survival mechanism anymore. It's good to live in reality instead of so much time spent inside my own mind (scary place =)
  
• I'm a little bit better teacher-- This one is kind of cheating... in the first decade of teaching it's pretty hard not to improve with each year's experience =)
• I've been living in a very touchy-feely place. I'm not sure if I'm really changed or if it's just a way to fit into this culture, but we're often packed in so we practically sit on each other, hold hands walking everywhere, and hugs are the natural way to greet each other. I've always been awkward with this stuff, but it seems that some of that barrier is broken down-- the difference is that all the physical connection doesn't mean so much here...with no personal bubble, it's not a big deal to touch someone else-- either shoving or hugging!
• I got a little more organized in schoolwork, but most of my world is just as random and haphazard as ever (thus, months between having time with organized thoughts to blog!)
• I'm quicker to make friends and less demanding of them in the way of intensity-- I'm still not "casual friend" material, but I can have more than 2 friends at a time and my head doesn't explode =)

Have you missed anything while you've been gone?

• My niece was born 3 days after I arrived in Korea, so I had never held her or seen her except on my computer screen-- I do love holding Kaitlyn now! And playing with Logan and hanging out with Mariah-- I've missed months of them growing up and am surprised at how different they are and still much the same... It's the same with everyone, but with children it's so much more obvious!
  
• With the advent of the internet (thanks Kerry!), skype and other international communication, blogs and e-mail, I don't feel that I've entirely lost touch with what is happening for my family and friends across the US, but I am enjoying catching up in person now this summer!
• Having transportation parked next to my door-- but the loss of car payments, insurance, maintenance, and needing to be alert while traveling are a good trade-off!
• Knowing what drugs I'm taking after getting prescriptions from the doctor =)
• Doritoes, Reece's, salad, pizza, and small (normal) spoons
• Understanding the language around me! Grocery shopping is so much easier when you can read the labels-- find a foreign food store sometime and try to find the salt, vanilla, mayonnaise, and the kind of toothpaste you like!
  

All in all, I'm pretty much the same person and while I enjoy being back in my homeland again, I miss Korea at the same time-- it's a GREAT place! Come visit sometime!!

Korean friends, meet my American Friends and family...

My family: (I obviously need to update the albums! My Dad is missing!)

my sis& a happy big brother

sister,mom,me

niece&nephew

aren't the nephew&niece SOOO cute?!

Like a second family to me!

Friends

my teaching buddy!

superpowers: shopping and teaching me how!

never a dull moment with my Idaho buddies!

American friends and family, meet my Korean Friends...

Whole School...
My Seniors (co-advising group)










Co workers:

Church Family

Sisters and Brothers

Still here!

Yesterday I reclaimed my house.

I'm embarrassed to say it was taken over by piles, stuff, dust, school, things, recycling, junk... it looked like a crazy cat lady should live here (except so bad that the cats would have taken off a LONG time ago!) When my schedule began to get so full, I resorted to only barely keeping up with laundry and dishes-- if it didn't stink, I couldn't take time to deal with it.

This isn't really anything new in my world. This cycle is "normal," but when it gets to the out-of-control-stage, I hate it! It makes me lethargic at home so that instead of using the limited time doing all the things I need to do, somehow, I spend hours doing nothing and digging a deeper hole for myself over time.

Sunny weather returning does seem to help me in the motivation department as well as seeing the end of the school year in sight-- and needing to leave this place in a state of organization so I can come back and hit the ground running in August!
So, the desire to fix it was there but if I was a tidy organized person who could figure out how best to clean things up, I wouldn't be in this mess. People like me (and I'm told there are many of us out there!) need someone to show us the way to live like the highly advanced lifeforms that we are; because left to myself, I could be the proof that scientists are looking for that we all evolved from hyenas!

So, thank you Ellie for telling me about flylady I got some tips on how to "crisis clean" and then how to keep up on all the little things that I feel completely helpless to conquer on a regular basis. The bottom line is-- you can do a lot in 15 minutes! (and you can't do everything at once so don't beat yourself up trying)

My encouragement to me today-- enjoy seeing the floor and some table surface areas!
My encouragement to you today-- if you feel helpless, get help! There are people in this world who are good at the things you're not.... and they probably have a website

Have a great day!

Snippets from the Whirlwind

Things

Spring Break did prove to be a restful time and I came back to school with more motivation and feeling like I could be better at my job again =)
I've got all the travel plans figured out for the summer and I'm really excited to hang out with friends and family again! Now that the tickets have been purchased and we're on the home stretch of the 2nd semester, my excitement is mounting by the day!

A bunch of us from church are pretty excited to go to a Hillsong concert next month! There will be many Korean parts of the concert/worship service, but I'm sure I'll hear more English music all at once than I've heard in a long time!

Music

The school had a Spring Fair on Friday and one part of the event was an art show of all the students' work from this semester. To continue a tradition started 3 years ago, musically inclined teachers play background music at the art show to provide some atmosphere, so my guitar and I got roped in for a time slot. This is much different than my normal playing because, usually, the whole point is for other people to join in and sing along, and it's a basic list of worship songs that I play. Who knew all those years of listening to FM100 (the easy listening station in Idaho) would come in handy 20 years later?! The folk/oldies tunes are fairly easy to find music for, many don't require a great sense of rhythm or many chords, and the voice I have fits this genre quite easily. I had a great time singing and jamming with my fellow teachers-- it didn't even matter to us that the torrential rains made for tiny crowds and all the outdoor events were moved to the gym on other end of campus. BIG fun!

Church

I'm in a discipleship class with 3 other foreigners led by our English ministry leader, Pastor Kang. It's been good to go back to the foundations, memorize Scripture, and find out more about my friends and their backgrounds. There's enough homework to keep me busy, but Pastor Kang is a very understanding teacher, so it's doable =)

After sitting in the pew for a few months, I'm now enjoying the opportunity to sing on the worship team for English ministry, so that adds a practice late Saturday nights, but since I have to leave my house anyway, I now go a little earlier to attend the young adult service. (well, we're not so young, but we are all single =) The music and teaching is all in Korean, but my good friend Lydia translates for me. It's yet another flavor of worship service: a more lively and energetic group, the message is more intimate than the large services, and it's a wonderful time for Lydia and I to be together. The whole group welcomes me with open arms and they don't even seem to mind the constant murmur of a foreign language at the back of the room.

Sundays are full to the brim from pre-service music practice in the morning till the conclusion of English practice before evening service (which I don't attend because by 7:00 I'm pooped and there's always a little school prep. to be done before Monday morning =)

English

My English Bible study for high schoolers has slimmed down to a much more manageable size. It's now only 3-5 students any given week (instead of 20) and I'm still having a blast getting to know them and helping them gain confidence to speak while also diving into God's word!

The desire for English is overwhelming here! There's no way I could help everyone who drops a hint or asks directly and I feel helpless when I have to say that I have no more time to practice with people, but I'm full up right now =) Pastor Kim (see next post), one of the staff pastors who has given us midnight rides home after Friday night service for months, is needing to practice and improve his English for missions ministry; Sunday&Thursday evenings we have conversations with little mini-lessons thrown in here and there.
One of my Bible study students is facing a difficult university application process which includes interviews in English discussing political issues, so he and I are meeting for a little while before our study to converse and prepare him for that.

The school has arranged for a "critical writing" class for students whose parents want them to have extra tutoring from English teachers; we meet 2 afternoons a week for an hour for some concentrated writing instruction and practice. It's a GREAT extra boost in the income and it's fun to work with my students who begin to see their writing improve through one-on-one editing and instruction. It is "one more thing" on the schedule, but highly worth it for the improvement we're seeing in their daily classwork during the day too!

In a Nutshell...

We have a few members from our English ministry planning to return to their home countries (at least semi-permanently) over the next few months and one of these is the main leader of our worship team. Though we've got a good, steady, team, the second leader is up to his neck in seminary coursework, so they're eyeing me as an additional leader and I'm promising to pray about it. Please pray with me for ears to hear His voice, wisdom galore, and willingness to follow wherever God leads.

For those of you playing along at home and doing the math, it's pretty safe to say that, after only 8 months, I'm as busy here as I ever was back in the states and I'll seriously be considering what to drop if anything else comes up.

Life is good!

God is good!

Finally getting all this blogged is good!

Sleep is good from what I remember...

g'night

May you also find God's leading in all your snippets and peace within your whirlwind!