The end of the Trip

Hey Everyone!

We arrived back home in Iowa City at around 4 this afternoon, with the exception of Rebecca (she went to China instead to study abroad for a year). Thank you everyone for your prayers and support. We had an absolute blast on the trip being both tourists for the first week and being the greatest Native speaking English teachers ever to visit South Korea! Okay, maybe not the greatest but the kids sure did make us feel that way. Anyway, thanks again for all prayers and support that we received to make this trip possible.

-The South Korea Team of Nathan, Brooke, Rachel, Caleb, Carol, Rebecca and Ben

P.S. Stayed tuned for the addition of some pictures from our trip!

Our Last Day in South Korea

We left Luther University to eat Lunch at Matt Wasmund’s house in Seoul after our debriefing with John the evangelist and Pastor Yun.  When we arrived at Seoul Station, we met Matt and his two daughters, Lily and Olivia, to walk to their house.  The girls were adorable.  They are 6 and 4, respectively.  They’re full of energy and happiness.  They showed us their room, danced for us, and read some books to just name a few things.  At Matt’s house, Didi, Matt’s wife, prepared a wonderful meal.  Then we went to Changdugong to see the secret garden.  Unfortunately we were too late and not able be in an English tour.  So we just looked around the palace grounds.  The architecture and color scheme was similar to other palaces that we have see.  Then we went to Insadong, the shopping/souvenir district of Seoul.  We all picked up some sweet things.  People got paintings, clothes (shirts, dresses), food dishes and utensils, and a bunch of other cool items.  Then we took the subway back to Nick’s and Anna’s apartment.

By Benjamin Behrendt

 

Today, the group split up. After a walk in the park, a couple of us decided to go to Seoul to see if we could see the Secret Garden at the Changdugong Palace, while the others decided to stay at Nick and Anne’s apartment and relax a little. We got to Seoul with a little extra time before the tour, so we went to a very beautiful Buddhist temple that had three giant gold replicas. We went to the Garden afterwards. It wasn’t exactly what I expected – I think I’m too used to Western gardens. There were a lot of ponds with pagodas, and a two story library that had beautiful little purple flowers growing along its bamboo fence. It was a huge garden – the tour lasted an hour and a half, and then it took 20 minutes to walk back out. Afterwards, we went to the Jongmyo Shrine. This is where all of the emperors and empresses of Korea are remembered. We caught the tail end of a tae kwon do tournament, which was very exciting. We caught a bus back just in time to meet Anna and the rest of the group at a restaurant; we decided to take their family out as a last thank you for everything they’ve done for us. We were so blessed to have been able to stay with them these past two weeks; they did so much for us and we will never forget them or their kindness. 

We also just celebrated Rebecca’s birthday with a lovely chocolate cake. She’s heading for China tomorrow, and I think we’ll all miss her very much. She’ll be in our hearts and our prayers, and I hope she’ll be in yours, as well.

The rest of us, though, are heading back to America! We’re taking off for the airport at 6 AM. Please pray for us on our way back home. It was a wonderful trip, and we hope the ending will be as well, though a little bittersweet.

We’ll see you soon!

-Rachel

Last Day of Teaching

So, today was our last day of teaching, and it was very bitter-sweet. It’s a good feeling to know that we made it through the camp, but the kids were just so much fun to work with and be around. Today, between all of the classes, we went through about 4 pounds of candy. Ben and Rebecca took candy and had their kids use them as the markers for Bingo. That definitely got rid of some candy. What was left we threw out the window to the kids that were still there afterwards. During the closing, the pastor of Palbok Lutheran Church said a prayer for us, gave us some awesome gifts, and we all took pictures together. With the help of some of the head people of the camp, the kids wrote us all notes and then Stella, the main woman in charge, and the other camp directors and whatnot made all of us books with the notes and some pictures of us that had been taken throughout the week, which was really awesome!

This is Caleb and I’s group for the week. They were so much fun to work with and they were super funny as well!

--Brooke

 

After the camp, we went out to eat, with two of the guys that helped out with the camp. It was an interesting dinner for a couple of reasons. One was that neither of them knew very much English, so communication was difficult, but with the resources available on phones these days, we were able to talk a little bit. Another reason that it was interesting was that everything they served us was raw, and we were in charge of adding it to the pot of broth in the middle of the table to make our supper. It was a lot of fun and very tasty. We only have a couple days left so we won’t be getting many more meals that are this interesting.

-Caleb

Water Fights part Deux

Today was our second to last day of English Camp. We started off with a breakfast trip to Dunkin Donuts, and then started getting ready for class. The story the children learned about today was about Jesus’ birth, and they made cross necklaces in crafts. The morning went smoothly and lunch was Bibim bap a sort of rice casserole with vegetables. Afterwards the cooks brought out bread, butter, and strawberry jam for the Americans, but it seemed that snack was way more popular with the younger children.

Next was more English and Bible lessons and music. We had somewhat of a chaotic closing which calmed down when Brooke said the prayer, we had relay races on the rooftop turf followed by a huge water fight. Lucy, Hee, and Alice were dumped into the small blowup pool right away and then we were soaked by water balloons and guns. Everyone was pushed into the pool at some point. And the children all learned teamwork when they wanted to go dump a heavy bucket of water on someone.

An hour later, exhausted, we ate some gim bap and hard boiled eggs, did laundry, and are currently playing cards (a game taught to us by Caleb called 99).

By Carol

Our class is definitely getting used to our weird quirks. Yesterday, when Nate and I started singing “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” to them, they just kind of stared at us in silence. Now they either grin and clap, or happily ignore us. We tried teaching it to them so they could sing with us, but that particular vocabulary word still seems a little out of their range. Maybe tomorrow they will join us. J

We talked about the birth of Jesus today. They seemed to know the story – some of the girls even waved their arms like wings when we talked about the angels coming to the shepherds. We also finished memorizing John 3:16, a verse we’ve been working on all week. We also made cross necklaces in crafts with Carol. The kids loved them and wore them all day.

I can’t believe tomorrow is our last day to teach already! Hopefully, it will be a good one.

-Rachel

3rd Day of Teaching (Over half way done)

Today was a lot of fun. A lot of the kids are starting to become a lot more comfortable with us and are having a lot of fun. Duck Duck Goose is the greatest game ever for kids that need something to do to burn off energy.

                

Then after camp today the kids from the church that is helping to host our camp had a little get together and invited us to have fun with them. We did a couple of Relay Races and had some ice cream things that were very tasty. Then we had a very large water-balloon fight. The water-balloons just kept coming and coming and the excitement lasted for about 45 minutes. Nate, Ben, and Caleb even tried having a 3v3 soccer match with the one of the Korean hosts and two of the older kids that were out teaching assistants, it worked surprisingly well until they balloon popped. 

 

Like Nate said, the kids really enjoy games. My kids really like to play BINGO, but I think that might be because they get candy if they win. The water fight and whatnot was on the roof of the building that we have been teaching in. The teaching assistants really got into it. They were the ones that got most of us completely soaked. When you threw the balloons, they didn’t pop when they hit the floor, so everyone started running at each other and popping it in their hands over other people. This was pretty effective actually. Tomorrow I guess we are having another water fight, so we will see how this goes.

 

--Nate and Brooke

Teaching–Day 2

Teaching went much more smoothly today.  We all had a better idea of the English level of our students and could plan accordingly.  After moving some of the students around to other groups we also had students with similar familiarity of English together.  We had crafts, music, the English lesson, the Bible lesson and activity time, and I think with the kids had fun with the variety of methods we used to teach them English and help them learn about Creation. 

posted by Rebecca

 

We went to dinner with the President of the university, Luther University, that we are staying at and teaching.  Rotary Garden was name of the restaurant we ate at.  It was a traditional Korean Restaurant.  At each table there was a cooking area where hot coals were put to cut the ribs.  It was delicious.  We talked with the president about some history of the church and Luther University in Korea.

Authored by “The” Ben Behrendt

Our First Day of Class

Today was our first day of teaching. It started out with a Korean church service. Our group was given a Korean/English Hymnal, and we used that to sing the hymns. The service was a traditional service, so we could tell what where we were, but it was all in Korean so we couldn’t follow along all that well.

After the service, the congregation had a lunch for us. On the way to the lunch Steven, one of the kids in the congregation asked me if he could eat with me. So I ate with him and some other members in the congregation. They served a Korean dish, but they had cereal, bread, and jelly on a table with a note “For Teachers who like not spicy.”

Our first day at the seminary has introduced us to interesting people and we are looking forward to meeting many more in the rest of this week.

-Caleb

This morning was such a blessing. It was truly a joy to meet and worship with our brothers and sisters in Korea. I look forward to spending the rest of the week with them.

After lunch, we headed over to our classrooms, where we finally got to meet the children. We spent a couple hours getting to know them and trying to gauge how much English they already knew. Nathan and I played Hangman with them to practice their alphabet and words, and they won a lot before they even had any letters on the board. After class, we taught them how to play Red Rover and ate ice cream. The ice cream was very strange; it came in a plastic bottle and had to be squeezed out. It was very good though, and I hope they serve it again.

It was a great beginning to the camp, and we hope to have more students tomorrow.

-Rachel