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

Going to the Seminary

Today we left Nick and Anna’s to go to the Seminary where we will be teaching our English Bible Camp. We are teaching at the Luther Theological Seminary from Sunday (today) to Thursday. We will be teaching them some Bible stories, but we are focusing more on the English aspect. The kids start to learn English when they enter first grade, but they learn more grammatical things then just words and phrases. We met up with our contact Matt and had dinner with him and another missionary, Julie. Ben and Nate were both very surprised when their meals came with Scissors and were large enough to feed half the group or more. It wasn’t what they were expecting but it was all still delicious.

Before we left for the Seminary, Nick and his son took us to a park near their apartment. It was a very nice park with a Lake and lots of Statues around it. There was a Book Theme Park that had a library and a stage and a lot of other interesting things in and around it. We had a lot of fun on the workout equipment around the lake. The whole group is excited about finally having air conditioning at the seminary, we probably won’t know what to do with it.

Brooke and Nate

DMZ and Other Fun

Yesterday our group had to get up early for the tour that we’ve been planning for a month—the DMZ Tour.  We went into one of the four known tunnels from North Korea.  Three were discovered in the 70s and the last one was found in 1990. These tunnels were made by North Korea to be used as a part of a possible attack on South Korea.  Some of the tunnels are big enough to move equipment that could reach Seoul within an hour.

Figure 1: DMZ Razor Fence

The depth of the 3rd tunnel that we toured was equivalent to a 20 story building underground.  We were able to go 350 yards along the tunnel to the north.  Along the entire way we were cold and condensation dripped off the walls and ceiling.  The entire way down we had to duck because of the short ceiling, about 6.6 feet, but that was probably at its high point.

Before we entered the tunnel, we saw a short clip on the Korean war and a cases of old weapons that were used.  Our group took pictures in front of a mine field next to the entrance of the tunnel.  Apparently none of the forest on base was safe to walk in because there were potential minefields everywhere.

Figure 2: Minefield Sign

Afterwards we went to the Dora Observatory where we were able to see the Demarcation Line and North Korea.  However we had take pictures of North Korea behind a line because the military did not want us to take pictures of the South Korean military locations.  Then we went to the restaurant and ate Bulgogi which was cooked in front of us on the table. Then we were told to make Bulgogi Sam (in Korean ‘sam’ means ‘closing shape’) with bean sprouts, garlic, beef, rice, and bean paste wrapped in lettuce leaves.

Figure 3: Dora Observatory View of North Korea

Figure 4: Bulgogi Lunch

Figure 5: Bulgogi Sam

Lastly we went to the Freedom Bridge. The name comes from the fact that prisoners were exchanged over this bridge after the Korean War. Along with the bridge there was a pool in the shape of Korea and a bullet-ridden train.  The train was there to show the damage from the conflict.

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Figure 6: Freedom Bridge

Figure 7: Pool in the Shape of a Unified Korea

Figure 8: War-Damaged Train

We got back to Seoul around 2ish and wandered the town.  With the rest of the day we saw the city hall and the area where they watch World Cup tournaments.  Next we toured the Deoksu palace.  Deoksugung was part of the Joseon Dynasty and therefore looks very similar to the Gyeonbok palace, but with fewer buildings.  Finally we got to see a bit of the city at night when we went to Namdeamun Market to shop for souvenirs. 

Figure 9: Seoul City Hall

Figure 10: Deoksu Palace

Figure 11: Namdaemun Market

Actually by Ben Behrendt & Carol Schaff

Another Day in Seoul

Today was another beautiful day in Seoul.  We took the Seoul City Tour buses that stopped at many points of interest.  It was neat that we could already recognize parts of Seoul that we had been to just yesterday.  Our first stop was the Korea National Museum.  There we learned some different aspects of Korean culture and history that made it what it is today.  Then was Namsan Tower, built on a mountain in the city.  The view from the top showed us how enormous Seoul is, even though we could not see all of it in the mist.  Down around the base of the tower it is a tradition for lovers to place a lock with a note on the railing.  There are even metal pine structures on which to put even more locks.    They looked a little like Christmas trees from the distance.  There were thousands and thousands of locks covering the rails and the metal trees.  What an interesting tradition!               posted by Rebecca

Lunch was a bit of an adventure today. We found a tiny little restaurant inside an underground tunnel, and decided to try it out. We squeezed by the main counter to a small table in the back, and ordered a dish of everything to share between us. There was faboki, which was a large noodle covered in spicy sauce (very good), ojinga, fried squid (also very good), and a couple of other Korean dishes. We were also treated to some warm liver; luckily, I wasn’t told what that particular dish was until after I tried it, or I might not have. As a grand finale, we got lung, which only a brave few attempted. I was one of these, and I have to tell you, the white veins sticking out were very off-putting. The taste was also a bit of a shock to the system. I was told after that I looked pretty sick to my stomach, which was very much the case. However, it was fun to explore, and was definitely one of the highlights of the day. Hopefully, we’ll get a chance to try some more unusual foods.   -Rachel

Our first full day!

Hey Everyone!

So Today we had many small adventures, we were walking near the Blue House (The Korean equivalent of the American White House) and were stopped by what appeared to be Korean Secret Service agents so that a small motorcade could pass without stopping. We also had a lot of fun wandering through Insadong. It is a market area in Seoul. We saw a lot of cool stuff, some expensive, some surprisingly cheap. I bought a really nice umbrella because it was raining that looked like it would be worth at least 20 dollars for only 5,000 Won (like 5 US dollars). We watched some guys making some really cool stuff out of honey and nuts called toksarae. It was really cool. They used honey and formed it into some 16,000 strands! It looked like hair when they were done! They used these strands to wrap up the nut mixtures. We didn’t get any because we were all full but we planned on trying some tomorrow if we have a chance.

-Nate

You would not believe how many Dunkin’ Donuts are in Seoul. I feel like we see one every other block. Actually, we saw a lot of seemingly random things today, including a 3D hologram in the Blue House museum. This was the most fabulous thing ever, and it made me feel like I was in a Star Trek episode. We also stumbled upon an interesting set of stone statues today. They were the astrological signs, standing in a circle, and dressed in armor. I got a picture with my sign (the snake) and I have to admit, for not knowing the statue existed until that moment, I have a really strong attachment to that little guy. I can’t wait to see what else is around here.

-Rachel

One of my favorite things that I saw today were the guards at the Gyeongbokgung Palace. There were quite a few of them standing around the gate. Most of them were standing completely still, like the guards at Buckingham palace, but some of them were not quite as formal, and were talking with the people that were touring the castle. We got our picture between some of the guards, When we took that picture I realized one of the guards had a sword, a pole arm, and a bow and arrow. After we left the guards, another group tried to take a picture but the guards wouldn’t let them. We soon realized it was because they were going to do a little demonstration. For that, the guards on both sides lined up. Then they marched around to the other side. It was really cool. I am looking forward to seeing other interesting things in the coming days.

-Caleb

As you already know, today, we went to Insadong Market. Well we went for a little while anyways. It started raining about an hour before we left for the market, but once it stopped, we took our chance to make our way there. Once we got there though, it started raining again, so we waited inside a sorbet and coffee shop for it to stop raining. When it stopped again, we went into the market and got through most of it before it started yet again. This is where we encountered the guys that Nate mentioned before. After this bout of rain, we went into a little boutique with about 5 different vendors. There were things from jewelry to clothing to kitchen supplies to an assortment of knick-knacks. Some of us got chopsticks for 2,000 Won, which equals $2.00. Let me tell you, when it rains here, it seriously rains. The rain today came in little spurts and these spurts were crazy downpours. And the best part is that people seem to know that it is coming. They are always ready with their umbrellas and everything. Hopefully the weather is in our favor for the rest of our trip and we won’t have to deal with rain too much more.

Goodnight, and until tomorrow,

Brooke

We Made it!

Hey everyone!

Well, we made it to South Korea! After our long journey (13 hour flight followed by an hour bus ride), we finally made it to Nick and Anna's house. Nick and Anna went to the Chapel while they were in Iowa and then they moved back to Seoul and are being generous in letting us stay with them and their 2 kids. When we got off the plane, we took the bus to Seoul, where Nick met up with us to take us to their house. The bus ride let us see the city and all of the interesting things it had to offer. One thing that stood out was that the bridges here are very interesting. They all have intersting designs and shapes. Pretty neat.

When we got to Nick and Anna's house, Anna had a delicious dinner ready for us. She made Japanese-Style Curry. It was amazing! After we ate and got introduced, we planned our day for tomorrow and let me tell you, it's going to be pretty awesome. We are planning on going to the Blue House, which is the Korean equivalent to the White House. After that, we are going to go to a museum, and then who knows, it's going to be an adventure!

Well, the long journey has worn us all out and we are going to get some sleep for our day tomorrow.

Goodnight and God bless!
Brooke

Today's the Day!!

Well were off. We are meeting at the Chapel at 4:15 and we should be on the road out of Iowa City by 4:30 a.m. this morning. We'll meet up with a pastor in Chicago, who will join us the rest of the way to the airport then take the van back to his church. Then, at noon, our flight leaves O'Hare and will land in Incheon International at 4 O'Clock on the 2nd.

Introduction

This is the blog for the group from St. Paul's Lutheran Chapel in Iowa City that will be going to South Korea. There are 7 students going from August 1 to August 14. We will be teaching a vacation Bible school class at Luther Theological Seminary in Ilsan, South Korea, and also spending some time seeing some sights.d

Those traveling to South Korea include Ben B., Caleb K., Nate B., Rebecca S., Rachel D., Brooke E., and Carol S.

 

Check back to this blog for future updates.