Hello from Seoul!
It's 11:53 pm and after figuring out how to manuever through my Taylor email--the buttons of which are now in Korean--in order to send an email to my family, I decided to turn it into a blogpost. It's nothing fancy, but after blog-burnout from sending 7 hours on 9-page single-spaced documents, my motto for blogposting needs to err on the side of "Anything is better than Nothing."
The 12 hour flight from Chicago to Tokyo was interminable. We shared it with several military personnel in street clothes only identifiable by their camoflage backpacks--although the tatoos would have given it away for some of them. I had very little sense of time or progress since I didn't have a window seat or a map by which to guage our progress. I read 6 chapters of David Block's book More than a Native Speaker, which is excellent. It made me very glad that I brought it along, a bit perturbed that I didn't look at it sooner, and intimidated by the prospect of putting all of his good advice into practice.
We had a 3 hour lay-over in Tokyo. I spent about 2 hours of it reading the most recent Time magazine in a duty-free shop. It was a good way to observe people, re-recognize how little I know about what's going on in international politics in this world of ours, and note "cultural specialties" such as green powdered tea, baby sardines, dried plums, dried octopus, vacuum sealed squid, and green tea Kit Kat bars which were for sale there. I purchased a keychain mainly so that I could get some change in Yen to add to the bowl of international coins that Anna and I have in our room. I got back more coins than I exected for the 40 cents change I needed. All of them are very lightweight.
Our flight out of Tokyo was actually early--they moved it up by 15 minutes, which is something I've never experienced before. Of the 9 Taylor students traveling together, I was the only one who was sent into the immigration office to have a security officer inspect my passport and documents since they were concerned that I was coming into the country for a long-term paying job as an English teacher without the proper visa. I'm fairly convinced that what we're doing is legal, but I didn't ask too many questions. My general rule of thumb is not to provide additional information or the opportunity for government officials to request it. Especially when I am entirely at the mercy of their proficiency in English.(Which was quite good, by the way.)
We waited a little while in the Incheon airport in Seoul before four students and the pastor came to pick us up and drive us about an hour to the church. I don't know how large this church is, but Dr. Chang (who drove me down to Indianapolis on Wednesday afternoon) said that the Yom Kwang church at which we will be teaching has 10,000 members. And that's an average sized church. According to him, five of the world's largest churches are in South Korea. Any guesses? Alright, since I know you're curious, I'll tell you: he said the largest has 500,000 mebers. I hope to exerience it. In some ways this one more like a compound/small apartment building with a gym in which a summer camp of elementary school students were chasing each other around with pillows at 11 pm.We've learned that this will be our home for the time we're here: two to a dorm room. I'm a bit disappointed that we won't be living with host families, since I hoped that would at least give me some inroad into getting to know the culture a bit more. But now I don't feel as bad for forgetting to purchase a gift for my host family.
Tomorrow morning at 10:00 we're leaving here to go to the church where we'll be teaching. I anticipate a day of meetings and orientation, and hopefully as little jet lag as possible. As I'm currently in the state beyond sensing exhaustion or hunger, my primary goal is to convince my body to "feel" enough to be able to sleep shortly after I find my pajamas, take a shower, and set up my Egyptian alarm clock to go off at 9:00 am.
Please continue to pray for me:
-A positive attitude toward team bonding as balanced with cultural integration
-The ability to plan lessons effectively rather than allowing myself to be paralyzed by the terror that comes from inexperience, the desire to be perfect, and a discumbobulated mind which hasn't really been taught how to systematically teach English.
-Discipline to blog and communicate with family more consistently than I did in Spain.
-Growth in my view of God and what he's doing around the world
Friday, July 9, 2010
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