Saturday

Today we had our first Korean class! It's fun, but it will definitely be harder to grasp than Spanish. We learned the alphabet and how to write our names as well as some basics like hello, thank you, I'm sorry, how much.. and of course sit down and be quiet!

On our way home we passed a stall selling these awesome fish. We heard about these from our friend Rachel, so we bought a bunch of them. We haven't learned our numbers yet, so our request for two bought us two dollars worth. We ended up with six. They are delicious! They are like waffles on the outside and sweet black bean paste in the middle. Amie is in love.



This evening we've been working on our block printing project. Peter is working on a scene from our trip to Morocco, and Amie is working on an image of her beloved Beta fish. We will show you when we're finished!



We've started working out. We jog along the river until we come to an outdoor excersise park, which we will tell you more about later, and then jog back and climb the stairs. This is useful becuase of all of those extra fish we are eating!

The highlight of going to the immigration office...

We were encouraged to take this picture, the passersby thought it was hilarious.

Chusok: Best Weekend of All Time

This weekend was Chusok, the Korean harvest holiday. Though the members of the Christian community here dread this day because they are forced to tell family members that they will not be offering sacrifices to the ancestors, Amie and I had a great time not working on Friday. We went shopping for all the things the apartment still needed, took a nap, went out for Italian food (Amie needed pizza after a week with Peter), and cleaned the apartment.

Saturday, the actual day of Chusok, our friends from church came and took us to Olympic Park in Seoul. It is about 45 min. from Bundang on a normal day, but twice that with holiday traffic. The park was built for the 1988 Olympics in Seoul. It has a very beautiful garden walkway, a river, and is the fifth largest sculpture park. We had ice cream and saw a flame burning for peace that was lit for the games.

After the park we went to dinner at a friend’s house. His family provided quite a feast! The time with the family was great, and the food was terrific! They had beef, pork, fish, and stingray as well as three types of kimchi, noodles, rice, and vegetable cakes. For dessert they had rice cakes (the family owns a rice cake business), cheesecake, apples, and pears the size of cantaloupes. We had coffee and ginseng candies after dinner, and a great time hanging out. The family gave us each a pair of socks, and then we went for a walk in the park. We feel very blessed.

Daniel knows it's going to be good.

After dinner Scott made us bomb coffee.

The generous Lee family.

We are now back in our apartment resting up from the long first weekend together. We went to church this morning and then had lunch at the leader’s house. We took a nap and had a nice dinner. Now we wanted to get the first blog out. Thank you all for your prayers. We have a lot of work ahead of us in our lives and jobs, but we feel secure in God’s love and yours! Thanks!

Filling up the Apartment

In Korea, if you have an old bit of furniture you don’t care for, you take it to the dumpster area and drop it off. College students can then descend and snag all of the good things before they are taken away! Because this happens under the building, you don’t have to carry things too far, and they don’t get wet. We have found a coffee table, desk chair, large picture frame, 2’by 3’canvas painted red, and a dish rack. We are still holding out for the PS3. It is really fun to stop and check when walking home from the market. You never know what you may find.

Our Apartment

We live in Blue Ville! Not as Korean a name as “We’ve” for a complex, but we like it. It is directly across from the subway station which is not only convenient for travel, but also guarantees a lot of activity all the time. There are tons of restaurants, coffee shops, stores, and other fun things all within a two minute walk. They call the area a “Walking Mall,” as you can’t drive down the central street with all of the shops. We live inside the metropolis, if it wasn’t clear. Across the subway and mall, about a 3 min. walk from our front door is the school that we work at. This will be great in the winter where it stays in the 20’s for at least a couple weeks. Brrrrrr! Behind the apartment is a river which translates into a long skinny park about 300 yards wide. The river has running and biking tracks on both sides and crossings ever so often. It will be perfect for exercise, and it is very beautiful.

Inside we have all that we need. One large room for bedroom/ living room about 20’ square, and a kitchen with a small bathroom attached. Overall its about 20’ by 40’. We have a good stove, toaster oven, enough dishes/pots, and a little fridge/freezer which now has food in it.

Not our building, but a great name:

Amie’s Arrival!

Amie came and felt as jetlagged as could be expected from the 16 hour time change. Peter was, of course, overeager to show her everything that he learned. We walked in the park and around Sunae. In the afternoons Amie observed while other teachers taught. She will have a very firm grasp on the process before she starts Monday! On Wednesday we were invited to a welcome dinner with our co-workers and employers. We had a very fancy Korean BBQ meal and were able to practice eating with chopsticks and experience some Korean customs. The director gave us a very nice set of shampoo and conditioner that smells like ginseng.

Thursday at small group she was welcomed by the group who gave us a cake! We were expecting to cut it up with everyone, but they put it back in the box and sent it home with us. It is very good and mostly consists of yogurt, a very interesting and delicious dessert. They sang to us a welcoming song in Korean and had candles and the whole bit. We meet in a Dunkin’ Doughnuts (of all places) but they say that the owner is happy to host the group as long as we pray for them every week.

Peter’s time before Amie

Because of visa issues (and we still love the UW) Amie had to wait behind and Peter flew to Korea alone to set up shop. Though much of the first week was spent fighting jetlag and figuring out how to buy food, Peter did teach all week part time.
The real saving grace came from the church of a coworker, which offered him the friendship of an English speaking small-group. Half of the members are Korean, and half are teachers from the US. He arrived on Friday night, and Sunday he had a day of worship and time with community. That was great and SO fast. They have a Bible study at a coffee shop on Wednesdays and the boys of the group came by our apartment to hang out on Friday. Since Amie came Sunday evening, they helped him get to church and then to the airport “limousine” bus.

Peter and Amie in Korea

All doubts about Amie and Peter having a good time in Korea are off. This place is awesome. We feel so blessed by all that has happened so far, and we are sure that if we seek God through these steps, we will grow as individuals and as a couple.