A family who has two kids at Wesley Mission School took all the teachers for an overnight at the beach on Anmyeon Island, just off the west coast of the Korean peninsula.

While it was a very short trip, it was nice to head out of town and relax for a little while, and all of us were very thankful for this family's generosity.

Here are a few photos from the weekend. First, yours truly with the beach (low tide) on Friday evening. It was really foggy, but trust me, the Yellow Sea (or "West Sea," as it's known in Korea) is behind me. Due west across the Yellow Sea is China.

It was low tide while I was out walking on the beach and taking pictures, so I got to explore some marvelous tidepools. I found a few beached starfish and relocated them to some of the deeper pools so they wouldn't dry out. The starfish were thankful, I think, but the little creatures they eat weren't quite so pleased. Here's a look at a starfish and some anemones in the tidepools.

The rocks in the photo below are known as the grandmother and grandfather rocks, and apparently it's quite a sight to position yourself so you can see the sunset between them in the fall. At high tide, the water covers the rocks between them. I walked right up to the base of both big rocks before heading back to the hotel for lunch this afternoon.On my walk back to the hotel, I passed several fresh seafood stands set up on the beach. They sold octopus, sea slugs, and shellfish, collected that very morning. Here's a look in an octopus tub.Now here's the . . . fun? . . . part--well, not for the octopus. If you decide you want an octopus, you get to pick it live out of the tub. They put in on a cutting board and chop it into little pieces, and you eat it raw--and still twitching, I imagine. How's that for a nice snack? I have to say, I didn't have the guts to try it. Actually, I felt a little sorry for the octopus! (Little piece of trivia, did you know the plural of "octopus" is "octopodes"?) That's all for now.

Sorry it has been awhile since I've posted anything. It's past my bedtime, but here's a photo of me in Seoul at the garden behind the hotel on the US Army post at Yongsan. I was there this weekend for a friend's friend's (not a typo) wedding. See my post on 4/15 about clothes shopping in Korea!

In my intermediate class, we're still talking about occupations. They're learning words like veterinarian, doctor, lawyer, teacher, pastor, businessman (and woman!), shopkeeper, biologist, architect . . . I had all the kids list different family members and what occupation they have. Some of them had trouble coming up with a name for their family member's occupation. One girl's dad is a florist, but that was easy enough to explain. The one that really threw me was the girl who said, "My father. Goat kill. Apples make juice. Grapes make juice. Headache. Black. Drink." Then she drew a picture of something that looked like a person with hair sticking straight up and used her hand like a butcher's knife to show cutting the hair off. I was totally confused, so she went in the office and explained it to one of the Korean staff members at the school. She came back and said, "Chinese medicine." So I wrote "Chinese medicine practitioner" on the chalkboard, but she didn't like it. "My father Chinese, no!" she said. "My father Korean!" I tried to explain that "Chinese" was describing the medicine, not her father, but it didn't work, so I just crossed "Chinese" out and wrote "Eastern." That was okay with her, just as long as it didn't say "Chinese."

Here are some photos of another one of my classes. The girls are just about the sweetest kids in the whole school. The four boys give me more trouble than anyone else! There are three more kids who didn't make it into the picture: a boy who is the fifth troublemaker in the group, a boy who is just as sweet as can be and can spell and read anything, and a girl who understands nothing at all and was getting some special one-on-one help when I took the picture.

Happy Belated Easter

Alleluia, Jesus is risen indeed!

Easter was beautiful but chilly here in Korea. The mystery of the hard-boiled eggs is solved. They handed them out to everyone as the entered the church. They had little plastic wrappers with Korean writing on them. I was kind of hoping there would be some kind of massive Easter egg hunt, but such was not the case. We had lots of visitors in church since everyone was supposed to bring someone to church with them. I didn't end up inviting anyone because everyone I know here belongs to the church! The service was very nice, with several pieces of special music.

After church, the choir, praise team, elders, church staff, and missionaries all went to a restaurant for some excellent Korean food. At many Korean restaurants, you sit on pillows on the floor. Since there were so many of us, it was a tight squeeze with very little wiggle room. I ended up with very sore legs by the time lunch was over and managed to spill food all over my skirt. Chop sticks and slippery food are a dangerous combination for me.

After church we had a few free hours before heading back to the church for a joint worship service for all the Protestant churches in town. One of my beginner students sat next to me in the service and was fascinated with my earpiece for the interpretation. It was pretty painful trying to understand what was being said, so I let him listen to it. It entertained him, and I think I understood about as much of the service without the interpretation as with it, though of course I missed Dr. Kim's funny expressions. I swear, he throws them into the interpretation just for fun and not because it's actually in the sermon.

When I packed to come here to Korea, I figured I wouldn't need any really dressy clothes. I knew I'd be spending most of my time teaching and as much free time as possible exploring the country, mostly in blue jeans. I brought two black pants suits (a.k.a. my funeral suits, one short-sleeved, one long sleeved. I mostly wear them to church or things like the parent orientation, where they want the teachers to look really sharp) and a couple very casual skirts, but nothing fancy. All of my clothes are mix and match, very simple, very washable, and mostly good for all four seasons.

So a few weeks ago when I was invited to go to a wedding with a fellow teacher, I started to wonder what I would wear. A black pants suit like I'm going to a funeral? A denim skirt? I contemplated ordering something from the US but didn't want to pay the exorbitant shipping fees. I also contemplated having someone dig through the things I packed away in storage and send me something, but I didn't really want to put my family through an archaeological excavation. So I decided to try my luck shopping for something to wear here in Korea.

It doesn't take the world's most observant person to see that my build is much different from that of Korean women, but I figured since I've lost almost 10 pounds since I got here (stress, good walking trails, and kimchi will do that to a person) and since I occasionally see women who are taller than I am, it shouldn't be an impossible task to find something that fits. I went to a huge department store in a city of 500,000 people. Surely, they would have something, right? I stopped at the first section in the department store and through pantomime and the few Korean words I know, I tried to ask if something would fit me. No. Again, I asked at the second section. No. Third, no. After being told no at the fourth section, I asked WHERE I can find my size. The answer: "Big size-ee, here (motioning toward the whole department store), no." And she pointed to the next department store, "Big size-ee, yes!"

With that, I went to the other department store, and started asking and pantomiming there, only to get the same answer. No. No. No. No. No. Sometimes they even laughed when I asked if they had my size, "Big size-ee, no. Ha. Ha. Ha." (If you're not built like a typical Korean woman and are even thinking of going clothes shopping in Korea, be sure you have pretty high self-esteem before you start out.) Finally, I asked someone at the information counter where I could find "big size-ee" clothes. She made a few phone calls, and then another department store employee escorted me to a section of the store that carried a few things. I ended up with a very plain but classy black skirt and a very frilly white blouse. Yes, I know I don't ordinarily go for frilly. For that matter, I've never gone for frilly ever in my life, but this was the only shirt in two whole department stores (a total of six floors of clothes) that fit. I'll have to post a photo for you all next weekend.

The sizes here are also totally different from American sizes. It was quite a shock to find out that I now wear a size 77! It is just one more example for me about how the entire frame of thinking for people is different from what I'm used to. Kilograms, not pounds. Kilometers, not miles. Won, not dollars. Celecius, not Fahrenheit. Rice, not bread. Size 77, not size 10. Koreans go by their last name first. They drive on the right side of the road but walk on the left side of the sidewalk. If you frame a question in the negative (i.e., "Isn't he coming to school today?") and the answer is yes, Koreans respond "no." "Yes" would mean you are correct to say he isn't coming to school today. "No" means that it is incorrect to say "he isn't coming to school today" because the truth is that he is coming to school.

It's a completely different way of thinking, and it's a challenge for me everyday to remember that what I have known all my life is no better or worse than what they have known all their lives, but to be effective in my work here, I need to understand the Korean way of seeing the world as best as I can, so I try and I learn a little everyday.

Tomorrow is Easter. I saw the church staff unload an entire truckful of hardboiled eggs yesterday. I'm very curious.

Today the school coordinator gave each teacher a couple dozen hard boiled eggs to distribute to the kids in the classrooms. I've never seen kids get really wild about hardboiled eggs before, but by their reaction, you would have thought we were passing out candy! Other than that, it was a five crying-kid day. Not too bad for a Friday, I'd say!

One of my middle school students gave me a painting he had made today. I asked him to sign it and discovered that the kids don't know how to read or write in cursive. Lesson plan temporarily aborted, we spent the next several minutes practicing signatures. I wrote each student's name in cursive on a piece of lined paper and let them practice. It's been a long time since I learned cursive in 3rd grade, so I really had to think to remember the correct way to make all the letters.

After a few minutes of practicing signatures, we got back to the lesson, which was about occupations. I went around the room and had the students all say what they want to be when they grow up. There's no lack of self-esteem within this group! One student wants to be the CEO of Samsung and another a mathematics professor at Harvard University. I also have an aspiring English teacher, baker (not to be confused with banker--none of those in the class), doctor, and zookeeper in the class. One boy said he wants to stand in front of the train station and say "give me money," which is a standard joke for that class. Whenever someone is absent, I ask the other kids where he/she is. If they don't know, I have them invent excuses, which gets them practicing their English and engaging their imaginations. They really like to tell me that so-and-so is standing in front of the train station saying "give me money!" I thought it was pretty creative the first time I heard it, but it's getting a little old now. My younger, less advanced classes come up with much simpler but just as entertaining excuses. "He is dancing." "She is sleeping." "He is swimming." My personal favorite excuse for someone not being in class: "She is eating noodles." Well, yeah! If you're eating noodles, you can't possibly come to English class!

The yellow dust didn't hit us as badly as they had forecasted, so I took a long walk after my classes this evening and took some pictures of spring springing forth here in Korea. With all the flowering trees and the freshly planted rice fields, it's really lovely. Here are the pictures. Top to bottom: cherry blossoms, more cherry blossoms, a freshly planted garlic field on the outskirts of town, and some of the tiled roofs typical of the houses around here.

Here are some beautiful April flowers from a tree in front of the city hall. There is a similar tree in front of the church, but this photo turned out better.

Today one of the church elders sat in on two of my rowdier classes. It is amazing how their behavior changes when a Korean is in the classroom. This particular gentleman is a Tae Kwon Do expert, so I think the kids were especially careful! They were quiet and had their books out and raised their hands to answer every question and sat in their seats. I almost had to wonder who those children really were!

My preschoolers and kindergartners did really well today, with one exception. No wet pants, no blood, but there were quite a few tears. One little girl, who never says anything or does anything but sit there and look at me and sometimes cry, kept smacking another little girl on the head. Then she stood up and pushed her out of her chair and onto the floor. The victim's face smacked right into the hard floor, and she bawled. I can't blame her. I saw the whole thing happen but was on the other side of the classroom, admiring some other kids' coloring. I could only get there in time to pick the poor, bawling baby off the floor with one hand and grab the perpetrator's wrist with the other and march her into the hallway for time out. She sat in the chair with her arms crossed, pouting for the rest of the class.

This afternoon I tripped over my own feet in one of my classes and just barely managed to regain my balance without falling on the floor myself. Of course, I did this in front of a whole classroom of 9-year-olds, all of whom laughed hysterically for much longer than the incident was really worth. Then one boy announced, "Teacher face very red!" which of course resulted in more laughter. Lesson plan aborted, we spent the rest of the class time learning words like clumsy, embarrassed, klutz and telling stories about making fools of ourselves. Since their English is very basic, we had some interesting pantomimes and drawings to get the stories across.

The weather report says we're due to have another yellow dust storm tomorrow.

It has been a very stressful week here. I appreciate your prayers. The good news is that the weather is starting to warm up. I can hear the birds chirping outside. The trees are all starting to blossom. Spring is here, and this Holy Week, I am reminded of the promise of new life and hope.

This weekend I went back to Seoul and walked past the Deoksugung Palace again. I took this picture of the band (it's for you, Sal) during the changing of the guards.As soon as I took it, my camera flashed "low battery" and shut itself off. I'm hoping to make it back soon to take some pictures of the cherry blossoms. All the flowering trees here remind me of Northern Virginia and Washington, DC.

Last week one of the littlest, cutest, sweetest girls in the whole school jumped up and bit her lip as she landed. She must have bit it just right (or wrong, as the case may be), because it resulted in blood everywhere. Besides being a little shaken up, she's okay.

I had a pretty good morning with my preschool and kindergarten kids today--only two criers, no wet pants, no vomit, no blood. That's what I call success. The preschoolers were tickling each other when I went into their classroom, so I taught them to say "tickle, tickle." It's probably not the most useful expression they'll ever learn, but they had a lot of fun with it.

The rest of today was equally uneventful, except for two more crying kids and one very loose tooth which managed to fall out in the middle of class and caused quite the excitement in an easily excitable class.

There was a lot of yellow dust in Seoul this weekend. It blows in from the Gobi Desert in China and Mongolia and causes quite the problem here in Korea. All sorts of health and environmental problems are attributed to yellow dust. According to the Korea Times, this weekend's yellow dust storm was the worst since 2002. You can see the haze in the photo below at Deoksugung Palace. Click here for an interesting newspaper article about this weekend's yellow dust storm in Seoul. Click here for a website that explains the Asian dust cloud phenomenon, complete with satellite pictures, photos of extreme yellow dust haze in Beijing, and photos of yellow dust haze as far away from Asia as the Grand Canyon.

I got out to take some photos today of the cherry blossoms here in town, since I'm afraid I'll miss the peak in Seoul, even if I do make it back there this weekend.

The director has been calling "secret" meetings with the other staff members--secret from me, that is. I was told about one by another teacher and accidentally walked in on another, to be greeted by a long, awkward silence.

It's not all bad here, though. Funny things happen all the time. There has been a revival in town since Sunday. It's held at a different church in town each night. A funny thing happened on my way home from the revival the other night. The pastor asked me what I thought of being in a Pentecostal church. I told him I didn't know it was Pentecostal. No one told me what church we were at. They just pointed to a steeple, and I followed the crowd. He wanted to know what I thought about the people speaking in tongues. I had to tell him I had no idea they were speaking in tongues--I thought it was Korean! We got a good laugh out of that.

Sorry I haven't been able to post my updates in a few days. I've been having some computer problems. It looks like the problems are at least temporarily solved, though. I'm just home on my lunch break, catching up on a few email messages and recovering from my morning classes. I had five kids cry, one wet her pants, and one little boy fall sound asleep.

We usually sing for the first 10 minutes of my preschool and kindergarten classes. They love "Old McDonald" but don't quite have the concept of farm animals. By the time we're done with the song, Old McDonald's farm usually has a tiger, a lion, King Kong, Ellen, a fish, an elephant . . . interesting farm.

On Sunday, Dr. Kim asked me, "Ellen, did you SHAKE THAT COLD?" I wish I could capture in writing how his voice changes when he gets excited about using a figure of speech. You can just hear how it delights him to come up with something like that.

And that's the news from Wesley Mission School. I'm off to my afternoon classes!

I'm feeling even a little better this weekend. The weather report on Wunderground said it was supposed to be 55 degrees and sunny today, so I decided to head to Seoul for some sightseeing. It's interesting how "55 and sunny" turned out to be "48 and raining steadily" most of the day!

I visited the Deoksugung Palace grounds but didn't stay long because it involves a lot of walking outdoors to various builings, none of which you can actually enter. It was a little too cold and wet to hang around, but I did take a couple pictures. There is also lovely photo slideshow on the Deoksugung Palace website, but the text is all in Korean. It, along with the other palaces in Seoul, is on my list of places to visit again in nice weather! Photos (top to bottom) are the main gate to the palace, the main palace hall, and a detail of the fancy painting on the ceiling in one of the buildings.At 3:30 PM today, I celebrated the beginning of my 9th week in Korea by treating myself to Dunkin' Donuts in Seoul. It was right outside the palace grounds and was a nice place to warm up and dry off. While sitting at Dunkin' Donuts, guidebook to South Korea in hand, I thought about nice, warm, indoor activities to do with the rest of the day and decided on none other than the Kimchi Field Museum where all my questions (and then some) were answered about Korea's favorite spicy dish of fermented cabbage and other vegetables. I kid you not! See the photos below and take a look at the museum's website by clicking the name of the museum above. It's impressive. I provided the link to the page in English, but it's available in Korean and Japanese, too. I especially offer these photos for my dear family members in the museum business and for the youth group members who have fond memories of visiting the Spam Museum in Austin, Minnesota during our 2003 summer mission trip.

Here is a lovely display where museum visitors are invited to look like they're eating kimchi from the manequin's chop sticks. After putting my mouth so close, I had to wonder how often they disinfect that thing.And finally, a display of just a few of the countless varieties of kimchi one may encounter here in Korea.While it is fun to laugh about, I have to admit, after being here in Korea for 8 weeks and eating kimchi almost everyday, I still like the stuff.