Saturday, April 17, 2010

blue skies are coming...

spring is emerging.

cherry blossoms are appearing.

and my friend emily is GETTING MARRIED today!!! oh how i wish i could be there!

some new photos!

the last month went by SO quickly.

my parents came and their visit was great albeit way too short and the time flew by.

the highlights were a weekend trip to busan (fresh air and beaches!) and half a saturday at the demilitarized zone (dmz) between north and south korea. eye-opening.

the best part of their visit (for me at least) was the friday they came to my school. they came to each of my classes and they wrote letters to students in my mom's class. they got to meet my students and my students got to meet them and they had a lot of fun with their letters.
one of my favorite lines:
[almost at the end of the letter] "Oh my gosh! I forgot my introduce. I'm hadsome (sic) and I wear big glasses. Are you curious now?" - one of my 9-3 students.

my homeroom is pretty photogenic.

this week has been SO joyful. my students make me smile and laugh every single day. praise God for that!

laugh-out-loud moment #57: walking into my ESL A class, there were a few kids missing, but since the bell hadn't run i wasn't too worried about it. seconds later, i found one under my desk in front of the room and a second one popped out of a cabinet in the back of the room. especially impressive is that the cabinet is maybe 5 feet tall  and has three shelves in it. he fit himself on the top shelf.

snowing-in-march: we've had a long winter and one of our last snowstorms was on the day i do soccer club. they all thought i was crazy for not canceling it, but that day marked the first many of them had played soccer in the snow :)

laugh-out-loud moment #58: when my adopted father mr. park told my real father in his broken English, "I will fight you for your daughter"

something a little different: since our school has really long winter and summer breaks, there are really no breaks at all in the semester. in addition, school has instituted a new stifling rules policy that has many of the students begging for mercy. the students, as a result, have become almost completely burnt out. so many have been out sick and they look and act tired everyday. many of the teachers have been sick too. i have a lingering cold and this week i had a brush with pink eye.
the past few weeks (even months) i have also been struck by all the events going on around the world and i felt a holy spirit tug to share with my students - most of my students are SO disconnected from the world outside of korea. reading the details of yet another earthquake in china this past week, i thought it would do something different. i wanted to give the students a chance to actually pray for these nations (instead of just talk about them) and take some time to rest from the busyness of the week. friday in all six of my classes i played a little video i put together to give them a visual of what they could pray about and then gave them complete freedom to create (draw, write, or whatever), pray, or sleep if they really needed to. the response was different in each class, but it was definitely a renewing time for me and some of my students as well. i expected many to fall asleep but surprisingly, very few of them took advantage of that opportunity. God really blessed this time. He gave me Psalm 97 for this video and the song "How He Loves Us" by Jesus Culture...


keep breathing. keep praying.






사랑해요

[i love you]