A Mighty Fortress

Today we visited what has become our favorite attraction in Korea thus far! It is called the Hwaseong Fortress. It is a wall built around the city of Suwon, which is about a 30 minute bus ride from where we live. It was amazingly gorgeous! The wall was built in the late 1700's, during the rule of King Jeongjo. It is about 5 miles around, and was built as a defensive fortress. The Hwaseong Palace is enclosed within the wall. There are 41 structures along the wall, including four main gates, four secret gates, and numerous watch towers, pavilions, turrets, archers' platforms, and guard platforms. The wall goes up through a mountainous area, and back down through the town. There was so much beautiful history to see as we walked and explored!

We started our walk by climbing up a small mountain. There was a beautiful lookout pavilion at the top, and the view was breathtaking! We could see the city, with the majestic mountains in the background. Then we followed the wall down the mountain, and explored all of the unique watchtowers and pavilions. I felt like I was standing in the middle of history. My favorite part of the walk was the Dongbuk Gongsimdon, or the Northeast Observation Tower. This tower is an oval-shaped brick building that is three stories high. Inside, it has dimly-lit secret passage ways, and a spiral staircase that leads to the roof. I loved it so much!

As we walked along this beautiful fortress, I couldn't help but think of the hymn, "A Mighty Fortress is Our God." Now I have more perspective on that song, and a more real, visual image of what a great fortress looks like. I am thankful for a God who protects us, who triumphs over evil, and who abides with us forever.

"A Mighty Fortress is Our God"

A mighty fortress is our God

A bulwark never failing

Our helper He amid the flood

Of mortal ills prevailing.

For still our ancient foe

Doth seek to work us woe

His craft and power are great

And armed with cruel hate

On earth is not his equal.

Did we in our own strength confide

Our striving would be losing

Were not the right man on our side

The man of God's own choosing

Dost ask who that may be?

Christ Jesus, it is He

Lord Sabaoth, His name

From age to age the same

And He must win the battle.

And though this world, with devils filled

Should threaten to undo us

We will not fear, for God hath willed

His truth to triumph through us.

The Prince of Darkness grim

We tremble not for him

His rage we can endure

For lo, his doom is sure

One little word shall fell him.

That word above all earthly powers

No thanks to them, abideth

The Spirit and the gifts are ours,

Through Him who with us sideth.

Let goods and kindred go

This mortal life also

The body they may kill

God's truth abideth still

His kingdom is forever.

My students have lost their marbles!

I am convinced that I have the greatest students ever in my classes. They are so funny and crazy all the time, and I love it. I'll tell you about my favorites. :)

Elena

Elena is awesome. She is 13 years old, and is in level 3 English. She is so smart, and she loves to learn. She is also really dramatic about everything (probably a big reason why I love her!) The other day, she was making a big deal out of something, and I told her that she was being dramatic. She looked it up in the dictionary, and said , "Teacher, NOO! I am NOT!" Haha. One day, we learned that the phrase, "lose your marbles" means to "go crazy." So Elena started to use the phrase all the time. Her chair was being really squeaky that day, and she said, "Teacher, my chair has lost it's marbles." Then, the next day I was passing out a test, and she was stressed about it. She said, "Teacher, can I borrow your marbles?" HAHA! Because she had lost hers! Another time, a boy in the class said that he was going crazy, and Elena said, "I stole his marbles." Still another time, she said, "Teacher, have you seen my marbles?" The possible usages for that phrase are endless!

Elena is also obsessed with learning how to write in cursive. One day, at the end of class, I wrote out all the cursive letters on the board, so that she could copy them down. She practices every chance she gets, and she is getting really good at it! Yesterday, her paper with all her cursive letters was on the floor, so I picked it up and gave it to her. She said, "Oh teacher, thank you! It is my treasure! Treasure number 576!" I was confused. I asked her what she meant. She told me that she has 576 treasures, or things in life that are important to her. And she has them all memorized! I asked her what treasure number 101 was. She wrote something on the desk with her finger, and then said, "The teddy bear that my mom gave me when I was little. It is very dirty." Number 1 was her journal. Number 2 was her bank card. I was in awe as she kept telling me about these numbered treasures. She said, "Teacher, I am 13. I am very old, so I have very many treasures."

Robin

Robin is in the same class as Elena, and he is so funny! He is a little chubby and so cute! He's the prankster of the class. Every day, before class, he tries to play a prank on his friend named John. One time, he took John's books without him noticing, and put them outside the door, with a post-it note that said, "John." At the start of class, I brought them inside, and gave them back to John. Robin just started laughing hysterically! I really don't know why it was so funny! The other day, Robin took John's backpack, and put a post-it note on it that said, "Trash." Haha. That was a good one. He laughs so hard about things, and his laugh is contagious. It's like this high-pitched squeaky laugh that is adorable. He is all about pranks all the time.

Robin is also extremely smart. He asks me great questions, and he really wants to understand everything. The other day, we learned the word "boast." I explained that boasting is when someone talks about how good they are by saying, "I am so pretty. I am so smart. I have more things than you..." The whole class erupted, saying things like, "Oh teacher, I have friends like that!" Haha. Then Robin said, "It is Prince Virus. There is no cure." I made him explain it to me to be sure that I had heard him right, and I had. Boasting is The Prince Virus because it is a sickness you have if you think you are as good as a Prince. And there is no cure! HA! I'm sorry, but that is brilliant.

One more story about Robin. Yesterday, I was passing out a test, and they were freaking out as usual. I said, "Don't worry, it's easy." Robin said, "Every day, you say easy. But it is dangerous. Teacher Karen is dangerous." Haha. I liked that one! He is just so funny. He gets himself in trouble a lot too, and then he's says, "Sorry, sorry, sorry!" It's hysterical.

These are just two examples of the awesome students that I have. They are all so interesting and unique in their own way. I could tell stories about all of them for hours. I never thought I would love teaching this much! But these students make it so much fun because I never know what to expect!

Karen is my name. Badminton is my game.

Tim and I have been taking advantage of the amazing park that we have nearby to stay active! Tim has been playing tennis a couple of times a week with one of our coworkers. Also, there are badminton courts, so I decided that I am going to get really good this year! Badminton is a really big sport here! Tim wins every time we play, but I'm getting better! My goal this year is to win a badminton game against him. It's a pretty ambitious goal, but I think I can do it!

Weekends in Korea

September has proved to be a good month for us in Korea so far! The weather is changing, so it is a little brisk in the mornings and evenings, which is wonderful. We feel like we are getting more and more connected with people at church every week. We got our first paycheck, which was much needed! And, though we really do love teaching, we love the weekends when we have time to explore this amazing country.

Two weekends ago, Tim and I ventured into Seoul for a basketball game. It was no ordinary basketball game. Some retired NBA players came to Korea to play against the Korean National Team. Tim's friend, Matt got us the tickets, and we were really excited about it. Of course, the boys were more excited than I was because they knew more about the players and such. But I like basketball too, and was really looking forward to the game. Let's see, there was Tim Hardaway, Robert Horry, Dominique Wilkins... and Kareem Abdul Jabbar was one of the coaches! But it proved to be an eventful day, even before we got to the game. Here's how it went down. Ok, so since Matt had gotten us the tickets, we were planning to meet him at the subway station, so that we could go with him to the game. The problem was that the subway station was bigger than we expected. We waited for 20 minutes at the place that we thought we were supposed to meet, to no avail. Since we don't have cell phones, we had to try to guess what he would do. Finally, we decided that we should go to the basketball stadium to try to find him there. We knew that he wouldn't miss the game. We got there, and looked around outside for awhile to see if he was looking for us outside. He had our tickets, so we couldn't get inside the stadium to look for him. Just as we were contemplating what to do... buy tickets so that we could get inside?... keep waiting?... go home?... a guy walked by and handed us two tickets. We thought he was trying to sell them to us, so we said, no thank you. He said, "No, they're free. Enjoy the game." Crazy! So now we had a way of getting into the game at least, and we could try to find Matt from there. Once inside, Tim used his acute detective skills and the zoom lens on our camera to find Matt. And soon, all was right in the world again. It was crazy! I really thought that we would never find him, but we did! So we watched the game, which was kind of funny at times because the retired NBA players were pretty old and couldn't move as well as they could in the past. They lost to the Korean team, who literally only shot 3-pointers. There was a Korean boy band at half time that I liked! It was all so much fun. And the lesson that we learned that day... we need cell phones!!

This past weekend was also an eventful one. After church, we went with a group of people from our Sunday school class to an area of Seoul where there is free bike rental on Sundays. We ate lunch, and then went to the bike rental place, only to find out that all of the bikes were rented out. But, don't worry, we DID get to ride bikes. Kind of. So as we were walking around, we saw what looked like an infomercial being taped. There were video cameras and people riding these exercise bikes. We were standing there watching, and then they asked us if we wanted to ride the bikes for the taping. We were like, "Absolutely we do!" (a reference to The Office hehe). They chose Tim, my friend Jackie and I, and told us to ride fast and smile! In a few minutes, they said that they were going live. We could see ourselves on the monitor. Then, the camera guy came over to me, and did the most uncomfortably close close-ups ever. It was really funny! We were just laughing and smiling and waving! After the shoot, the director took us over to a convenience store and bought us juice to thank us for being in their commercial! It was so nice! We heard that they do a lot of TV shoots in that area, so we want to try to get in some more, so that we can be infomercial regulars! Hahaha! I LOVE KOREA.