Taking a Step Back

I have almost reached the halfway point in my time in South Korea. So much has happened in the last 6 months this blog has really only been the tip of the iceberg for my experiences here.

Since I last wrote I went to Japan. The main purpose of our trip was to visit Universities in Kobe, Nagasaki, and Hiroshima where youth voices (nine to fifteen of us) discussed Environmental, Discrimination, and Peace issues from three different country's perspectives. It was interesting trying to see how other countries taught issues and therefore the different points of views. It was also a good time getting to know students from Japan. But we did do our fair share of tourist things too. I can not fully summarize our ten day trip in a blog post but I had a lot of fun visiting Imperial Castles, Buddhist Temples, and Shinto Shrines. We also visited the peace parks in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, which was very interesting how the cities have turned such unspeakable tragedies into beautiful peace movements. For pictures click here!!!

For the Lunar New Year I went to Rev. John's family's celebrations . I was really nervous about going to a Korean household for the first time. Especially since Rev. John kept asking me if I knew now to bow. There is a special traditional bow for New Years which you bow to your elders. Thanks to some help from youtube and my Korean-American friends, I got the main idea of the bow down, gracefully was too much to ask. But in return for my somewhat making a fool of myself, the elders give you money. Then everyone sits down to eat rice cake and dumpling soup, the more bowls you eat the more good luck you will receive. (Dad- this is way more delicious than eating Black-eyed peas for good luck). I believe my grand total for the new years was 6 bowls (not at once). After dinner, we all gathered to play traditional Korean games, yuk - which is played with four sticks that you toss like dice and depending on how they land you move your pieces on the board accordingly, the finer points of these games I have mastered, as those don't get translated into English for me! Then we played Stop-Go - a card game which I can't do justice to so if I find a deck, maybe I will teach people when I get home, assume I figure out how to keep score, currently people just tell me, you won or you lost, and I say OK!

This week things starting getting back to normal. Schools were in session and I was in town so I got to see the kids at my center again. It had been almost four weeks since I had seen some of the kids, between going to Jeju with the middle schoolers, going to Japan and then the Lunar New Year. It was nice going back, having the kids tell me they missed me. Walking into my center and being practically tackled by kids hugging me, makes coming back from vacation great.

Of course that isn't going to stop me from visiting with my parents when they get here in four days. I am really excited to introduce them to all the people who I work with this year. To be able to show someone everything I have been talking about these past 5 months. That being said, there will probably be another hiatus of posts as my parents will be visiting for three weeks and I am going to be busy spending my time with them while I have it! But I promise tons of pictures and interesting stories come March!