Rest

Phew. Well, it's been a few weeks since we've posted. BUT--whoopty doo, we have internet now! Hopefully this will translate to more blog posts and more Skype dates. There is so much to share--where to even begin? Maybe a follow up from my last post? Sounds like a good start. God is still continuing to walk with me through this journey of finding joy in Him through every circumstance; good or bad. As many of you know, I've always loved other countries, people groups and culture. Both Traylor and I have traveled many regions of the world and have wanted to explore the possibilities of overseas missions. We see our time in Korea as a "stepping stone", if you will, for what God could lead us to in the future. I fantasized about what it would be like to live in another country for longer than short term projects, and now that I am living it, I am finding that it is isn't always as "romantic" and naturally comfortable as I pictured in my head. We both have real jobs with pretty intense, long, exhausting hours (We are at school from 9am-7:30pm Monday through Friday). Most of our week days are spent indoors with kids--all day long which that leaves little time during the week to venture out. We've been sick. For days. And still have to work. We are being stretched, we are being challenged. But at the end of the day (ok, maybe the end of the week :)) I am reminded that it is worth it. Fighting for what God has called you to do is worth it. And, He will give you strength to keep fighting. Not only that, but He always hears our cries for help. I've been so comforted by David in the Psalms: "O Lord, in the morning you hear my voice...", "The Lord hears when I call to him" and one of my recent favorites Psalm 3:3-4: "But you, O LORD, are a shield about me, my glory, and the lifter of my head. I cried aloud to the LORD and he answered me from his holy hill." 

So, the week days are are hard here. The kids really are fun (most of the time), but the days are so long. (I promise, this blog is not a pitty party! Keep reading!) Like I said before, that really means that our week days are mostly spent at school, which leaves little time to explore the culture and pour our lives into others. (Which is what I thought this year would mostly entail). Sometimes I wonder if my kids at school are getting anything I am teaching them, or if we are loving people around us as well as we could be. I think about how tired I am after working, but feeling like I am not being used here like I should be. Like I need to be doing more. God quietly reminds me that He is always in control...He doesn't need me. I need Him. I need His love to flow out of me. I need His love to love these kids, to love our friends, to love my husband. He is what I need. Just seek Him and and all of this will naturally start to flow from my heart. I can't do anything on my own effort!

Man, do I love the weekends here. Such great times of rest; not only physically from our long days at school, but most importantly, spiritually. Lately I feel like God has given me such great reminders of His faithfulness when we find our rest in Him. Since we've both been so sick this week, we haven't been running as much. Today, however, despite my cough from hell, I put on my running shoes and ran outside to embrace the 60ish degree sunlight and blue sky morning. I was running through the neighborhood and looked closely at all of the buds starting to blossom on the trees. I kept running and saw the first cherry blossom trees in bloom! I was reminded of the Gungor lyrics: You make beautiful things out of the dust. Spring is on the horizon and new life is coming! Tomorrow we're hiking over to a neighboring city for the cherry blossom festival. Can't wait!

Since we live in a big city, a lot of things are pretty westernized, but today we found some back streets behind our apartment that made us feel like we stepped out of the city life and into Asia for real. It was a BLAST. We peeked down ally ways, and took pictures of the architecture and shops. We laughed at the 'Korenglish" sayings we found on so many of the awesome shirts we found. We bought a little plant to bring some color to our apartment. We saw tons of street food. Here's a few pics for our exploration:

NEW ARRIVE! 

"Sweet. i like you, just you are."

and my favorite by far: PITHBULLS.

Thanks for journeying with us! We love you guys!

Joy in Trials

Well, I am sitting here on an express train on our way from Incheon (near the capital, Seoul), where we spent the day training for our school. It is said to be the fastest train in the world! So, I’ve got a little time to write. It’s times like this, where I look around at all of these people, visiting different cities & places, and realize WE LIVE IN KOREA. We’re not in Columbia anymore, Toto. This is our real, every day life. I think the reality of that has really begun to set in for me. (This is Hannah writing for now btw) I was re-reading some of my journal before coming; remember my thoughts about what Changwon was going to be like, what our school was going to be like, what LIFE was going to be like. I remember praying for all of these things, and now that we’re living it out, I can praise the One who cares about our deepest desires, big and small.  I can see God’s hand at work, guiding us to Changwon, and directly to POLY school. He’s answered so many of our prayers for a church, solid school, awesome co-workers, friends. It is because of that, that I can continue to call on Him in faith that He will give us what we need. And man, have I had to call on Him this week. It has been one of the toughest weeks for me at school. My morning kiddos are incredibly cute, but this week has been really difficult. I know now looking back that part of it has been my own inner struggles with perfectionism and feeling completely inadequate, but some of it comes from the fact that these precious little ones 1) don’t all speak English (a handful do) and I feel helpless at times to know how to communicate with them and 2) I wasn’t prepared to not be able to keep their attention for so long and felt like I had failed and 3) let's be honest...sometimes they aren't so precious : )  I’ve got some strong willed kiddos and it is difficult not being able to explain to them why I am disciplining them. Long story short, there were a few really stressful days where I broke down in the classroom, once when I bit my tongue harder than I ever had in my life (icing on the cake) and I just stared at these kids wondering what the heck I was doing here. One time this little girl who speaks a little English pointed, “Hannah Teacher crying!” Since it was so draining, all the life was sucked out of me for my afternoon classes with my older children. Just made for some long days and good cries after work.  I tried to explain to Traylor that I have always LOVED children, and have always dreamed of living overseas for longer than 2 weeks at a time as I had previously, and felt like I had failed…that maybe I wasn’t supposed to be teaching after all. I slowly I began to realize that—NO. I have not failed. This is not a mistake. This week has a purpose, and there will probably be more weeks—heck, there will be more weeks like this again. Despite all of that, God is faithful, His promises remain, and His joy can be found in the deepest, darkest moments.  I’ve been so comforted by truly trying to SEEK joy in the midst of trials. I rarely try to SEEK joy and CHOOSE to believe that God has our best interest at heart, especially in hard circumstances.  I always just want it to come naturally…I just want to wake up happy. But that doesn’t always happen. I have been eternally thankful for my sweet husband during this week. He has been my biggest encouragement, always checking on me after each class and lovingly correcting some of the lies I’ve allowed myself to sink into. He is the best, and I am growing more in love with the man I married.

Phew—sorry for the in depth story of my heart! I cherish your thoughts and prayers. THANK YOU! In other news, the week ended really well and I feel some of my joy being restored. My morning kiddos (the young ones) celebrated a bday celebration with the rest of the school and it was hilarious. All of the school came together as an assembly of sorts and we danced and played games. On the wall hung a ‘Happy Birthday Banner’ with Hello Kitty (Of course!). I posted a video to facebook so check it out.

Here are some of the cute kiddos in my class. Can you tell these two girls are the ring leaders of my classroom? The first is Sunny and the second is Christine: (hopefully you'll get a kick out of the peace sign, too!)

I only have two boys in the morning. One has a bowl cut. Yong is the first and Thomas is the second.

I have some hilarious older kids in the afternoon. They are older and much more advanced, so you can carry on conversations with them. I have this kid named Benjamin that brings pockets full of Lego toys that I have to take from him every single class. He is the biggest trouble maker, and literally turns into the Tasmanian devil, but he makes me laugh so hard.  Here he is:

Here are some other highlights:

We found a church! It is so awesome because there are people from all over the world, which we love. We went today for the second time and it was absolutely incredible. We are really excited to find a family here to plug into. Thank you for your prayers in this area--we've met some really great people and it is so encouraging to hear God's Word in another culture and know it is the same! 

We moved our bed upstairs to the loft and got a new (for us) couch that somebody was throwing out! For some reason, the loft has a really low ceiling. (Typical in Korea) You can’t stand all the way up, otherwise you’ll hit your head.  But it is perfect for our bed! Took a little video our us in our apartment: (please excuse the fact that I just got out of the shower!)

I love the every day life of finding quirky little Asian things. I love that we get to walk to school every day past the Hello Kitty Café (which was an AWESOME birthday celebration!)

I love using chopsticks. Today at our training in Seoul, they had forks for us—but I willingly chose chopsticks. Hannie the Asian.

I love that kimchi literally comes with every single meal. Also, sometimes our apartment smells like kimchi and we don’t even eat it there. It is like a permanent smell.

Again, I love that I can get an ab work out on my morning run and run past the old guys wearing neon track suits in the park.

I love the fish markets in the middle of the city, with fresh fish and fruits and veggies.  I don’t, however, like the silk worms boiling in a hug pot, ready for a tasty little snack. Gross.  BUT, the fried shrimp on a stick, and friend pancake-like-thing on the street has become a regular snack for us.

I’ve gotten used to the “bow” you do when greeting somebody. Why don’t we do that back home?! : )

I love the mountains just within our grasp.

And Asian bowl cuts. I love them so much.

And I love you guys. I really miss you guys. Come visit when you can ; )

"You'll learn."

Since Traylor did an incredible job of telling you in detail about our life here--i'll just add a few random things and a few pics we've taken. My friends Jessica and Laci and I coined the phrase "You'll learn" (said with a condescending tone :)) whenever one of us does something that we'll eventually learn not to do; or when we are learning new things. I feel like I am in a constant state of "You'll learn" here. Few examples:

These people hooked up to IVs walking around. Apparently if you go to the doctor's office for the common cold, they'll hook you up to an IV and let you leave. I guess you just check it out for a few hours? This is something I've seen MANY times, so it is not just a random event. Here's a pic I secretly snapped of this little lad in the restaurant with his IV. 

I mentioned before that many of the parks have work out equipment. Here is the arm machine I've used a few times on my run. (see my Facebook for pics of the stationary bike, too!)

It has been fun learning all of these new things with Traylor. What a blessing to do this together. As Traylor noted, we have really great co-workers who have been awesome at showing us around. We went to Busan yesterday (huge coastal city) and experienced some of the shopping districts and the gorgeous beaches. I'll definitely be hitting up the beach every weekend in the summer. Here are a few shots from our day exploring Busan: 

We've officially started teaching, so that's both a "you"ll learn" experience and a very fun and exciting time for us. Last week was their graduation (since the new school year starts at the beginning of March). The kids are really great. My new youngins can't speak any English, but I know it will come quickly! Here are a few pics from graduation. We love you guys and miss you dearly! Make sure you scroll down for Traylor's post : )

First Impressions (Traylor's view)

Okay, so for those of you that know me, you know there are a number of things that I like….A LOT. I like a good and quirky conversations, I steer conversations in this direction intentionally a lot of times. I like nature a lot; I especially like birds and trees for some reason (I think I am more fascinated at how God could make such things…a seed produces a thing that can weigh tons and an egg that produces something that can fly, I digress). I like good food, I like photography, I like to run and walk, I like adventure, I like clothes with neon colors, I like making new friends, and I like living among different cultures, amongst other things.

Korea has offered all of these things to Hannah and I so far. We live on the 18^th floor of our apartment and the view is quite stunning with a bustling city of neon lights below us and the mountains a mile or so beyond our reach. There are trees everywhere here (typically cherry blossom trees, but there are some scattered pines here as well) too along with birds.

Asian food has always been something that I did not like (heck I think I have shut down the Nichols weekly Chinese food runs on Friday whenever Hannah and me come to visit for the weekend), I didn’t like Japanese or Chinese food. After getting over finding a long black hair in my food twice in the first week here I can honestly say the food is great. There are so many flavors it’s ridiculous. My little nephew Mikey (he’s three years old) probably had a more advanced taste pallet than I had before I moved here as fruity pebbles was probably the pinnacle of taste for me. I want to highlight a couple of restaurants for anyone reading this.

First one is Korean barbeque. Korean barbeque is essentially a barbeque in the middle of your table. You can order your meat (beef or pork) and then it comes with all of these vegetables that you can cook with it (onions, carrots, radishes, mushrooms, kimchi, garlic, etc.) and then when it’s done you can add either a sweet or spicy sauce or both, whatever you want really and wrap it in lettuce with all of these vegetables and eat it kind of like a taco.

The second place, and my favorite place so far is a kind of similar to the Korean barbeque but instead of a grill in the middle of the table, there is a very hot bowl of broth, almost like a chicken broth. So instead of an open grill you cook all of your meat and vegetables in this pot of very hot broth. So, you are cooking meat and vegetables in this pot and then when the meat and vegetables are cooked you wrap in in a spring roll and eat it. The spring roll did have a ‘latexy’ feel to it so it was a little awkward to eat, but it was still delicious. So, when you are done with this, the meal is not over, the broth is still left, you are as fat as a Thanksgiving turkey, but the broth is still left; someone has to eat the broth. So, our waitress comes over and brings rice to the bowl and squishes a squash in the middle of the rice and the rice cooks in the broth, it was incredible (again, a gracious God that gives us thousands of flavors of food to delight in Him in). I’ll zip through the other likes so I can get to my co-workers.

Photography is awesome here, so many colors, so many landscapes, so many different faces and shapes. Unfortunately, the sky has been quite dreary since our arrival two weeks ago (Hannah is used to this from Germany, but I have never seen anything like it in South Carolina).

Running is awesome and there are about four full size parks about a half a mile from us with tracks around them. I am starting an ultimate Frisbee league here and there are already five or six other foreigners that I haven’t met yet (facebook is incredible) that want to play next Friday night (along with hopefully Hannah and our other co-teachers at POLY and our other two friends that we met from Arkansas).

Adventure is everywhere here (we are in on the other side of the world so it better be). We went to Busan yesterday (a coastal city of about four – five million people) with our other teachers and the teachers from Arkansas. Hopefully, Hannah will talk more about Busan (we should have some pictures of it up too)

Clothes with neon colors are everywhere here. Korean’s dress better than any American I have ever seen. It may be because we are in a fairly rich city, but it’s incredible. The kids at our school wear Burberry and R. Robot (an expensive Asian kids brand) almost exclusively. The style here is awesome and I really wish I could wear some of the clothes here, but everything in Korea is very much Korean sized, meaning their extra large is about a medium in the states and there is nothing larger than an extra large. If you have any resemblance of a calf muscle on either leg, you will not be able to wear their pants or jeans. The good thing is, it allows me to save some cash.

Finally! Our co-workers. I work with four girls (including Hannah) and one guy. The girls: Kiley, Allison, and Anisha have all been here for a few months. The boy, Paul, started the same day we started. They are all great and are mostly around mid-to-late twenties. Kiley and Anisha are from Toronto and Allison is a southern-girl from Georgia. Paul is from Wisconsin. We have been very blessed to work all of these guys. The two Canadians have showed us around the city as they have been here the longest and know of some good areas to eat dinner/lunch and places to meet other foreigners. I think I’m making pretty good friends with Paul, as he is a very easy-going guy. It’s weird when you come here. You think about all of the Korean friends you are going to make but you tend to steer back to comfort and normalcy.

Okay, looong… breathe, I think I’m done. I hope to go into more detail later about our adventures. I do want to brag on God a little more though. One of the major reasons I wanted to come to Korea with Hannah was to pave a path for our marriage of reliance on God and on each other and I truly feel he is doing that. I find myself appreciating Hannah more everyday and getting to serve along side her as my bride. It has been incredible to pray together through hiccups we have had here and just our next day here. I was telling Hannah that Korea has really humbled me from an American perspective because Koreans in Changwon really don’t care if you are American (which I thought they would). I don’t know the language, I don’t know my way around the city, I don’t really know anyone here, and I have no anchor here except for Christ.  

Ephesians 2: 8-10 states, “ For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

If you pray, pray for this for my heart for my time here. We prayed for this before we came here and God has been faithful to strip me of comforts and some laziness already and it has been great. Pray for that to continue.

I miss all of you guys and we are praying for you!!