Traveling

(Somehow this didn't get published...but this is supposed to be before the latest post! Blogger is in Korean and I don't know how to change it, so I am just randomly pressing buttons until it posts-ha!)

So this is our first ‘official-official’ blog entry from Korea. For those of you who haven’t heard, we have made it to Changwon after a long day and night of travelling out of Charleston. We both anticipated that the day was going to be full of emotions and confusion. We arrived at the Charleston airport with Hannah’s parents and my mom alongside and Delta giving us the proverbial middle finger with our luggage. We came around the corner to see our good friends, Beth Kay and Mark Barrett waiting on us at some random gift shop around the corner and our hearts really did melt at that time.

It takes me a long time for things to settle in; the fact that we are staying here for a year is still very hard to comprehend. I’m not very sure if it’s a male thing or not. For Hannah, it has been very real from the start about leaving her family and friends behind and the emotion that comes with that.

So, fly from Charleston to Atlanta, then to Tokyo, then to Busan, Korea. Our flight from Atlanta to Tokyo was awesome. We were blessed to have two seats in the back of the jet. I got to watch three Harry Potter movies, and three other random movies and Hannah watched like 76 episodes of Glee (it was a 14 hour flight). We arrived in Tokyo and we were both incredibly tired. I did not sleep at all on the flight and Hannah was in and out.

So, we are arrive at the Tokyo airport and are like the walking dead. We find our gate and sit down and both fall asleep for a few hours. Well, of course, we both slept through our dozen or so boarding announcements and by the time we were jolted up by a flight attendant the entire flight had boarded (thank God for nice Japanese ladies) so we had to rush to board the flight, thankfully we made it. 

Fast forward a few hours and there we were, walking through the gate in Busan (about 40 minutes outside of Changwon) being greeted by our director. We were shocked by the fact that she hugged us immediately! It was nice to see a friendly face. She drove us back to our apartment. We were anxious about what this apartment would be like and prayed it would be bigger than a cardboard box. We couldn’t believe how nice it was once we opened the door.  High ceilings, a loft space, kitchenette, all overlooking the city of neon lights on the penthouse suite of the 18^th floor of the apartment. We were blown away by how awesome it was!  Thanks for your prayers friends. More to come. 

First Impressions

School

We arrived in Changwon around 11:00pm and were informed that our director would be picking us up at 8:45am the next morning for what we thought would be just a tour of the city. It turned out to be a full on, all day first day of training. These Koreans don’t mess around when it comes to work! The school is a highly respected school on many cities in Korea, but I think both Traylor and I thought the kids would be a little more mundane and robotic. It turns out that they are just normal kids who happen to have parents who send them to school all day in hopes of getting the best jobs one day. They mess around, laugh, giggle in class just like any other kid their age. I was immediately smitten by the littlest kids (4 year olds) and was excited to know that I’d be teaching these little munchkins in March. They are HILARIOUS! I can’t wait to post pictures of how cute and funny they are. Every teacher is called by their first name and then “teacher” {teacha} after it.  So, we are Hannah Teacher and Traylor Teacher.  They are also so stinking smart! 4 year olds can read full English sentences by the end of the year. Crazy! They all have English names like “Kevin, Andy, Becky…” It’s like, yeah…I know that’s not your real name, George- Ha! I think their names are assigned by their parents when they come to school.  We will get our first batch of kids the first of March, so we’ll update more once we get our classes.

Our apartment

What a blessing our apartment is! THANK YOU for praying for a big place for us. We shared a little about our apartment in our previous post, but here are a few pics:

This guy is the first thing we see looking out of the window of our apartment. Every time I get scared about living here, I look out the window to be reminded by Mr. Thumbs Up, that everything will be ok : )

Changwon the city

The city is A LOT bigger than we thought it would be. Tons of shopping and food places around our school and our apartment.  I’m actually in a Duncan Donuts right now! for the free internet since we don’t have it at our apartment yet) At night the city really comes to life with bright neon lights everywhere and the hustle and bustle of Koreans getting off work and trying to get into the night life. These pictures are daytime/night views from our apartment: 

Here is the same view at night (as the pic above): 

Mountains surround our city, so it’s awesome to have the best of both worlds.  We’ve been able to find 3-4 running trails/parks within walking distance of our apartment. The funniest thing about these parks is that they literally have gym equipment outside on the trails. You’ll be running along and up next to the tree will be a legit workout machine that you would find at any gym. Bench press, ab machines, 3-4 arms work outs, leg press…ect. I’ve even seen a stationary bike and elliptical machine on my running trail! Absolutely hilarious. Traylor and I will be ripped when we get done with this year ; )

Man, there is so much we want to share, but since our apartment doesn’t have internet, we are really limited for now. Thank you for being patient with us! Once we have internet  we’ll update more often and be in contact. (Probably in 1-2 weeks) We love you guys!

Prayers

We are very excited to embark on this journey to Changwon, South Korea! Thank you for your consistent love and support as we have been praying through every-leg of our journey to Korea.  Looking back on this past year, it is undeniable that God has paved the way for this opportunity to teach in Changwon.  We will be teaching elementary aged students at Korean POLY school.

Changwon, South Korea, (population of 1.1 million) is a smaller city by Korean standards, but a pretty big city by our standards. We are excited about the city life, and anxious to hike in the mountains that surround the city.  We are ready to learn about Korean life, and embrace a culture much different than ours, and teach a group of elementary aged kids! More than anything, we are ready to take the grace and love we have been given, through Jesus, and share that with another people across the world. We want to give you guys a couple of ways you can go before God for us.

First of all, please pray for the Word of God to go before us. Pray that internationals’ hearts would be open and willing for gospel change. Pray that our marriage and our work ethic is a picture of God’s grace and covenant made through Christ. Pray that God would generously give us church family. Pray that our eyes are more open to the Spirit on this trip, pray that we learn to trust in the Spirit more than we currently do and this trip would be the catalyst for that.  Pray for our families as we leave them for a year.

THANK YOU! We really want to keep up with you guys, so please continue to email or Facebook us!

Less than a week!

WE LEAVE IN LESS THAN A WEEK. Sunday (the 19th) to be exact!


Hello. 


Thank you for joining us in this journey! Chanwon, South Korea, will soon be home to the Disbrow family. We are anxious and excited about what God has in store for this year ahead. For those of you who have prayed specifically for us, THANK YOU. Our visas came this week, which was a huge answer to prayer. 


Thank you for your continued prayers as we wrap up our time here. We'll miss the home we have here and the friends and family we will leave. Thankful for Skype, Email and snail mail.


More to come. Until then, enjoy this picture that our good friend, Ashley Wright, took of us. We liked it so much we had used it for our blog, too : ) 






































Psalm 9:11 is our heartbeat for our time in Korea!