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!!