Chris and Jenn's First Week In Korea

We have finally created a blog. For our first message we are going to go back and enter previous emails that we have sent to others in the week that we have been here. The reason for this is that we both had different email lists so some people heard Chris point of view and others heard Jenns. Some of you may have already read parts of these so scroll down to the next bold spot for a different email. In the future there will only be on post at time.

On Sat, Feb 28, 2009 at 4:22 AM, Chris Richards <cwrichardswa@hotmail.com> wrote:

Good morning my friends, this is a brief email journal that I wrote to myself and thought you might enjoy. I will probably post it on our blog when we get it set up (maybe Sunday?), but until then or if I forget here is a brief account of our first two days here in Korea. ChrisDay 1 (plus an extra night) The flight was 11 hours long and I did not sleep at all during the whole journey. We landed safely and went through customs, where they confiscated my beef jerky and trail mix (very irritating) and then got through to meet Charlie. He was delayed on his way over however, so we waited for a half an hour or so until he arrived to take us to Ilsan. We took a "limosine bus" from the airport to Ilsan. The trip took about an hour, and our boss, Sarah Ryu met us at the bus station and took us to our hotel room.

The hotel room is nice. We are on the tenth floor, which is the only floor that is hotel, the rest is other businesses. The floor of our room is a soft, and semi-heated wood floor. The bathroom is a little strange as there is no shower curtain. the whole room is the shower even though there is a bathtub. The floor has a slant so that the water will run down to a drain in the floor, and the ceiling fan is always on. The fan would normally annoy me being on all the time, but it is rather quiet and when the door is closed the sound is minimized greatly. I often cannot hear it even when I am trying to. There is a large screen tv and a decent computer (which I am currently using). The computer was problematic for a while as it typed everything in Korean and try as we might we could not figure out how to make it use English. Jenn stumbled across it and so now we have a usable computer. We cannot use her laptop yet since we have to get a power adapter for it to plug in to. The bed is way too hard, but we are coping. I expect that most matresses here will be very hard (it was the same in India), and we will most likely be buying a memory foam mattress pad or something simliar from Costco (yes they have them here too). Charlie has a membership there so we should be able to get what we need to from that store. There is also a hot water pot, with tea bags and Maxim sticks (instant coffee already mixed with cream and sugar in a tubular container that resembles a stick). Inside the mini-fridge there was water and some OJ.

My first day in the ECC was very interesting. Many of the children quickly became attached to me and weree hanging off of me and trying to drag me down hallways. We observed the regular classes today, but the children were a little rowdier and less obedient than normal. It was many of their last day (also three of the teacher's last day) and so things were not as disciplined as usual. It was strange how the children are left alone in their rooms while the teachers change rooms. Each room is named after an international city (such as London, Paris, NY, Seattle). Also, the children are between 1-2 years younger than their age (Koreans measure age differently than Americans). What this means in practical terms is that the kids are between 4-6 years old, but in Korean terms are 5-7 ? years old. Generally the kids are well behaved (we will see how that works when we start teaching on Wednesday), but many of the students that we will be teaching will be new students, most of whom will no little to no English. I will have more of the 2nd year students, but Jenn will have mostly (if not completely) new students.

Day 2

Today Charlie came over to see Jenn and I and help us around the area and go shopping for things we need. We spent half the day going through parts of Ilsan, including the beautiful lake park, and then trying to find some of the items on our shopping list. We did not find the power adapter that we wanted (so we are still not able to use our laptop, I am using the computer in our hotel room), but did manage to acquire a coffee pot, kleenex, coffee supplies (filters, creamer, sugar, cups, etc), hot chocolate for Jenn (mostly, [since it is so cold here we find that we want to drink warm beverages more]). We had a good time with Charlie, who was able to help us order Korean food too. I forget what it is called, but we ate something that is very similar to california rolls (sushi type food). Very good!! I could eat that everyday, which is probably a good thing since I will be here for a while;-) The excusion out through Ilsan wore all three of us out pretty effectively, so we returned to our room and tried out the coffee maker (Jenn did not have any). While we were out, the staff at the hotel must have come through and refilled our towel supply, as well as adding another water and OJ to the fridge and somemore Maxim sticks too, although I had already bought some more myself.

Whenever I travel to a foreign country I usually get sick during the first week or so. So far my health has been good, only minor complaints. Jenn seems to have acquired some kind of bug and is not feeling too great (she is sleeping right now), but has been handling things very well. Last night we wandered into a nearby restaurant for dinner and ended up ordering almost at random (nothing was in English, so we guessed on something). It ended up being something akin to sweet and sour pork, but with additional veggies/fruit and it was quite spicy. Happily she has decided to try to learn to eat spicy food, and was able to eat it without getting heartburn or an upset stomach. She managed to eat it with a smile and enjoyed it, although I think it was spicier than she wanted.

Ilsan is a beautiful city. There is the lake park nearby (probably 5-10 minutes away from our hotel room by foot) and an abundance of department stores, shops, restaraunts, etc. The subway and train stations are right by our workplace, so when we move into our apartments we will be able to get there quickly by those means of transport. The city was also very well planned and developed. There are large streets and sidewalks everywhere. The city was designed for the modern age, with cars, busses and pedestrians all having the room neccessary to get around town. That makes a lot of sense since the tcity has only been around for about 20 years or so, but it is still impressive. We have been slowly exploring parts of the city on our own, primarily in the early hours of the morning when hunting for breakfast. Korea is not like the US in that the whole nation stays up later and gets started later too. Most stores do not open until 8am or later. By stores I mean all types, food, clothing, department, etc. It is very strange to be walking the streets at 7:30am and still not being able to find a place to buy some food. We have found a few now, but it seems so strange.

Another strange thing about Ilsan, and from what I have heard it applies to the whole country, is that it is a very safe city. There is little crime here. I regularly see vehicle left with their engines running but no driver (usually he/she is inside a nearby store, but I don't see this sort of thing in the US). There are no meanacing looking kids or adults walking around or anything particularly discomforting either. Charlie was telling me that the only place he has been while here that he is not comfortable going at any time of day or night is an area (I don't recall the name) that contains a very large amount of foreigners.

So we are doing pretty well. We both got about 8 hours of sleep last night, and managed to sleep in till 5am. Jet lag stinks. Tomorrow is Sunday, but we will probably not be going to church. We have not located an English speaking church of any time here in town yet, and since Jenn is not feeling well we are not inclined to do much exploring either. We will probably listen to last weeks sermon from our home church in Red Bluff.

One last cool thing about Korea. The water is ok to use for basic things like washing your dishes, rinsing your tooth brush, etc. In some countries you cannot do this without getting sick or having other unpleasant troubles, but here it is ok and is not an issue. I don't know why, but am glad not to have to worry about getting water in my mouth while showering or having to rinse my toothbrush with bottled water. It is just one more convenience that you don't think about until you are in a foreign land.

Please pray that we build good relationships with our coworkers and the students and that we can be a good witness to the people here. There are a couple Christians in our school, but at this point we don't know much about them or anyone else at work. While this is not a missions trip in the normal sense, both Jenn and I want to be good witnesses to the people of Korea and encourage those who already know Christ. We also need to find a good church here. Our options will be limited since it will have to be an English speaking church, but we hope to find one where the members are truely Christ-like and are seeking to continually grow stronger in their faith and trust in the Lord.

Please email us and let us know what is going on in your lives.

Have a good night.

Chris



On Feb 26, 2009, at 15:08, Jennifer Richards <jenniferrichards_99@yahoo.com> wrote:

We arrived in Korea. Chris friend Charlie met us at the airport. We are now in a motel for 6 days across the street from the school. We will meet everyone this morning. We got about 6 hours sleep last night and then woke up at 3 am and could not go back to sleep. We are excited to see what the day has in store for us. We mastered Korean showers and a keyboard that is not in English and now we are going to go and try to find breakfast.

We will send more updates later.

Chris & Jenn