크리스 오 제니퍼

If you can see our title, it is Korean for "Chris and Jennifer." If you can't see it, Sorry :(

Sorry we have lagged on our blog the last two weeks. But we do have a lot to talk about. First it felt like Christmas here one day. Well not exactly. About two weeks ago it was Teachers Day. It is a day when students and their families say thank you to teachers by buying them gifts. It was strange accepting gifts from students.

But it is normal to accept gifts from students here. I was given two bath sets, a hat, head band, some socks, some tea and a really nice pen with a flower on the end that smells like a real rose. But what I enjoyed the most was the cute little cards and notes that they wrote. They were very precious.

We have started to take Korean lessons. We have lessons after church on Sundays. So far we have learned most of the alphabet and how to write our names in Korean. It’s fun, but we have to do a lot of studying and we have a long way to go before we can carry on a conversation.

We have been searching for a mattress pad for our bed. Most mattresses here in Korea are very hard. We are hoping to find some form of memory foam. We found one at EMart last week. Unfortunately it was very dirty. We were disappointed because it was the only one they had and it was the only mattress pad that was not wrapped in plastic.

On our way to another store to search for a mattress pad we decided to walk through Lake Park. This is where they had a flower festival recently. It is a large park with a lot to do. We enjoyed looking at the flower gardens and the Lilly pads whose flowers looked like they had been painted. It is amazing what a creative artist that our God is.

Chris here. So I didn’t even know that there was a Teacher’s Day, here or anywhere else. I was surprised one day to have one of my students give me a gift. This was on Thursday, the day before Teacher’s Day. Not only was this gift totally unexpected, but it was not a cheap gift either. This girl and her family had bought me a rather large bottle of Chanel aftershave. Jenn likes the smell so I use it, most of the time. I was quite surprised by this and it was only after I found out that this was normal and OK that I was ok with it.

On Teacher’s Day itself, nearly all my kindergarteners gave me gifts. One of them gave me a baseball hat that says something about New York Air Force (in English). Another gave me a beautiful bar of hand crafted soap that her card says she made herself. I also got some yummy chocolate bars, some stickers and temporary tattoos, flowers, some facial cleanser and some very beautiful cards, made by my kids. The kicker though was when one of my 7 year old girls (5-6 in U.S. age) gave me a bottle of champaign!! I can only imagine the ramifications if that happened in the U.S.

First, an investigation would be launched into the teacher’s background and why this child was giving him champaign. Then, they would arrest the child’s parents for allowing her to have possession of alcohol. The child would be taken away from her parents and the teacher would probably be fired from his job. And here, its kinda normal! You have to love the differences that cultures can make!

In other news, I finally got my own computer. It may seem strange to buy one when you already have two, but we found that sharing one generally meant that one of us was ALWAYS on it. Typically for email and such, and staying in contact with friends and family back home. So, we decided to go ahead and buy one. Well, I had a friend here help me (Jason), and he ended up having a friend of his (Luke) help us both. Luke helped me out incredibly. He ordered the parts needed for my specifications (actually, this computer is above what I was looking for), then I paid for them. The parts were shipped to his home or his father’s work and he assembled the system for me. Then Jason dropped it off at our apartment (he has a car). So, then I jury rigged a desk out of empty boxes, suitcases, and a whiteboard and now I have my own desk too:-) Most of my programs are in Korean, but I am fluent enough in Windows and MS Word that I can deal with it just fine. I won’t use any other software very often, so it works out pretty well. Besides, I am learning Korean now!

Work has been going pretty well lately. Last week I had a minor incident in one of my classes. The short version is some of my students did something they weren’t supposed to and a parent saw it. I didn’t react fast enough because I was doing something else. I had been having some other problems with this class before, so it was kind of a last straw incident and so today I informed them that things were going to change. I am please to say that class went very well today.

Just after that class, I was grading some of my students’ diary entries and read one that I just thought was hilarious. If you went to college with me you’ll find it funnier than those who didn’t, but either way it was just strange and funny. I am typing it out here in its grammatically corrected format.

Asians, Europeans, and Americans live on the Earth. I’m Asian, my ECC teacher, Chris, is American, and Adolf Hitler was European. We all live (lived) on Earth! Chris, Adolf Hitler, and I don’t have the same skin color, but we aren’t very different people. Some Americans think, “I have white skin, I’m the best!” but white skin, black skin, and yellow skin are all the same!

I just wanted to share this. I decided to assume that saying that he and I aren’t very different from Hitler was not an insult. Until next time…