Summer Vacation Don't Blink

Well this most recent week was our “summer vacation.” Yep, for a whole 4 days we didn’t have to go to work!! We have had a blast and here are some of the details of my week, and a bit from before vacation too.

One day in class all my kindergartners were wearing Crocs and they pointed that out to me. Well, Brandon came over and looked at my shoes and said they looked like a similar material. Then he felt my shoes and announced that they must be the same. For the record my shoes are not Crocs, and in my opinion don’t look anything like them, so I mentioned that they were different. Well Brandon , not to be deterred by such information goes and SMELLS my shoes and then his. Then he triumphantly announced that they have the same smell too! I looked at him and said (in a kind voice) I think that’s the foot smell. With that all the kids laughed ( Brandon too) and we started class. I love my kindergartners!!

My experience with the “5-year olds” also went really well. No one cried when I walked in and they all seemed to love me. In fact I suspect they will be quite upset when someone else comes into class instead of me on Monday. They were very well behaved, although a little hard to keep track of and control sometimes. In short, I love them and actually enjoyed teaching them, but am really glad I don’t have to keep their class.

Wednesday was our take care of those unpleasant but necessary things day. We went to the dentists and then to an optometrist for Jenn (I had been just before we left for Korea ). Well, the optometrist was great and Jenn got a new pair of glasses, which look quite nice on her.

We went to the dentist to get our teeth checked and cleaned. Korea does things slightly differently than we do in the U.S. For starters you don’t make an appointment beforehand. You just show up (this goes for optometrists and just about any kind of health care as far as I can tell). Second, they call the teeth cleaning “scaling,” which seems quite accurate after the fact. Their drill/electronic scraping device sounds horrid (think fingernails on chalkboard x 2 and much louder) and really scrapes. Then, they don’t polish your teeth like in the U.S. After the scaling is complete you are done.

The dentist had bad news for me. I had a cavity, but due to its location it could only take one kind of filling after the drilling. So on Friday I went in to get the initial drilling, molding, etc taken care of. Well they put a temporary filling in my tooth after they did their nasty work of taking out the cavity and I am supposed to come back this next Friday to get my final filling.

Well, on Saturday night (sorry, I am jumping out of chronological order) when I brushed my teeth my temporary filling fell out. Of course the dentist offices are all closed on Sunday so I called Hoon (a Korean man who helps us foreigners a lot. We met him at church) in the morning and he looked into things for me. It turns out that our church (which is absolutely huge, although the English service is small) has among other things a clinic that they run on Sunday. This clinic is for church members and is completely voluntary. Different people volunteer to help with different things and so they have a nice list of people with different professions who come down to help when called on. So a dentist who spoke quite good English put a new temporary filling in to last me until Monday, when I can go get the correct temporary filling replaced (I assume he didn’t have the resources to put the proper one in). Praise God I can eat again!!! This was a particularly big deal for me since I start feeling really weak and shaky if I don’t eat. God was very good in providing this help through these people!!

On Thursday I met Charlie at Seoul Station (train station) to go explore a fortress. We went to Hwaseong Fortress in the city of Suwon , just south of Seoul . We took a train to get there, which was a first for both Charlie and I (well he did ride the KTX, but that is different). He figured it saved us a good 90 minutes of travel time compared to taking the subway or buses. The train was nice too, although a little more expensive.

We had a blast exploring the fortress. Construction on it began in 1789 and it was finished about 1796. It was made primarily of stone and brick construction and was rather well designed as a fortress, although I am not aware of any battles having been fought there. It also contained a palace which was interesting, although I liked the fortress part better. Climbing the walls took a large part of the day and was also very tiring. After going to the top it was easy to see why fortresses are usually constructed on hills. We were out of breath going less than ¼ the way up and had to pause several times. In a battle the soldiers would have had heavy weapons and probably armor to slow them down and help tire them too. It was cool.

Upon my return from my expedition to Hwaseong Fortress I found my apartment sparkling clean. My sweet wife had cleaned the whole thing all by herself and done an impressive job too!! For reasons not entirely understood by me, she likes to clean when I am gone and make it all perfect (maybe I am too messy?), but then it is absolutely beautiful when I come home. She is very sweet!!!

Jenn:
As you may know I love to go to yard sales and there aren't any here in Korea. Maybe because they don't have any yards? So on Tuesday Chris and I went to a moving sale. I found it on the Seoul chapter of Craigs list. There are a lot of moving sales from foreigners who are leaving Korea and can't take much with them. It took us over 1 and a half hours to get there by subway. But we got a lot of cool stuff. Maybe this will satisfy my yard saleing bug for another 5 months who knows.

So this week I not only got new glasses but I also dyed my hair a very dark brown. I have never gone darker before. It goes well with the new red glasses. Pictures to come but we havn't taken any yet.

I am very thankful that we got important things taken care of instead of going a trip during vacation. However after the dentist and the eye dr. Even with them being a lot cheaper here I think that it would have been cheaper to go on vacation instead :)