Castaways

Dear Yellow Sea,
You have made a fool out of me.

Yes, that's right, believe it. This is my second blog in two days! I'm just tired of being behind, plus last week had it's fare share of funny,stressful, touching happenings that I want to write down before I forget.

Last Sunday evening, I think, was a slight turning point for me. If you read my last blog, you know I had been struggling with homesickness. I was looking up the word "homesick" in Google and I found that a major symptom is not wanting to do anything at all, no matter how exciting it would seem. This was exactly how I was feeling. I was to the point where if someone would have said, "Natalee Anderson, you have won a two week trip touring all of Asia with a special stop in Australia annnnd your travel buddy will be RYAN REYNOLDS!!!" my response would have been.."eh, no thanks, I'll just sit in my room and watch Office reruns." Well, to be honest, having Ryan Reynolds as a travel buddy probably would have snapped me right out of it. But you get my point.

We have a 3 day vacation starting next Wednesday and I had been talking to my dad about the different opportunities I had for traveling. But when it came down to it, I realized I didn't want to do anything but come home. I'd had enough adventure to last me awhile. He ended up coaxing me out of this slump and encouraged me to take the opportunity to go to Guam for the 3 day vaca. My really good friend here, Hwa Jeong is getting married in Guam to another teacher Ben, and she has many friends in Guam so I had a place to stay and someone to pick me up from the airport. So, I bought the ticket (with some much appreciated help from my fantastic father), and next Tuesday I'll be off to Guam for 4 days! Be prepared to be enlightened about Guam in a future post!

Monday morning last week had such a good start. One of my adult students from the morning class, Mrs. Nam, had been gone for 2 weeks on vacation to Cambodia and Vietnam. I didn't realize how much I missed her until I saw her. It was so great having her back. Her comments are the best! This is one of the many times I wish that I could temporarily eliminate the language barrier because I wanted to hear all about her trip in detail. But of course i can't do that and if that was even possible I would totally be out of a job.

She did talk a little bit about being in a country that is not nearly as wealthy as South Korea. I was proud of her that she let herself be affected by the poverty-stricken people there. Sometimes I think many South Koreans are very concerned with material things and are therefore a little shallow and sheltered. But I guess I could say that for Americans too.

Moving on, Tuesday something utterly embarrassing and hilarious happened. I was with Jemal waiting for Yogita to finish teaching English for a company class. We had some time on our hands, so we decided to explore a little near the company. We ended up down next to the Sea. The tide was out, so there were a bunch of ajummas collecting, I think, oysters and other edible sea life the tide left behind. We had our fun wandering around on the "ocean floor" taking pictures and trying to find our own oysters. Little did we know what was happening when we were having our fun.

We went out on the rocks to the left here. This picture was taken before "the incident."


As I was taking a picture or daring Jemal to eat one of the raw oysters I noticed the ajummas were nowhere to be seen. We were alone. We turned around and BAM the tide had come in. My heart sank, which was a little dramatic of me to feel, but I was so confused, it had only been like 15 minutes, it looked deeper than it was AND I was in a skirt and tights. Now, I didn't befriend a volleyball or tear my shirt and wrap it around a stick to make an infamous torch or anything, but Jemal and I did quickly make our way through the shallow water, socks and shoes and all. It really wasn't a big deal, but then as we were crossing, we noticed all the oyster hunters were sitting up on the rocks watching us, laughing. That was one instance I was very glad to not know the Korean language.


It looked much deeper than it really was. You can tell by looking at my boots here.


On Friday, while playing a game with my class of 15 and 16 year olds, I observed a stark difference between the Korean teenage boy and the American teenage boy. We were playing this pictionary game that has pre-printed pictures and the player has to use the pictures to try to get his or her team to answer. The word they had to show was the word "bikini," after about 2 minutes of trying to show picture, I hear the shyest boy in the class yell out, "BIKINI!" and as soon as the words came out of his mouth, he turned as red as as an apple and covered his face. I can only imagine the perverted comments a group of American 16 year olds would have come up with. It was refreshing to witness their innocence..but I say this knowing that they could easily be shouting some grotesque comment in Korean and I would just sit there smiling and nodding. Anyhow, the embarrassment made it's way to the next level when the next word on the card was, "honeymoon."

The weekend came around and it was surprisingly full. On Saturday Jemal, Yogita, and I went on a little drive. We drove about an hour south of Gunsan to a city called Yangwang where there was a scenic route along the Yellow Sea. Although, it's winter and trees and plants are mostly brown, it was so refreshing to see the vastness of the Sea. I love seeing God's creation soooo much more than seeing all the modern, trendy buildings in Seoul. Also on our little day trip, we went to these little villages. It had a definite countryside feel, the villages were similar to the size, if not smaller than Walnut, IL. I think in one of the villages, there were tons of fish farms. It's hard to describe, but we drove out onto this marshy area where there where may roofs built on ground level above a square of water. It was kind of like Everglades meets Canadian bog (bawg). I'm not exactly sure what this little farming community did, but it definitely looked like something out of National Geographic or Animal Plant.


Saturday night, we had a little get together at church to say our goodbye to our Airforce friend Dale who is finishing up his year next week. It's sad saying goodbye. I feel like we are always saying goodbye to these guys. It's sad, but SOOO happy that they get to be reunited with their wives and kids. Anyways, Dale, you will be one greatly missed havener..dink dink.

Ironically last week, a question in the discussion section of my adult classes there was this question: "Do you think your favorite sports team will make it to the championship this year? Why?" Well, I jumped all over this question, chatting away about the Packers. So, that raised questions about American football. One of them said he doesn't understand it and that it's confusing. I was like, "no no..let me explain." [clears throat] "Well you have two teams, if one is on offense then they have four chances to get the ball 10 yards from where they started." (my thought: wait, they only know the metric system) "3 meters? no, I think it's 9 meters." "And then after they get past it, they have another 4 chances to get past another 9 meters. And then they can score if they run it past the last line on the field. And then they can kick the ball for an extra point. But then if they don't make it all they way past the last line they can kick for 3 points. But if they don't make it far they have to kick to the other team. And then they play defense." There were alot of "and then's" and "but's" in my explanation and as I was looking at their faces, I finally said, "You're totally right, this is really confusing. All you need to know is Packers rule and Bears and Vikings drool."

Speaking of the Packers, the other day I noticed this old person in his motorized wheelchair booking it down the highway, but my eye caught the bright yellow color and the glorious "G" on the back of his coat and I snapped this picture. You know I've been in Korea too long when the first thing I thought when I saw him was, "wow, it's so odd that that man has a Packers coat on," instead of "Wow! Someone help that senior citizen get off the highway and onto the sidewalk!"

Go Pack GO! Hope you're having a good week everyone!