All in a day’s work. Or, more appropriately, all in 5 minutes’ work.

here is the dialog:

"BOYS! Don't play with the hand sanitizer! It'll get the floor wet and someone will get hurt."
"BOYS! DON'T DO THAT!"
"BOYS!"
"Girls, don't run"

Elizabeth runs, slips in the hand sanitizer and clutches her arm.
The big boss takes Elizabeth to hospital.

Belle to me "Teacher, my leg is bleeding"
Me to Belle "What? Oh, my, it is. How did THAT happen?"
Belle "I don't know."
Me to Belle "Um, one second… grab some tissues!"

*Sally keeps reading out loud*

Joon to me "TEACHER! MY TEETH ARE BLEEDING!"
Me to Joon "Well, stop wiggling and poking at them :)"
Joon "BUT TEACHER! THEY ARE BLEEDING!"
Me "Well, stop poking at them and the bleeding will stop."
Joon pokes his teeth and gums
Joon "SEE TEACHER! THEY ARE BLEEDING!"
Me "If you stop touching them, they will stop bleeding"

Belle "I'm still bleeding"

*Sally keeps reading out loud*

Jack starts to clucks like a chicken and frantically starts saying "TEACHER! TEACHER! BLOOD!!!"

~*~

Hahaha. Gotta love kids.

“Greeting Card mishaps, getting lost, and being found” :)

Well, so much has happened since my last post and there have been enough adventures to cover two blogs.

AK Plaza: I confess this picture was taken off the internet – it was PACKED the day we went and to have stopped for pictures would have meant being trampled.

Two weekends past, Jen and I set off on an adventure to a giant shopping centre known as AK Plaza. Upon reaching the facility, both she and I decided that neither one of us were big ‘mall’ fans, and attempted to find a more quaint area in which to stroll and observe Korean life. We ended up in a relatively large store which seemed to sell a bit of everything (reminded me of a cross between Chapters/Indigo, Michaels and Staples) with a small bit of a toy store thrown in for kicks. It was there that we discovered some awesome greeting cards, and were impressed to find an English card section. The only problem was that the Korean attempts to express themselves in English were a little off base… resulting in some rather humorous mistranslation of ideas:

“Beautiful people make beautiful love like flowers in a Garden. Thank-you for your love.”

“YOU ARE NOT UGLY.”

And then there were the random language swaps, where a card would start off in English, and end in French (PS – Chrissy, this is your birthday card! I have yet to find a post-office so I can mail it! I hope you had a great one!):

“HAPPY Birthday; je te souhaite un heureux et joyeux anniversaire.”

It was also at this store that I found my travel mug:

A very blurry “loveing sky without wings.” Classic.

After stopping off at a local coffee shop we headed home for the evening.

The next day we set out on our 1.5 hour walk to find our English speaking church while in Korea. We only got lost twice! Eventually we found it and were pleasantly surprised to find that it’s a decent sized congregation – mainly English-speaking Koreans – who all seem really sweet. There was a great welcome centre type deal where us newcomers got to sit down with some other new people as well as meet the pastor and pray. There were a few other ‘foreigners’ who were extremely kind as well, and many people have offered to help us find our way around life in Korea. One of the young Korean girls offered to teach us how to use the subway system and got us an English copy of the subway maps. With her help we were able to get home much faster with only a half hour walk after getting off the subway. So far, Global English Ministry seems to be an awesome church, and we’re excited to be going back next week :) They also have some sort of orphanage ministry starting up again in the fall, and we’re super excited about that!

Later that week, I got a strange knock on my door. Very persistent, someone kept yelling “Annyeong?! Annyeong?!” (translated that means “Hello?! Hello?!”), at which point I would respond with “Hello?!”. The lady sounded confused and yet kind enough to warrant a response, so I opened the door. I’ve never seen Korean women look so shocked :) Eyes wide, they bowed and handed me this:

Having no idea what this was, I smiled and thanked them, returning their bow. Apparently they hadn’t seen too many foreigners before, and looked utterly perplexed at my presence. To fill the awkward silence, they offered another bow. As is polite custom here, I again returned their bow. Then they bowed again. Thinking that this was the final goodbye bow, I returned it once more and took a step back into my apartment… but they didn’t stop… they kept bowing. Not wanting to be rude, I kept bowing as well. Eventually, as time continued to pass, and no end was in sight, I offered “Komsumnida” (“thank-you”). They bowed again, I bowed again, I waved and backed into my apartment, closing my door behind me. Looking at the nifty pamphlet, I thought it was an advertisement for a fruit store or something… until I spotted this:

 

That’s right. Korean Jehovah’s Witnesses. Fascinating! I’ve never had any come to my door in Canada, and yet here in Korea they have already found me. Later there was a giant group of them meeting in the park outside my apartment. It was quite the sight.

Well, that’s it for today! We’re on vacation this week so sometime within the next couple of days I’ll have the next post up – this one will involve last weekend’s adventure in Daejeon: “Filled with hot air, doing loop-de-loops, kung-foo fighting and meeting Romeo.” There will be lots of pictures :)

Hope you’re all doing well!!!

~Kate

Airports, squat toilets and crosses.

Hello! I’ve made it safely to Korea, and have snagged brief access to the internet. So! I’ve got much to say, but now I’ll stick to the flight/arrival so as not to bore/overload anyone :) This is the Korean airport (from online advertisement):

My experiment had interesting results. I arrived at the Halifax airport around 5:20am, and proceeded to the checked baggage counter. Luckily, my lovely bags weighed in at 49.3 lbs and 49.4 lbs ~ SUCCESS! They were x-rayed and passed inspection. Proceeding onto security, excitement built as I stepped up for my turn at the counter. I smiled at the personnel, trying to appear as normal as possible. Perhaps that was my mistake, because instantly I saw hands waving at each other and a female security officer step forward. *Great* I thought, knowing full well what was to come. At least I wasn’t wearing anything metal – I’d taken great care to avoid metal in any form. I stepped through the gates, ready to pass the inspection with flying colors. The buzzer went off. “What?!!” Confused, I looked to my left, and noticed that my watch was happily resting on my wrist. All that effort wasted! The security man got out his wand thing and waved it all about, eventually allowing me to continue on towards the awaiting female officer. This search took the cake though. Not only was it the full pat-down, it was an in-depth shoe inspection and then a full bag search. Overall, the most thorough search I’ve participated in thus far. This officer seemed friendly enough, smiling as she put my fave stuffed animal back into my carry-on (“My daughter has one of these that she carries everywhere too!” – I never did ask how old her daughter was).

I passed through customs, endured my first and second flights (16 hours), and arrived in Japan around what would be 4am Atlantic Time, 4pm Japanese time. Security lines were huge, but it allowed me time to mentally prepare for the next encounter. I removed the watch, took my laptop out in advance, and stepped confidently up to the counter. The lady waved me through, and I was amused to notice that the guy who was supposed to be watching my gate was rather distracted and staring off into some distant land located to his right. I passed through without any acknowledgement from him at all, picked up my bag, and with a special thrilled feeling in my heart I pranced down to my boarding gate. I had, at last, gone unnoticed at an airport. *Joy!*

Having some time to wander the airport, I headed off in search of the restroom facilities. For those of you who are like me, be prepared for a bit of a shock here: not all toilets look like our toilets. That’s right. TOILETS are different. I experienced genuine shock. I had NO idea what to do with this:

While I was standing at the door peering in, the Japanese women found my confusion to be quite amusing, and kept repeating “squat toilets!” I told them I had no idea how to use the things, and they, again, laughed to themselves. Befuddled, I simply left. Ah well.

I made it to Korea around 8pm, managed to get through all the health-checks and somehow was able to prove that I was not infected with swine flu. By-passing the mandatory quarantine for all persons experiencing headaches, runny-noses and sore-throats, I made it through customs, retrieved my bags and met my taxi-driver. As I was making the hour long trip to my new hometown, I was amazed at the amount of crosses displayed proudly on buildings in the area. Lit with red or white Christmas-type lights, *hundreds* of crosses illuminated the skyline – there was never a time where I could see less than five crosses within eye-range, and usually it was more like 10+. I found out later that each of those crosses were placed on the rooftops of Christian churches, acting as beacons. It’s pretty crazy sweet and comforting.

I arrived at my temporary apartment around 9:30pm, ready for a nice night’s sleep ~lovely!

Well, that was the adventure of the trip over! I’ll write more about the area and my exciting first day in Korea soon (it involves me going to the Korean hospital and, later, being locked out of my apartment for the weekend ~ oops).

As soon as I find camera batteries, I will post pictures! We love to get emails from home (hint hint ;) and thanks to everyone who was praying for safe travels!

~Kate

In the beginning...

... was the blog. We've just spent the past hour or so trying to figure out how to use this 'blog' thing. After a trip to Tims (Mountain Road), we have gotten ourselves pumped up on caffeine and dreams of Korea.

We've decided to keep a blog of our many experiences throughout the course of our adventures - from the very beginning to the ...end? So this should be a pretty good account of all the crazy procedures, trials, and excitements.

Both Jen and I (Kate) are going to be posting on here, so we're going to be offering two different perspectives, and a wide variety of random thoughts. It should be quite fun.

Feel free to contribute by commenting, asking questions, and sending us emails at our awesome new joint email account (jenandkate@gmail.com)!

~*~ Kate

The above picture: Jen (left) and Kate (right)