The Brave, Little Ninja Goes to South Korea: Weeks 1-3

I know I said I would do one every week, but time just got away from me as I explored and got to know this wonderful place.

Week 1 (11th-17th): Camp Orientation and Cultural Orientation

• After my flight from Osaka, I finally landed safely in South Korea!
• We (me and the other volunteers) went from Incheon airport into Bucheon where I would be staying for the first part of my practicum teaching at an English camp.

• Even though I didn’t have to deal with jet lag unlike the other volunteers, that didn’t mean there wasn’t culture shock.
• Probably the biggest culture shock was the food. Honestly, until about the third week, every meal was a battle. Literally everything is mixed with rice here and for good reason. I’ve learned that rice is not a main dish but rather a key to survival if you don’t have a spice tolerance built up.
• Also, there is no such thing as ‘breakfast food’ in Korea. What you have for breakfast is the same kind of food as what you have for lunch and dinner. And let me tell you, if radish kimchi doesn’t wake you up in the morning, nothing will.
•  Another interesting thing: trash and recycling are rigorously sorted here. There’s a lot of looking in the trash cans to figure out “Is this the one for food or glass or paper or plastic?”
• There’s also what I call the “how deep should I bow” game. Just like in Japan, there’s bowing to show respect, but I still haven’t quite figured out when and how much to bow. Thankfully, I obviously look like a foreigner so I hope it’s the thought that counts.
• Finally, there’s a culture shock about air conditioning. The only time I’ve come across air conditioning that was whole-building (like, multiple rooms on one system) air conditioning was in Gangnam (which I’ll talk about later). I’m getting the impression that it’s standard for Korean air conditioning to be individual to the room. Most of the buildings I’ve come across are left open so the hallways are always the temperature of what’s outside, but the individual rooms have air conditioning units that you pray work.

This is an extremely busy building front in downtown Bucheon.

• It’s extremely common to carry around a fan (paper, collapsable, or mini-electric). You need it to survive.
• Also Seoul traffic is insane. Absolutely insane.
• Another thing: If you ever travel to Korea, you will probably notice little foam thingies on lots of car doors. This is because Korean parking spaces are extremely tiny. So because of that, they put these foam things on their car doors so they don’t accidentally ding the cars next to them on accident while getting out.
• There are tons of little convenience stores nearby, but there are bigger stores that have more items and more variety. One of those places is called Home Plus. Something interesting was that the Home Plus parking garage we went to had a “female only” parking level. I’m not sure why. My best guess is so that the parking garage doesn’t seem as scary to women who are walking through it alone with their purses.

• Home Plus has just about everything you could want in several floors, but it’s not always cheap. It gives of the feel of Target. They don’t give you any bags but you can take your bounty in carts after you pay to the parking garage, and there they have broken-down cardboard boxes and packing tape so you can use those boxes if you need.

• Another notable place (to the volunteers at least) is a coffee shop nearby called Coffee Bay. Now, it’s pretty much the closest coffee place to STU campus so we go there quite regularly and the volunteers who have worked past AIEs have gone there frequently too. The guy who we’re pretty sure owns the place and might be only one of two employees is really nice and smiles at us when we come in. And we do go there practically every day. We’ve taken to code-naming him Coffee Bae and plan to get a group selfie with him by the end of the trip.

• A notable place nearby is Bucheon Station. It’s a subway station of course, but it’s also pretty much a mall. It has shopping inside, underneath the street in an indoor market, and outside in an outdoor market.

Many of the shops next to the street have the fronts painted like this.

• As a group, I and the other volunteers went to the War Memorial of Korea museum in Seoul proper. But to get there, we had to ride the subway! The subways in Seoul are all connected unlike the ones in Tokyo so there’s no hassle about that. They also give you a cardboard ticket that you tap like an Oyster card as the single ticket. Then, when you reach your destination, you give the ticket back to a “ticket refund machine” and it gives you a 500 won deposit back. Make sure to do that. You can also buy Oyster card type things too of course that are plastic and reloadable.
• When we got to the War Memorial of Korea museum, our guide for the English tour was really hard to understand, but we found out that he had an incredible, personal story about what happened to him and his family during the Korean war.

Entrance to the museum.

• The museum covers Korea’s history since practically the beginning of time until present, but the biggest attraction and standard tours are about the Korean War. There are also some general war history things on the bottom level too. Outside of the museum on the lawn there are several Korean War–era aircraft and even boats. It was a really good learning experience for me especially in light of what I would be doing the next week.

• Throughout all of this, most of our time consisted of the volunteers meeting regularly for orientation to prepare ourselves for teaching next week.

Week 2 (18th-24th) AIE4UK

• The camps I’m here for take place at Seoul Theological Seminary (STU), and we are staying in the student dorms. It has a very ‘college-y’ atmosphere so it was sort of like being back at Taylor in some ways.
• The highlight of this week was the short, Mon-Wed English camp for Adventures in English for United Korea. A lot of the focus was praying for North Korea.
• Most of the people attending were pastors, seminary students, or missionaries who were wanting some English practice so they could tell their testimonies in English.
• I wasn’t surprised when I found out that I knew so little about North Korea, but I’m sure I won’t forget what I’ve learned. One of the many things I didn’t know was that under the South Korean constitution, the entire Korean peninsula is considered one people group. Thus, when North Koreans escape and get to South Korea, they have automatic citizenship. They are put through a government program upon arriving for about three months to help them learn how to live in modern, South Korean society.
• In general, I think at least the South Korean church has the mindset that North Korea will be open very soon, so they need to prepare to receive and care for the North Koreans when that day comes. It was so incredible to hear how they are readying themselves in very practical ways and how God is working powerfully.
• Aside from having various classes for them to attend, we also as a group went on a field trip to the Sihwa Lake Tidal Power Station. It’s a hydroelectric plant that generates electricity using tides. It doesn’t sound super exciting, but it’s actually really cool. There’s a sort of museum there that teaches and shows you how the station works, and there’s also a really high observation tower where you can see over the ocean.

View from the tower to the part of the bridge that harnesses the tidal power.

There’s a part of the observation tower that you can walk on that is made of glass. (The crocs aren’t mine….)

• This camp was such an eye-opening experience for me. I was so blessed to be able to meet these people and hear what God has done in their lives.

• Later in the week after AIE4UK was over, a few of us went to the outdoor market outside of Bucheon Station. I got about 12 pieces of mochi for 2,000 won (about $2). It was delicious! I plan to return for more.

• For dinner on Friday, we ordered Chinese food. Something interesting is that they gave us food in non-disposable bowls so after you finish, you wrap up your dirty dishes in the table cloths they give you, and the delivery guy comes back and picks them up.

• There was also a fire in town one night. Because STU is on a hill, we have a really cool view of the city. That also meant we were able to see the fire as well as the firefighters fighting it. Later, we found out that it was a business that was along the street. The fire completely decimated the small business and severely damaged at least five others that were surrounding it. Thankfully, we don’t think anyone got hurt. I’ve never seen anything like that before.

Pretty much only the concrete side walls are left.

• On Saturday, we were invited to go to a church in Gangnam that was affiliated with the university to help out for a few hours with a children’s camp they were running.
• Yes, this is the Gangnam from Gangnam Style, and if you don’t know what the song is about, the singer is making fun of the lifestyle of some of the rich people who live in Gangnam. We drove to Gangnam and let me tell you, I’ve never seen so many expensive cars in one place. There was even a Lincoln stretch limo that was fighting its way through the intense Seoul traffic.

• The camp was for elementary school kids and was done in English. It was so fun to be goofy with these little kids.
• After the camp, the church took us out to eat at a traditional food place. I’m still learning how to eat all the different foods properly, but I’ve been told that I hold my chopsticks correctly so I’ve got that going for me.
• Then on Sunday we were invited back to that church for their Sunday worship service. It was entirely in Korean obviously so we weren’t able to follow it exactly, but some of the songs were hymns I recognized.

Entrance to the church.

• Afterward, the church offered to take us out to eat again. This time we went to an Outback Steakhouse. It was really entertaining probably to see a bunch of Americans (and one Northern Irishman) going to an Australian restaurant in South Korea.

Week 3 (25th-31st) AIE week 1

• This was the first week of regular AIE. This is the week we call “Teen Week” because the teens only participate for 1 week while the missionary candidates stay for two weeks.

One of the teens brought this Kermit from home. The Brave, Little Ninja had to get a picture with him.

• Each day, the schedule consisted of:
  • morning chapel
  • breakfast
  • a culture and missions class—talking about different cultural things the missionary candidates might go through when using English in the mission field
  • lunch
  • recreation—different games like a campus-wide hide and seek, card games, etc
  • chapel class—about how to do a simple church service in English
  • snack break
  • special interest group—sports, crafts, word games, praise team, pronunciation
  • free time
  • dinner
  • music time
  • a guest lecture about various topics related to the missions or learning English
  • food and fellowship
  • then a prayer meeting all in Korean (the volunteers had their teachers’ meeting during this time)

The desk graffiti in the auditorium was on another level.

• My responsibility was teaching a Bible study class with missionary candidates, a chapel class with missionary candidates, and the pronunciation class with mixed missionary candidates and teens.
• My favorite of the three classes was the pronunciation class by far. For some reason, the students really seemed to understand my lesson and were extremely enthusiastic about practicing outside of class. Over the two times the session met this week, I helped them work on the pronunciation of f, v, and the voiceless and voiced th sounds. Next week, the class will meet three times but only the missionary candidates will be there.

This is one of several posters set up in places on campus. The guy holding a baseball bat and smiling is saying something about to please not smoke.

• On Friday night, while the missionary candidates and older adult volunteers went back to the dorms to sleep after the day was over, the younger volunteers, teens, and staff (STU students who are English majors and volunteered to help out with the camp) stayed up and had a dance party. It was so fun! The music they played was mostly Korean songs but there were some English songs too. The kids were really impressed that many of the younger volunteers were familiar with some of the Korean songs. Yup, we’re cool now. It was such a fun experience to see many of the kids who were shy at the beginning really come out of their shells and be silly.

• Overall I really enjoyed this week—getting to know everyone and hearing their stories. I am really looking forward to next week.

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Thank you again for those who are praying for me. Please continue to do so. I really appreciate it.

Thank you for reading. I will try to be much better in posting every week from now on.

Next: Week 4
Previous: The Brave, Little Ninja Goes to Japan