Paju City English Village & the Korean Laundry Experience

   
     Today was pretty cool. Hopefully the pictures speak for themselves to an extent, but I'll try and paint it in words too. Paju City, home of the Paju English Village, is about an hour away from my school. Today, after my 40 minute bus ride from my apartment, I hopped on another bus with all of the students and teachers and headed for Paju. On the way there I saw what looked like a heavily guarded military training ground, but on further investigation found out it was the edge of the DMZ with North Korea! Must have been the closest I've ever come to a communist nation.

      Anyway. The English Village in Paju is basically a small enclosed town that was built specifically for the furthering of the English knowledge of South Korea's children. There were probably around 30 or so native English speakers working there today from all over... I met one guy from New Zealand (stamping mock-passports as we walked in) and another from Las Vegas who led our kids in a lesson on the Olympics. The kids had a great time. I thought the whole experience was a little weird, but I was happy to spend a beautiful day getting to know my students and fellow teachers a little better. Mrs. Jung (one of my Christian sisters at the school) brought a bunch of homemade Kimbab (basically Korean sushi) and shared it with me at lunch time. The children all just love to give me stuff and it is usually food/drinks so, even though I didn't bring my own lunch, I had way more than enough for one meal! God is good and I will always be a Baptist at heart and in my stomach.

     The sixth grade boys (a great group by the way) wanted to do a "jumping picture" before we left--hence the pic below. I was surprised it turned out so well! I think we are going to have a good time together this year.

These two little girls (in the second grade I believe) were always holding hands. They must be very good friends. I asked them for a picture and I got this! (You will probably see the peace sign in every single picture I take of my students ;) -- for some reason Koreans just love to throw up the sign!)

     So... Korea doesn't have any dryers. This was a realization that, quite simply, rocked my world. I spent about a week thinking about how to solve that problem, asking everyone I know how people survive here without a dryer and ended up going to Lotte Mart (Korean Wal-Mart) late last night to buy this drying rack. I must say, it's cheaper than buying a dryer and uses less electricity. You can also catch a glimpse of the view of Dongducheon out my window here.

Not only are there no dryers in Korea, but there is also no English on Korean washers. Go figure. This challenge was also on my mind over the past weak... It thought it could defeat me, but didn't know who it was dealing with. I conquered my washer because she forgot that my favorite thing in the world to do is translation!

Not only is having to set up one's life in Korea for the first time a huge challenge, but it is also the perfect opportunity to be absolutely forced into language learning. Normally it doesn't come so easily! I'm both figuring out life here and taking pleasure in the language-learning experience. I could still complain though... I'm only human. But God has taught me how to count my blessings--and this is one of them.