I'm Lovin' It!

It's been two months now that I've been in Korea, and I'm not regretting my decision to come here one bit. The language barrier is still my largest stumbling block, but I'm learning really quickly, and manage to communicate without too much trouble most of the time. I've gotten plugged in with a local church and will start volunteering with a community service organization this month. And I'm now so comfortable at my school that going to lunch and not having the school food because of my seafood allergy is no longer awkward! That's a HUGE deal, evidenced by the following:

Today in the teacher's cafeteria, a teacher stopped and asked my Korean co-teacher a question. Normally, this would have been "Why doesn't Willie eat the same food as everyone else," in typical group mentality fashion. But now it is, "Wow, does Willie cook all that himself?" The other teachers actually think it's cool that I make all sorts of random ethnic dishes, and often peer over at my plate to see what I've cooked up that day. FINALLY!!! I can stop hating the process of going to lunch! :-)

I was asked to teach a debate class, which I had done once before with some 11th graders, so I thought it would be fine. Then I found out the class was to be a 3 hour and 40 minute seminar.

Uh...cómo se whaaaat?! That's like 4 hours! 

I was freaking out because I didn't know how I was going to fill such a long time, but the day before the seminar, I finally cranked out some ideas and came up with a lesson plan. The girls were surprisingly involved, and what started out as a proctored discussion turned into a full-fledged debate between two of them whose English ability is quite high. All in all, the seminar went great and it actually got them excited about debate (whereas half of them were sleeping in the last class). I was SO happy!

In other news, I went on a retreat with my church in Daegu (Dongshin English Service) and had a GREAT time! Dongshin has a great group of believers and keeps me spiritually fed, too. The retreat was only about a day and a half, but I feel like I bonded so much with people in that short time. Here are a few highlights of the retreat's hilarity.

Long story. Just know that this was really fun :-)

Each team had to act out an appliance, and ours was
computer. The two people holding their arms around me are supposed
 to be a computer screen, and I'm Psy dancing to Gangnam Style
 on YouTube. The two holding up a circle are the PC speakers, and the
one in the striped shirt is "clicking" to play me.
Oh yha and...we won this competition. Haha

Yesterday, I went on a scavenger hunt sponsored by an organization called Love 146, a group dedicated to raising funds to stop child sex trafficking in this part of the world. Over 120 people came out for the event, and it was awesome! But more on that -- complete with ridiculous pictures -- in the next post :-)