Surprise!

I had my first "Korean surprise" today. Just as I had finished planning my activities for the 3rd grade students, I discovered that the schedule had changed and I would actually be teaching the 2nd graders on Monday. Had a two-second meeting with my co-teacher for those classes to find out for sure which pages she wanted me to cover and then brought my book home with me for the weekend. I figured with my light schedule I could easily get all my lesson planning done at school, but sometimes you just can't plan for this stuff. Oh, well, at least I do have the weekend to prepare, better than some teachers who have just gotten tossed straight into the classroom and have to do some serious improvising!

New beginnings

So, after a whirlwind week of orientation, here I am at Sincheorwon middle school (pronounced “Shin-chul-won.” The other teachers in the area have been so helpful and welcoming, and my co-teacher, Ji-Hye is really nice. I’m trying to be as friendly as I can, but they also seem understanding when I tell them I’m a little shy. I’m sure I will be feeling comfortable here soon enough. So far, the students are very good. I’m new, so they are relatively interested in what I have to say (which isn’t much since all that I am doing this week is introducing myself). Everything I do have to say is punctuated by a long “Whooooaaa” from all the students, but I’m willing to bet that won’t last long. Middle school students sure have a knack for saying “whoooaaa” all in a chorus.

It is pouring down rain, and, like an idiot, I forgot to buy an umbrella yesterday, so I had to walk halfway to school in the rain before I make a quick detour at a convenience store to buy an umbrella. I know, I know, Washingtonians aren’t much for carrying umbrellas, but we don’t have rain like this in Washington. Luckily my waterproof coat from Sara kept me dry on the top half, but I am still sopping wet from the knees down. I’ve also learned from looking about me at the other teachers that long pants aren’t the thing to wear in the rain, so next time it rains I’ll wear short dress pants or a skirt that can’t wick the water like long pants.

Although the pouring down rain is pretty loud, it doesn’t do a whole lot to cover the sound of the neighbors’ roosters crowing or the sounds coming from the nearby military base. Last night there were loud explosions and a helicopter flying over, and this morning lots of gunfire. These are all things that I’m told I soon won’t notice at all. And right on cue, the gunfire just started up again. I guess they are right, because no one seems to notice except for me. The explosions are mostly in the late afternoon and evening, and sometimes they are so loud they make the windows and doors rattle in my poor little apartment.

 Today I’m going to class with Teacher Eun-Jeong again. I have four co-teachers here, but I’ve only gone to classes with three of them so far. I’ve already met class 1-4, and Eun-Jeong has that class again today, so I’m hoping she isn’t expecting me to take the lead, because my intro lesson isn’t finished yet. I think I will take a look over the grade 1 book and see what the students are working on. I also get to meet a new class of 1^st graders today,* so that should be fun.

*in Korea, they don’t count up from first grade all the way to 12^th, like we do in the US. Instead, there is 1^st grade-6^th grade Elementary, and then when the kids graduate to middle school they start the count over again. So I have 1^st grade middle school=7^th grade in the US, 2^nd=8^th, and 3^rd =9^th. Those are all the grades I have as of now, but it’s likely that next semester I will have to teach 1^st grade highschool (10^th grade) as well. I won’t have to worry about all that for several months though.

Ever since I was little, I've felt like I shouldn't ask God for frivolous things, and while I feel my parents and Sunday-school teachers were probably trying to prevent me from making bargains with God (God I'll be a good little girl if you just give me a pony) I began to feel guilty about asking God for anything that I didn't need. 

Only recently, I began to realize that there is nothing shameful about bringing anything before God. There is nothing good about feelings of shame that separate us further from God. There is nothing shameful in sharing anything from our lives with our Father in heaven. There is a vulnerability, and a closeness in sharing more than just our needs with God. 

Think about it. There is a voice that tells us not to bother God with anything non-essential, and that voice is not from God. If we only ask God for the things that we need we are treating him as we would a stranger, rather than the friend and father that we so desperately need. 

If your car breaks down and you don't have your phone, will you wait for a friend to happen by and help, or will you ask a stranger? If you are lost, wouldn't you ask a someone, even someone you don't know, for help? In times of need, we will turn to anyone who can help us. 

But would you hand out your Christmas list to a complete stranger? No, we share our wants with the people closest to us. Not that I am suggesting we should treat God like Santa Claus, and bring him our list and expect that if we are good He will simply give us everything. I am saying we should treat God like he is a close friend, or family member. Isn't that the relationship that we say we want with him?

Gardening and James 1

So I was gardening, and I came to a heart-breaking decision: I must prune my pansies. It was a shame, because they were beautiful.

If you didn't look close, they looked like gorgeous, healthy plants with lots of lovely blooms. But if you did look close, you would realize that they grew too fast. 

 The stems got too long, and underneath, there were bugs and mold and disease. I could have left them, and they would have continued to look beautiful for a few more weeks, and then they would have slowly turned yellow and died.

 Once I began cutting off the healthy-looking upper leaves, it became quite apparent that the damage was worse than I thought. I had to cut off nearly all the healthy-looking leaves and leave sad-looking yellow stems and spotted leaves. It looks sad, and dead, and nothing like the pretty flowers that were there this morning.

 The upper leaves and the flowers looked so beautiful, but the further down the stem you look, the more bug and disease damage there was.

When I finished, this is what it looked like. It's sad. 

As I was cutting my poor plants to bits, and wishing I didn't have too, I was thinking about a few verses. James 1:2-3 "Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance"

I'm sure that cutting off large branches isn't particularly pleasant for the plants. I'd consider it a trial for them. And after the trials, they don't look so good. In fact, they might die. But without pruning them, the disease, bugs and weeds would have eventually killed them anyway. In order to cut the plants I had to care about not just how they look now, but how they will look later this summer. I could have torn out the plants completely and put new ones in, and I wanted to give the old plants a chance. I have faith in the integrity of their roots. I think they are strong enough to survive this, and that they will be stronger and more beautiful in the future because I pruned them today. Maybe my faith is misplaced and they aren't strong enough to survive. Or maybe in a few weeks I will be posting more pictures of lovely, healthy pansies.

FEI Fundraising Banquet

Well, this post is overdue. I guess that's what happens when you click "save" instead of "publish" and then proceed to abandon your blog for several months... again. Anyway, I wrote this back in November. A busy month for me, what with National Novel Writing Month and a trip to Portland to see some very dear friends at the Forward Edge International Fundraising Banquet.


So just one note, a long weekend away from home without your computer isn't the best way to start off NaNoWriMo. So... yeah. I've got 1400ish words plus a paragraph or so that I scrawled in the car. That said, this weekend was entirely worth it.
My mom and dad and I left on Friday morning. Upon arrival in Portland, we spent an hour or so at the fabulous Powell's City of Books. This was only the second time I've gotten to go to Powell's and the first time I had a high temperature, and don't recall enjoying myself much. This time, we didn't really have a lot of time to wander around, but I found a wonderful memoir about North Korea which I have been eyeing on Amazon for quite some time. It's called "The Eyes of the Tailless Animals" and I highly recommend it, I finished it on the car ride (when I probably should have been writing.)
On Saturday, we did a little sight-seeing and then headed North to Hayden Island where the Forward Edge Banquet was being held. Forward Edge International is the organization that I went to Oaxaca Mexico with, and I was delighted when I heard a couple of months ago that Tom and Wendy, my host family from Mexico, and Victor and Lety, who run the a family center called Trigo y Miel in Oaxaca, would all be speaking at the banquet. I lived with Tom and Wendy and helped out at Victor and Lety's center almost every day for the nine weeks I spent in Oaxaca.
When we arrived at the hotel where the banquet was being held we met up with Bill and Anita and some other friends who were had gone with us on our first, week-long trip to Oaxaca.
That evening when went to the banquet. I had a somewhat tearful reunion with Tom and Wendy and Victor and Lety, and then had a few stressful moments of getting back into the swing of speaking Spanish as Victor expected me to translate for him and Lety to the rest of our group when Tom and Wendy weren't around. Happily, I did OK with the Spanish though, as Victor is pretty careful to speak slowly for me. We were able to taste some of the Mexican sweet bread they brought to show off their successful new project- a bakery which brings food and employment to the families in a neighborhood where many of the people, and especially the women, don't believe they have the talents and abilities necessary to have a good job.
After some time to chat and a silent auction, we headed into the banquet hall and enjoyed a tasty dinner and then listened to the special speakers for the evening. In addition to Tom and Victor and Lety, we also heard from Forward Edge facilitators and local missionaries from Nicaragua and New Orleans.
After the speakers, we hung around and chatted with Tom and Wendy and Victor and Lety a little more, as well as others who came on short term mission trips to Oaxaca while I was there.
Victor and Lety kept asking us, "When are you coming back?"
My mom said, "Now that the bakery is finished, what work do you have for us there?" and Victor and Lety both responded, "Oh, so much! We have so many plans!"
My plan right now may be to live and work in South Korea, but at the same time, I hope God brings me back to Oaxaca and the wonderful work he is doing there through Victor and Lety. Their faith and constant encouragement has been so influential in my life. There is nothing like seeing people full of love and compassion for people who have, all their lives, felt inferior, abandoned, and rejected. These children and families are just longing to feel the love and acceptance that they can only find though Christ's love- a love which Victor and Lety strive to show them every day of their lives.
Here are some of my pictures from my time volunteering in Oaxaca at the family center Trigo y Miel.

Brother and sister Yoselin and Leonel wait in line to wash their hands before eating their Saturday breakfast at Trigo y Miel.

Jacqueline, one of the younger kids, enjoys her meal of tuna salad and crackers. Wendy and Lety mix vegetable protein into the salad to make it healthier for the kids. The older kids help carry the plates out to the younger kids before they get food for themselves.

My sponsor child, Clara, waits for the activities to begin after finishing her meal.

Lalo and his sister Melina pose for a picture. I was trying to keep them entertained while their mom and Lety helped their older sister write a letter to her sponsor.

Rainy days have begun, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. I find the sound of the rain relaxing. Plus, not wanting to go out in the rain puts me in the mood for crafting and art projects. So today, I made myself some tea, turned on some rainy-day music and broke out my watercolors.
Since it was a rainy-day, I chose a sunny subject to paint.

 So here it is with the first layer of paint. I always start at the top, and of course, with the lightest colors first.

 The reason I always start at the top is so I don't drag sleeve in the paint. If I painted the bottom first, I would get paint on my hand and sleeve reaching over it to paint the top. The problem is that while I am waiting for the first layer of paint at the top to dry, I always put a layer on at the bottom, completely ruining my good sleeve-protecting intentions.

 Here's the beginnings of the clouds, and yes, I did get grey paint from the bottom on my sleeve as I reached up to paint those clouds.

 More layers on the bottom. Had to cover up the sleeve-smudges.

 Beginnings of the foothills and more clouds.

 First bits of shading on Mount Baker.

 Smoothed out the shading and began the treeline.

 Finished treeline, more layers on the bottom.

 Adding the little plants sticking up above in front of the mist.

Finished!

Even when I'm happy with how they turn out, they never compare to the original!
Ooh, also, there's some new items in my etsy shop this week, including some Doctor who, Firefly, and LOST. You should visit my shop and check them out: http://www.etsy.com/shop/Westwoods

So I found and started a temporary job. It involves me waking up at 5:30 am. I've been incredibly lazy since returning home from South Korea, and haven't been consistently waking up before 9, so two early mornings in a row is feeling pretty tough. I'm awfully spoiled, aren't I?
I've also recently gotten myself fingerprinted, and I've been sending out various requests for recommendations from my professors, which is almost as frustrating a task as writing cover letters, but at least I know who to address them to. Meanwhile, I neglected my etsy shop for the first week or so of October, but I've finally posted some more new things. You can check them out at www.etsy.com/shop/westwoods