On Sunday, I experienced a new church with my friends Dorrial and Amanda. It was located in what I call a mountain, but the Koreans refer to it as a hill. The service was in Korean, but we had an interpreter who spoke to us over headsets… it was a unique experience.

To say that this church is extravagant would be an understatement—they had television cameras and huge professional lighting. The worship band had a grand piano, multiple keyboards, violins, a cello, bass, guitars, saxophones etc. They sounded amazing!

After the service, I met Dorrial and Amanda’s boss who drove us to a shopping complex for lunch—she seems like a very nice woman. We shopped for a bit and finally returned home and had a relaxing evening…. UNTIL…. Amanda’s washing machine stopped working.

Both Amanda and Dorrial had kindly offered to wash my laundry for me because my laundry machine was not working. After I dropped a load off at Dorrial’s I went to Amanda’s but she just found out that her washing machine would not open (it had a load of laundry that had been in it all day). After some discussion, we decided to start push buttons and turn the power off in the hopes that it would somehow ‘fix itself’. This was not the case however. We ended up flooding Amanda’s kitchen! After multiple blankets, towels, sweaters etc had been used to sop up the huge amounts of flooding waters, we were out of ideas.

Dorrial was still persistent and kept pushing buttons and playing with the power until magically, it opened. Unfortunately it did not fix itself and Amanda needs to call a repairman. Everything is more difficult when the instruction manuals and labels on the machines are in Korean.

Luckily, Dorrial washed all of my laundry, so I am now smelling fresh again!

This morning, I met Dorrial and we did a two-hour costal walk. The beach is about a 5-10 minute walk away from our apartments (she lives across the street from me), so it is very close. It was beautiful! The sun was shining and although it was not overly warm, it was very comfortable.

Somethiing I find very interesting here is that there are many workout stations along the beach. I think this is such a great idea to promote healthy living and it’s great not to have to pay for a gym membership. They seem to be well received also, because whenever I pass them, there are always people using the equipment.

I’m really enjoying getting to know Dorrial, she is very similar to myself in terms of values and perspective. I think we will have a great year together!

My classes today went much more smoothly than on Friday. There is so much to do when teaching six different classes a day and my mind is constantly spinning. I am beginning to feel like I’m getting more comfortable with the routine now though. The students are so lovely—for the most part they are well behaved and very helpful. When they see me in the halls, they often get excited to come and say hi to “Laura Teacher”.

I often feel slightly sorry for the kids though; they work very hard. They have to attend public school in the mornings and then many of them go to a sport/music lesson after and then come to English school. Many of them study from 8am – 10pm every day! It is very tiring for them, but life is very competitive here and knowing English is a very good skill.

I enjoy playing educational games with them because they get all excited and have fun. I was able to bring some Canadian souvenirs with me, so I use those as prizes and the kids get so involved and active.

Today I brought in my camera and took some pictures of the kids. These are only my Monday/Friday classes. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I have different students, and on Wednesdays I have different students again…. It’s a lot of names to learn!!!

I’ll post more pictures soon!