Summer in Korea and the 2nd Semester

When we walk down the main street, we pass the JoyYang Gate. It was part of the ancient wall, and entrance to the old city.

On the other side of this gate is down town, Hong Seong. This is 7 minutes from our apartment and then another 7 minutes slow walking, we are in the centre of town.

After being in Seoul for the long weekend last week, we realised what a big city it is. We are happy that we don't have all that traveling to do here in our town. We can reach most places by walking. For anything further, a taxi is not too expensive.

Summer in Korea and the 2nd Semester

We have been in Hong Seong now for 7 months. The Summer here gives HOT a new meaning. We tried to walk slower, do less, and just do the minimum. Any effort resulted in a feeling of being in a Sauna after a long exercise. Well, almost. And then, one fine day, it was cooler and it has been cooler ever since. The Autumn here is fantastic. We really enjoy our early evening walks in the neighbourhood. We greet all the older ladies sitting on the sidewalks, having a chat with their neighbours. We try and dodge the truck spraying a white cloud of "stuff" for the mosquitoes and after crossing the bridge, we're back at our apartment.

During the Summer vacation, we did Summer Schools for 3 weeks, out of the 5 weeks. It was heavy going, but rewarding in a way. We did not do our regular curriculum, but tried to do fun things like making puppets, skits, and songs.

I (Rykie) am now trying to learn Archery, after seeing it on the TV a lot during the Olympic
Games. My School, Hong Ju Elementary, has a coach who is helping me, while I teach her a bit of English.

We still run a 2Him Fellowship on Thursday evenings. Pieter does a Bible Study on basic christian values. There are a few regular school children who attend, as well as 7 adults. We need prayer for these evenings. We hope that more will join us. Joseph is our interpreter and we appreciate him and his family's commitment to us. He also teaches with Pieter.

The new semester has started. We find that the students are now used to our way of doing things. We are also now used to their loud way of going about in the passages. They have settled down and we are enjoying the teaching.

BIG NEWS: We have DV two weddings coming up at the beginning of 2009. We are looking forward to our first leave in S A. Sune is planning to get married to Dewald Fourie and Erik found his future match, Marguerite Swart. We are very happy about the new developments. Pray for us that all the plans to put things in place (e.g. finances and practical issues), will go smoothly.

Hong Seong and Us

All's well with us here in our town, Hong Seong. We have settled into a comfortable routine of planning and teaching and weekends off. The weeks tend to be a bit hectic, but we are getting used to it. We find the children and schools noisy, but very busy with activity e.g. singing, music, loud voices, instruments like drums banging, shouting in the passages, etc.

I (Rykie) had a demo lesson with a co-teacher, and the lesson was visited by 14 principals from other local schools. Pieter will soon have the same experience. They are going all out to monitor the English progress in schools. The Korean teachers window dress and rehearse the lessons for a few weeks before such an outside visit by people from the Department.

We have a very kind neighbour who is now part of our English 2Him Fellowship on a Thursday night. She took us to a Botanical Garden in Gwancheon - 30 minutes drive outside town. We enjoyed being outside on a beautiful day and walked quite a distance to get a view of the area. The plants and flowers were just so beautiful. Our neighbour bought herself an English Bible and is starting to read it for the first time. We are very happy about that.

The 2Him Fellowship needs to expand. We are getting a new person now and again, but we need a strategy from the Lord and drastic growth. Pray with us for it to happen. We are trusting God for conversions etc.

We are now ALIENS in Korea

We are so pleased that we are now finally registered as a foreigner and alien here in Korea. This is a great event, because now we could buy cell phones. We could also register our Medical Aid which means we can benefit from their very good health care system.

Friends here gave us the name of a very good Doctor. We needed medication and we only had South Africans prescriptions. He helped us to get the right medicine which we are familiar with. He is also a christian and after a very friendly conversation (he speaks a little English) he presented Pieter with a Bible. It is a Korean and English version and we are sure we will be able to put it to good use as we speak to people.

Cell group

When we came to Korea we prayed that we might have an open door for the Gospel too.
We were invited to attend Church and felt at home straight away. The Pastor and his wife opened their hearts for us. We approached him about starting an English Cell Group and he gave us the Church small hall as a venue. We have started on a Thursday night and 27 people came the first night, then 12 and last night, there were 10. This should still pick up as it gets known in the community. We have seen that it can be a real tool to make Jesus known and for believers to get to know Him better.

The fellowship is great and we have Joseph Kim, an interpreter and friend who helps to interpret when Pieter talks. This is a great blessing as many people want to learn English, but their knowledge of the language is still limited.

Photo of children

This is me(Pieter) and the smallest children I teach.
The Grade 1 and 2 class at Yong Bong Primary, they are such darlings and cannot wait to be spoken to or even to be hugged. The kids like all children love attention and where ever I walk, I hear: "Mr Pieter, Mr Pieter!" All they want to do, is to say the only word they know, i.e. "hello" and get a hug. A truly wonderful and rewarding experience.

Part of the reason we are here, is we believe that God want to use us in the community. We have a passion to spread the love of Jesus. We would like people to stand with us in prayer and trust that we'll see this happen.

After our taxi ride from Seosan, we arrived in Hong Seong. This is a large town and our apartment
is only 5 minutes walk to Rykie's one school, Hong Ju Elementary School. The other school is 20 minutes out of town, surrounded by farms, and is Jong Ho Elementary School. Pieter also teaches at two schools, about 15 minutes out of town and he takes the bus every morning. The one is called Jong Bong and the other is Hong Buk Elementary School.
We are very happy there and enjoy the classes, now that we have the curriculum sorted out. We prepare and is an assistant teacher in the morning and in the afternoon, we do extra curricular English classes.

The weather has changed from very cold, to warmer, as it is now Spring. The cherry blossoms are
out and we eat a lot of strawberries. The rest of the food takes some getting used to! We have been invited to a traditional Korean Restaurant or two. That means you sit on the floor on a cushion, at a very low table. There are about 40 small dishes between the people around the table. Some dishes are very hot and spice and we now know to avoid it. We stick to the one or two dishes we like.

Our apartment is really very comfortable. We have quite a large bedroom, a small study, a larger kitchen area and a bathroom with a toilet. It is fully furnished and have underfloor heating and aircon. We are on the first floor. Around the corner is a very nice supermarket. They even deliver your goods if you buy more than a certain amount. It really is very safe here and we feel O K to take a walk down town - another 15 minutes down the road. On a Friday night we enjoy going to a "sort of Mc Donalds". This gives us a taste of Western food again.

The Korean children take music as a subject and all play recorders, small desk keyboards, violins, drums and even saxophones. They are taught to read music. They love singing.
The people are very friendly and helpful. Although no one speaks English, they often try and understand us - with many hand signs from our side.

Later we'll tell more about the Church we go to now. We started an English Bible Fellowship and will share our wonderful experience with you.

Arrival in Korea

Hi Welcome to our BLOG journal.

Hope you will visit us often and enjoy your time with us!!!


ARRIVAL:
Well we arrived here on Monday 3rd March 2008.
Honestly we could have been led anywhere on Earth!
We arrived in Seoul, from Singapore where we spent 2 days to try and focus, late the afternoon at 17:30. All we had was the name of a Mr Lee and his cell no. [In Korea it is called a hand phone].

He met us, put us on a bus to Seosan and said something in Korean to the driver whom spoke zilch English. Well there we went, after 30 minutes it got dark so we could only see a freeway and car lights. The bus ride with all our baggage, took about 2+1/2 hours. There we waited on the bus until we were stuffed into a taxi who took us for another 1/2 hour. Stopped in a dark street and were met by 4 Koreans some spoke English while the others could hardly speak. We then walked up a little incline and into a building where we found our apartment on the 1st floor. It looked very comfortable but we had no bedding and it was about 3 degrees outside.

It was very interesting as we spent our first night in a Spa(their version of a motel).
The central heating was so hot that we first cooled the room off with the air-con. The next morning we were picked up for our first day at school at )8:10, so there we went.
watch for next blog