HERE IT IS FINALLY

This is our janitor on the couch asleep. Mr. Song will come into my office and do this every afternoon. He also tells me in very broken English that I am to tell no one that he does this. He is well into his 60s. He does EVERYTHING at our school and we are terrific friends. We are going to try to put this picture in the yearbook. He jokes about getting mad at us if we do...He always tells me "no speekie" about telling people about this.


Here at my desk...this is the one room that needs a lot of work. The high levels of humidity, coupled with the fact that they try to cut costs by adding water to paint has given the walls the look that it has.


This is a picture of my office looking out towards the gym. You will see a couch where our janitor comes in to take his daily naps and a coffee table. Also my desk is just below.



This picture is in one corner looking at the other. You can see the door leading to where my class was the last two years. I have tripled in size and the students have so much room to run around now. They love it.

This is a picture of my gym that has finally been finished. A lot of work has gone into it trying to get it just right. What you are looking at is the main open area. The ground is made of foam pads that are obviously both red and blue. I chose this design because when I pick teams I wanted to be able to have a clear division in the classroom. The pads are three foot square puzzle pieces. When I got back to school from summer break they were almost finished with the room but they hadn't layed the floor yet and so in two days just before open house Emily Williamson and Kyle Williamson and Dakota Romsa all helped me put the floors down. All of those names are students of mine and also have a parent who is a teacher. Emily 7th grade, Kyle 4th grade, and Dakota is an 8th grader. The pillar in the middle of the room is something that I couldn't get rid of since it supports the rest of the building. I told them that would be okay since we would pad it up as well. Which should happen shortly.

Size doesn't matter....WHATEVER

Height

No some people might tell you that size doesn't matter but if you look over at this picture I beg to differ with you. This was taken at our school "Spring Fling Thing". The Korean woman in the picture is Ms. Moon. She is our secretary. Amazing woman, does everything for us. But I'm 6'6" tall and the History teacher Mr. Mooney (in red) is 6'4" tall, and Ms. Moon is standing on three inch heels. Busses, taxi's, subways, doorways, you name it, and I just don't fit. I will walk down a street in Seoul and hear just gasps as I pass by. I sort of let it go to my head. Sometimes I'll even pretend to hit my head on doorways as I walk under them. Just to get the reaction.

Today was a beautiful day. Blue sky finally came out and let my students get outside. I was very grateful and thanked God again and again. Monsoon season is coming to a close but everything still is very wet. My students get very wild if they can't get outside. So today was a very big blessing. Tomorrow I have a meeting in Seoul that I have to go to as the Athletic Director. Please keep me in your prayers as I will be talking with another school about the way he has his teams playing. This is a sister school that is also a Christian school and our two schools love the competition, however, it also leads to fights in all the guys games. Even in volleyball with a net separating the two teams, they love to cuss each other out under their breath in Korean and our coaches have no idea what is going on. The other school wants them to play like this. For example in the last soccer game between our two schools, a game that meant nothing as far as the standings went, saw two students get thrown out of the game for fighting. Two Christian schools. What in the world would others watching the game say. People should be able to look out there and say wow those teams are edifying Christ even in their play. The AD thinks things are okay and we are at the point where we just want to forfeit the games because we want to avoid the temptation of putting these students in a position where they might resort to fighting. Please pray the meeting goes the way that God wants it to. Thanks.

Peace out...more later

There always has to be a first doesn't there?

WOW!!! This picture was taken early in the morning from a mountain top near our little city of SongTan. I couldn't believe that I was able to capture just a little part of what this really looked like. All I kept thinking to myself was the bible talking about everywhere you look there is evidence of God. I just sat up there for over two hours before and after watching the sun slowly come into view and then the brightness of the day.

I realize this is my first post but I wanted those who knew me to see some of the things that I get to see everyday. God truly has blessed me with an amazing job and it is suppose to be all for his glory, however, seeing the things I get to see I just can't help but be left astonished and amazed.

Since this is my first official blog I wanted to take a chance to tell you what I am up to over here. July 15th or so, 2003 I was having a bad day at work and my mom had sent me a web page from Christianity Today. At the top it had a link for jobs. I click to just have some fun and found myself looking at a page that had a school in search of a p.e. teacher and an athletic director. Funny that is exactly what I went to school to be. The only problem was that the job was in South Korea... I went ahead and put my name down just to see what would happen and on the way home I got a call from the principal. THAT DAY!!! He told me all about the school and the country and the fact that I would make 15,000,000 won...(that's like $3.50) in dollars. Joking of course but not by much. Long story short we prayed and I accepted the job and on Sept. 11th 2003 I was in South Korea via Japan to star a career as a teacher.

It is now two years later and I'm beginning my third year. Really don't know if I will be doing any more years or not. This is really exciting. I have never done something like this before ad now here I am learning Korean, going to Thailand, China, Fiji, meeting all types of people and growing in my faith more than I ever thought that I could. During these past couple of years I have had some very good times and some very bad times. Some I have put behind me and others have been learned from. God has a funny way of getting what he wants.

Peace out...more later.