Teaching Commence and Our Move to Renaissance

It has been a long time since our last post, sorry about that.

 

At the Noribong: Basically a kind of sketchy, but awesome Karaoke place.

We have started teaching here in Cheonan City, South Korea! After being here for a little over a month, it has finally happened. The passed month has been good, nonetheless. Sonia and I have moved a total of three times since we have been here, now, thankfully, settled in our 7th apartment in Yawoori (the main hub of the City, right near the bus terminal...and Krispy Kreme).

We first moved into another apartment on the 9th floor of the KNU dormitory, which was nice, but it is tough when you can't unpack fully just yet. We love our apartment though. It has a small sitting room to the right when you enter, followed by the kitchen on the left, the living room, shower, and finally....the loft/bedroom! We are still decorating it, but it is just about finished! This is Sonia and I's first apartment since we have been married, and we feel tremendously blessed to have it.

Our first home cooked meal in Korea, we finally had a fridge!

                                                         

Our room on the 9th floor at KNU.

We are continuing to meet new friends and great people whom we work with, along with getting closer to those who started when we did. It's nice having good friends close by when you are on the otherside of the world, God has worked it out beautifully. A group of new teacher came in near the end of TESOL and started teaching the next week, so we have been praying that everything goes well, I can't image jumping in like that but they are doing great. 

Our View from the 7th floor.

Quesadillas 

This is our apartment! More pictures to come

As I have said, we started teaching last wednesday, after completing our TESOL program and obtaining our certificates. The TESOL class consisted of 3 weeks of class time and 1 week of observation, which is proving to be very helpful with our new schools. It has been interesting learning how to teach, let alone teaching students who, for the most part, do not understand what you are saying.

First day of Classes. So grown up and shnazzy looking. 

Sonia and I both have two schools that we teach at.

Sonia's: Bongmyoung (Mon - Wed) and Mijuk (Thurs - Fri) - Elementary Schools

David's: Mok Chen (Mon - Tues) and Kwang Pung (Wed - Fri) - Middle Schools

We live near the bus terminal and take the bus each morning to school, which has been exciting and terrifying at the same time, for the bus drivers, at times, tend to push the limits of speed and try to push the limits of gravity with entire busloads of people. However, they do manage to get us to our schools, some that are close and the others that are about 40-45 min away. Three of our schools are in the Korean countryside, which is a nice change from the city. Sonia and I have talked that we are privledged to be so far away, since there would not be much opportunity to visit the country otherwise. The schools have been very good so far, and we are learning to become better teachers, Lord willing. We have the coursebooks that we have to use, but we can also prepare activites or games involving the subject matter, even though we have had times when we get to class and everything changes; as is life.

This weekend and the first half of next week is a Korean holiday called Chuseok, which is perhaps the equivalent to Thanksgiving. Everyone here is excited because this mean we have classes off until the middle of next week. Sonia and I are hoping to relax, but also see more of Korea that we haven't been able to yet, like Seoul or Daejeon. Or maybe we will simply get to know out city more. 

Sonia and I also celebrated our 1 year anniversary on August the 12th. It is truly amazing to think back on the last year and see what God has done in our lives and already in our marriage. We have seen Him work things out when it seemed there was no way for any good to come, and He has revealed to us the beauty and grace of marraige (not that we have learned everything, just enough for our first year). It still amazes us that God has brought us to Korea and we are eager to see more of this place.

Hopefully we will be able to give another update sooner then later, but if you just can't wait, we have Skype and would love to chat.

God bless and 감사합니다,

- the Yorks