2nd Week of teaching...

Well, here we go, I hope some of you have been keeping up. There is a lot of my everyday journeys that I am keeping out, not because it is private, but that it may seem insignificant to most people, but it is definitely a weird circumstance for me. Side note: I have been spelling definitely wrong for several years (and I am supposed to be a champion speller). Flabberghast!

Anyways, ok, this week was wonderful. I am getting to know the kids a lot better and they are always excited to see me, which gives me a warm fuzzy feeling every time. There are some difficult classes and a few difficult students, but all in all I love them and am looking forward to each new day with them. My most advanced class is a group of three girls, and they are sweet, respectful, smart, and I just taught them how to play spades and they love it!! Soon there will be a widespread Spades outbreak in Korea and I will be the one they can thank for it. I am such a catalyst for the insignificant things in life.

Each time I see my students I think of their future and where they will be when they are my age. What type of person will they be? Will they live life for Jesus? Will they be successful? I hope so, and I also pray that God will allow me a foothold into their lives where I can show them Jesus as much as I can, even though I am not in any means the most dynamic person for the job.

I am also getting to know some of the adults in my classes and they know that I am Christian, and that it is something very important to me. On Monday a 22 year old man(boy?) told me he didn't like Christians, but what he said he meant was that he didn't like religion. I asked if we could still be friends and he smiled and said yes. I am not going to make him a project or anything, but I am going to do the best I can to love him and make sure that he knows the truth of the gospel before this whole thing is done. Tonight I was able to share my heart with another man that is in one of my adult classes. He is an atheist, but he is still deeply concerned with the lack of morality that is sweeping Korea due to the West's influence. I told him how I lived and he expressed that I was the only young western man that he has ever met that has "conservative" values. I shared my testimony with him, as well as, the gospel and he was amazed! I hope I can still communicate God's love to him throughout this next year.

Pray for me people! I have a lot on my mind and God is opening up several doors for ministry. I feel totally empowered and I am ready to lay it all down and love the Korean people while I am here. My desire is for these people to have true and lasting communion with Jesus, and I am fully convinced that the Holy Spirit is moving amongst these people. God is gooooood people, and my trust in Him grows everyday. He will accomplish what His will demands!

First week teaching

So I finished my first week of teaching, and although I think it is going to be an amazing year with these kids, I still know that there will be some struggles. There is one class of very young kids that don't understand English very well, so I think they believe that what I say to them is "go crazy! you only live once, so be as wild as you possibly can", because that is exactly how they are. They are cute though, so I will let them live.

I am having a good time getting to know my fellow teachers and the people that have businesses in the same building as my school. Slowly and surely I am going to learn Korean, so that I can interact and build real relationships with these people, but for now it is just a lot of pointing and smiling.

The food here is the bomb biggity! I love it, it is way more healthy, its cheap, and it tastes good. What more can you ask for? Oh, well, certain foods also keep the yang up if ya know what I mean, wink. Not that I need that, but it is good to know.
I thought that I was poisoned yesterday, because I took a sip of my water bottle and it tasted like ammonia and made me feel dizzy and anxious for about two hours! Keep trying, but I am here to stay. Its going to take a lot more than that to pull this mountain down.

Yesterday I went out with a fellow teacher from Wisconsin, a guy named Donovan. We went to a really classy bar and ate some chicken mixed with vegetables and covered in a very spicy hot sauce. I made the mistake of ingesting the hottest pepper that has ever come near my mouth and my face was literally set on fire. I am black now. We talked about life and had a good ole time. Today I am going with him and my school's principal to look at some books. I hope to find a Korean grammar book to help me out, and I am also looking for some supplemental stuff for the Bible studies that I am going to be teaching...after this then my weekend will really start.

My first weekend in Korea: LIVE YOUR LIFE!!!

This is going to be a long post, but I promise that it is worth every second that you spend reading it. My theme song for this weekend was TI's Live Your Life. This song was everything I wanted to say (except the paper chasing part). The plan was to go to an island for the weekend and chill on the beach. This is how it happened...
The weekend started with a night on the town with Brittney, who makes life worth living, and some of her local friends. We went to Itaewon in Seoul, it was a first time journey for me to get to know the bus/subway system of Seoul. I arrived and met Brittney and her friend Diane at a sushi bar, and then we went to an awesome bar filled with military people and other foreign teachers. They had Guinness!!! Some of their other friends showed up and we had a good talk. I met a Special Forces Major that had been stationed in Seoul for awhile and he gave me his card and told me if I ever got into any trouble to give him a call. Now I gotz me some military backup homies!
Then we went to another bar, where you can sit in these swings and the floor had sand on it, so it felt like we were at the beach. Again I had me some Guinness, and we met up with one of Diane's old friends from college, a guy named Adrian that I am certain I will be friends with for a long time. We wrapped it up at the bar, because we had an early next morning, so we took a taxi home.
We woke up the next day and took a taxi to the Yongsan train station, where we met up with a very drunk and crazy Canadian guy name Matthew. He has been living in Korea for three years, so he is fluent in Korean, and he spoke with and annoyed everyone Korean that we came in contact with. At first I wanted to shoot him, but he turned out to be an decent guy and I can't wait to see him again. Two other girls showed up, and we jumped on our three hour train to Daechong for the ferry. The train ride was long, but it was a good time to relax and get to know the people that I was going on this trip with.
We arrived at another station and took another taxi through the smelliest town I have ever been in. It was an ocean town with these mud flats (probably full of dead fish and triads). Eww. We shortly got to the port and hung out for a little bit. We met up with the rest of our group. A guy named Lee, a local Korean and organizer of the trip, his friend Nathan, Nathan's girlfriend and her friend. Ten of us total. We boarded the ferry and had a beutiful forty minute ride to the island. So many awesome conversations that I don't have enough space for, but believe me they were great.
The island was called ??? Does it matter? We arrived and got picked up by our host. He took us back to what was basically a bed and breakfast. The host had prepared a HUGE traditional Korean meal, it was delicious. We sat on the floor and everything. Then we went to the beach and collected "sea cocks". They were this type of shellfish that you had to dig for and then salt the hole they live in until they pop out and you grab them. I caught seven, but Brittney and Diane got like a thousand, so I guess they won the "sea cock" grabbing contest. Sounds bad, but it isn't. Oh, the reason we called them "sea cocks" was because they very much resembled penises. We grilled and ate them later that night.
We then hiked to a secluded beach that had a 500 year old tree and we skipped rocks and frolicked around for awhile before we went home. It was a very magical experience. When we got back to the place we just goofed around for awhile and then we went to watch the sun set at another beach. I don't think I ever felt as close to God as I was in that moment. We went back to our place and grilled out. Delicious food all the way around. It got cold, so we had to adapt ourselves, but we made do and continued the fun with guitar playing, fireworks shooting, drinking, and awesome conversations. We finally all turned in to bed where we laid down mats in one big room and slept. It was interesting...
The next day we woke up and ate some breakfast, and I was anxious to get back to the beach. So I grabbed Brittney, Diane, Ashley, and Bonny, and we went to the beach. They laid out and sunned themselves while reading books (cause they're girls), but I went and stood in the ocean and watched the waves come in, and I prayed some of the most intimate prayers of my life. Tears people, tears. God is so awesome in his providence. We went back and had another HUGE Korean meal that was a million times better than the previous day, so it was good.
We then went back to the beach, where I pretty much kept to myself and listened to some tunes while burning in the sun and watching the waves come in, on an island, in South Korea! I had a great talk with Lee, and I am so glad I was able to meet him, because he is defiantely a kindred spirit. He gave me some advice that hit me at the most precise moment for what was on my mind. God is providential!!

To be Cont' later...

Being here the first week...

OK. My first week was interesting. Not too much to speak of right now, but interesting nonetheless. I had to quickly get adjusted to my apartment, and how there is no real shower (only a sprayer attached to my sink), but I am not really minding it that much. My sleep schedule is off, and I made the mistake of drinking the tap water (which had some very uncomfortable side effects), but I am alright now.
I spent time at the school that I am teaching at, and I really got to know some of my fellow teachers and the students. My director/principal is awesome, a very godly man, and I know that I will have a blast this year teaching at the school.
There was some cause for concern for me (I will not get into it right now), but everything is fine now, and so I feel like I am really here and ready to stay and explore.
The people here are really nice and willing to help, which is awesome since I had some very trying circumstances where I thought I would be stranded alone in a city of non-english speaking people where I may be forced to live on the streets and cry...
All in all, it was a very taxing week, but I had a great time and I am looking forward to this next year...Now for my weekend:

Ok, so here we go, and this could have gone one of two ways: a) I could have been Captain Serious and write this blog in a very standard and scripted way where all references I make to anything have some kind of higher purpose, but guess what? I ain’t like that, so I went for option b) which is simply me being Devin, which I hope is what the few people that are reading this want. At times I may seem irreverent, not to God of course, but irreverent towards the institution of…well…yeah. I will try and be as humorous in my explanation of my daily events as I can, but I may lose my ability over time, because my surroundings and audience are obviously different. I will do my best.

First things first: Thank you to all the people that helped me to achieve all that I needed to get done, you are very appreciated.

I guess I could start this off with telling about all the stupid shit I had to do to make this thing happen.

My first day was interesting. My mom and I woke up at the butt crack of the butt crack of dawn, so that I could get to the airport for my 6 am flight. It was a Sunday morning, and 4 am was early for us, but obviously late for some, because we drove past a strip club that was still packed with cars. Hey, when you got to see naked ladies, you got to see naked ladies. Right? Right? Well, we got to the airport and my stomach was in knots from all the stress and nervousness of the last couple of weeks, so I found the nearest restroom and split the atom so to speak. I shit. After that I was able to spend some time with my mom, but I had to go, so we said our goodbyes and I went through security and eventually on to my airplane.

I had the last seat on the plane, which was good, because it was near the lavatory, and of course I had to pee like 600 times. I met a guy sitting next to me who was in the Marines and had been stationed in Okinawa for the last ten years. He was cool; gave me some advice, bought me lunch, kept me company for a little bit in the San Fran airport. The next few sentences may or may not have happened, we’ll see if you can weed through the BS and find the truth.

I arrived at the San Francisco airport. It was a very overcast day, and cold, not chilly, COLD! I lost a nipple. All I could think of was how the movie The Rock is bullshit if this is how the city is in May! You can’t have a car chase with ice on the road, and a dirty, smelly geriatric driving. What other movies have San Fran in them, because I’ll rip on them too. Ok, so I arrive, I get off the plane and am immediately greeted by an airport employee, who was very zealous about telling me to have a “niccccce day”. I noticed that he had what appeared to be a red feather on his shirt. I pointed it out to him and he squeeled ( literally) and proceeded to brush it off. He then walked towards the desk for the gate and he grabbed what looked like a red boa, which was ironic since I wore a red boa for a halloween outfit that some of you may remember. I thought ‘what the hell does he have that at work for?’, and that is when I noticed that he didn’t have a back to his pants, which is very ironic since that almost completes the costume that I had. All the rumors of San Fran are true. Oh, and they were playing a Queen compilation the whole time I was layed over. Mmm.

And I digress. I eventually got on the plane to Incheon, Korea. It has been fun thus far. Got to watch Underworld 3, which was luscious. I dropped my laptop on a guy and woke him up. I think he wants to grind my bones up and drink them. I had an in-flight meal, which I am sure was people, ground up homeless people from around the world. Oh my gosh, this is getting stupid. Look, there can’t be that many cows, but there sure are a lot of people. Or are there?