A post about nothing in particular

Hello everyone..

this is Deborah and right now I'm bored out of my tree so I'm writing a blog. There are plenty of other things I could be doing (reading, practicing the violin etc..) but none of them appeal to me right now. Today was a holiday because it is election day and Koreans get the day off. However, our school only closed for kindergarten, so I got the morning off and got to spend it with Scott for a change.. that was nice. But now Scott has gone to teach his afternoon classes and I'm here all alone. I went to the school, but my alone class was cancelled so I came home again. I have another two classes tonight starting at six o'clock. Scott's 2pm class only two students showed up and his 3pm class no one showed.. so it probably would have been better if they had just shut down the school for the day.. as very few people are attending their classes.

Scott is booking our plane tickets today! Yay.. We found a way to go home on the flight leaving on August 27th! We had to upgrade our seats... it cost us extra but at least we get to leave on time. I'm excited even though we still have 86 more days left of our contract. Hopefully the last three months will not drag on. We have lots to keep us busy in June anyway. This Saturday we are going to a wedding, next saturday is a church hike of a mountain and a fellowship, the next Sunday is our first anniversary and the next day is my birthday. So, hopefully June will fly by and then only July and August will be left.

I'm enjoying the weather right now though. It is in the high twenties everyday and often reaches thirty. It is raining more often though as the rainy season has just begun, but I think the rain is going to be much worse in June and July. I have heard that the Haan river floods in those months.

Well, I have to be going (not really but I've run out of things to talk about)

Miss you all

Love Deborah

More photos

Realizing that we are only here for three more months and that we had taken very few pictures of actual life here... I decided to start carrying the camera around with me and just taking various street shots and the like. So, yesterday we went to Dongdemun to shop (it's a clothing town... every building is shopping, plus there are flea markets and street vendors).. we took some pictures there and of the Chongyechon river (an artificially created river through the middle of Seoul). Enjoy.

Saturday fun

Yesterday we decided to keep busy and go out for the day. We were unsure of what we were going to do when we left though. We had been planning to go on a boat ride of the Haan river, but it poured rain... I have rarely seen such hard rain. (The rainy season has begun by the way).

Anyway, we left late, around lunch time so we went to Hongdae and ate at Subway (one of the few around... first time we've eaten at one in Korea, so though it's a common food at home, it was somewhat of a treat). Jared has posters here too (except he's called Mr. Jared).

After lunch, we went to Rossi Mango (an italian yogurt ice cream shop) and had frozen yogurt covered in fruit toppings for dessert. We then walked in the rain for a bit, thinking of what to do.

We ended up travelling to Yoido to the 63 building and going to Seaworld... it was really cool.. I especially liked the seaturtles, penguins and sea lions... the sea lion show was cool too. I think sea lions would make fantastic pets (if you could keep enough raw fish on hand to feed them).

Well, I took some pretty cool pictures of the sea creatures, so feel free to take a look in our photo album.

Cultural Malaise

While walking home today, I was practicing smiling (smile, release; smile, release). It was the end of the day and I was a bit tired, so my face was flat. This reminded me of when I was in grade school and the schools were trying to teach us to smile. I remember they tried to play on our laziness by telling us that it takes fewer muscles to smile than to frown. They also told us to turn our frowns upside down. Why did they have to tell us to smile? What was wrong with us?

Long Day

Hello...

How are all of our loyal fans out there (the three of you that read this)? I'm at school right now on my only break of the day.. Fridays are extremely long for me. I start teaching at 9:30am and finish at 8:00pm with one one hour break from 3-4pm. So, it's now 3:15pm and I'm exhausted after the morning and early afternoon kindergarten classes.. but I still have four one hour classes to go before I can call it quits.

Anyway, I'm not here to complain about my schedule.. I'm actually here because I'm putting off preparing for my last four classes, but asside from that, to tell everyone what a beautiful day it is outside. It is bright and sunny and 30 degrees celcius. It's actually bordering on too hot for me, but since it goes up to 40 degrees here in the summer, I'll take thirty and be happy for it.

I guess this was kind of a pointless blog today, I could say more but I really should go prepare for my classes (blah), so talk to you all later

-Deborah

To our Dads....

This is a Father's Day post to say Happy Father's Day to our Dads who we miss so much and who have done so much for us throughout the years and continue to do so much for us now. I have so many memories of my Dad from as far back as I can remember, I remember playing baseball in the backyard, winning all of the arm wrestles I had against him.. Even though he was much bigger (figure that one out... Someone wasn't really trying), bedtime cereal snacks and morning porridge, teaching me my times-tables and pushing me to do my best at everything I tried. I probably have thousands and thousands of memories, but I took a few of my favourites and put them into a poem for you Dad (bare in mind that I don't write poetry often.. That's Karilyn's forte, but you can find my attempt down below. Happy Father's Day Daddy... We love you!

FatherÂ’s Day Memories

When I think of you Dad,
It'’s hard not to recall
My memories of you,
From when I was small.

I was always trying
To be tough like the boys.
A kitchen boxing lesson
Would fill me with joy.

In outside work,
I was in the way
But you let me help,
You didn'’t send me to play.

I wanted to help
I didn'’t want to go inside,
Because I knew
The end brought a wheelbarrow ride.

Dinner time
Was filled with glee
As it was always a good joke
To hide your tea.

Later on,
We would style your hair
And though it looked silly,
You didn'’t seem to care.

After devotions,
I often pretended to sleep
Knowing I'd be carried
If I didn'’t make a peep.

At night there was a value tale
Of right and wrong
Or if I was lucky
Maybe a Wilf Carter song.

I closed my eyes
You shut off the light
And kissing me
You said "“good-night...
..my little cherubim”

-For my Dad (A.K.A. Ian Allen MacDonald), from Deborah

Now Scott will contribute some of his memories of his Dad (A.K.A. Kenneth Miller Montgomery) and he will post one of his famous original compositions for him on the music link.

To both of our Fathers.. thank you for loving us but being strong for us when we needed it. Thanks for the snacks and for the whacks that kept us healthy in more ways than one. We love you very much!

Love Scott and Deborah

Disappointments

As kind of an add on to how time goes fast and how our time here will be over soon, I'll just mention the kink that has recently entered our plans. On Saturday afternoon, we called Korean Air to book our seats for our open ended tickets. As it turns out, the flights are all booked up at the end of August and they can't get us on one until September 10th at the earliest! This throws a wrench into the works as our plane tickets expire on August 27th and even if we can get them extended Scott will still miss the first few days of school at least.

They said that they can get us on an earlier flight on August 15th, but at that time our contract is not finished and we would forfeit our $4000 end of contract bonus (severence pay, I guess it's called). So, we don't want to do that since we will have worked for the whole year only to not get it because we left ten days early.

The airline has put us on the waiting list for the flights on the 25th and 27th, so we need people to cancel their flights for those dates in order for us to get home on the desired date.

I have no idea what we're going to do if this does not happen... all we can do is pray that everything works out.

Time, it goes so fast

The saying goes that "time flies when you're having fun". I'm not sure that the person who made this up did all of his research. Because although there have been moments of fun and enjoyment, on the whole I haven't been having that much fun (as compared to other times). However, looking at the calander I was struck by how fast time actually has passed... for example, it seems like a very short time since Scott and I got married, but yesterday was actually one month away from our one year anniversary (I guess that is still a short time as compared with the rest of our lives, but it seems to have gone by extra fast). Also, we now have only 98 days until the completion of our contract in Korea, then we will be headed home. To me 98 days still seems like a long time, but compared to 365 days, it is very short and will probably go by fairly quickly.

So, in conclusion since I only have three minutes until I teach my next class: You don't have to be having huge amounts of fun for time to fly... you just have to be living and getting older.

Some book I read

In some book that I read a long time ago, the author said that the church must always beware of two problems. The church, like a chameleon, can change its colours to look like the culture around it, or it can recede into itself and have no contact with the world. Jabez would be upset by this. We need to expand our territory.

Here in Korea, Deborah and I have become tribal. We separate ourselves from our roomates and our coworkers, and the result is that we hardly talk with them. A few weeks ago, however, we joined them for a spaghetti party at our apartment. Everyone pitched in to buy the ingredients and we all helped to make it. It resulted in a lot of conversation, much of which was about Jesus and the church. I was able to share the faith because we participated in their spaghetti party.

For those unbelievers who read this, sharing the faith is not like trying to make you take your medicine, or, worse, trying to feed you poison. It's inviting you to a feast that brings abundant joy.

I think that Jabez would have liked this spaghetti party.

Mother of Mine

To all of our mothers at home (which would include two people.. Lynnette and Betty). We want to wish you a very Happy Mother's Day and tell you that we are so thankful to have mothers like you, who loved us and taught us so much through the years; sometimes through mental lessons, sometimes through physical (the words "do you want me to get the stick" come to mind for me and Scott recalls a hand reaching for the belt). I'm sure these lessons were well deserved although we didn't think so at the time, but we appreciate them now. We miss you both very much and we would love to be back home to celebrate the day that is set asside to honor those who brought us into this world. But as we cannot be there for another four months, we want you both to know that we love you and cannot imagine how on earth we would have survived this far in life had it not been for the firm and loving hands of our mothers guiding us all the way. As a wise man is fond of quoting: "She's your mother, God love her, She's as true as a prayer". As our gift to you both this mother's day, we have recorded a few tunes. Simply click here to see them. These are very "rough" recordings and you know the saying that "he has a face only a mother would love"... well, these may be recordings that only a mother could possibly love.

Happy Mother's Day! We love you very much!

Love Deborah and Scott

I wrote "Mom gave birth in pain" for my mother, who loves hot dogs in summer, and the one titled "A word that means the world to me," written by Howard Johnson and Theodore Morse, sung here by Deborah, originally recorded by Eddy Arnold, is for Lynnette. "Scott plays hard for the ladies back home" is again mostly for Betty, though its for all the people who have acted as my mother through the years, such as the honoured Lynette, Darlene Robison and Donna Meulenkamp.

Plane tickets aren't cheap

We love you.

Hot Weather... and getting hotter

The past week has been absolutely beautiful here weatherwise! Everyday, it has been sunny and between 20 and 25 degrees celcius, so nice. I'm not used to such an early spring, but it's quite nice. The trees are now in full bloom, the world is green again (well, if you're looking away from the asphalt and apartment buildings). We got to Korea at the end of August and it was extremely hot, about 38 degrees on most days. But I have since been told that June and July are actually the hottest months here, so I shudder to think what the temperatures will be. Coming in at the end of August we also skipped the rainy season. So, we are in for a treat there in the coming months.. starting half way through June I think. It rains really hard almost every day. Right now though, I am enjoying the warm weather and the sunshine.

Already however, I have had to restrict my running to after the sun goes down. The afternoons are too hot to run in. Although it is only about 23 degrees, the humidity is usually between 85 and 100 percent so the weather webpage informs us. So, I don't run in the heat. It is still quite warm in the evenings. I now run only 3-4 days a week, usually every second day. I don't know what I'll do for exercise when the rainy season starts, it will be very windy as well as very rainy, probably almost impossible to run in. Maybe I'll have to join the gym again, or maybe just the swimming pool. Who knows?

Although we are both well adjusted to life here and it doesn't bother us as much as it used to, we are both looking forward to getting home in a little less than four months. We have started counting down the days.... only 112 more to go! (112 days makes it seem so much longer than 4 months). It will be so good to see everyone again and to finally see my three new nephews who aren't so new anymore, but they're new to me, so I can't wait to see them! Sometimes we talk about when we will go home.. how excited we'll be to be teaching our last class, getting on the plane, arriving in Toronto, knowing that we are only a two hour flight away from home and then landing at the Halifax airport... we will both be very excited. Now we are starting the four month task of shopping for souveniers, something we haven't done any of yet... we must be the worst tourists ever... although I guess we're not really tourists since we've been living here for the whole year.

Tomorrow we have the day off... long weekend yay!!! May 5th is Children's Day in Korea, and it is a holiday. This year Buddah's birthday also lands on May 5th, denying us the regular two holidays in May in Korea... they're combined into one this year. The week surrounding Buddah's birthday is an interesting time around here. People buy lantrens from the monks and they are all hung in the streets, each lantren you buy is supposed to bring more blessings on to your family and loved ones. It sounds like an elaborate scheme to get money if you ask me. But it does make for colourful streets. I haven't taken any pictures of the lantren lined streets yet, I'll have to do that and post them. There are also many traditional ceremonies, parades and so on.

Well, I'd better sign off for now... this is getting way to long for anyone to bother reading.

Deborah

okay.....

This is just a funny story we thought we'd share...
Last night, or early this morning, I awoke to the feeling of the quilt being flapped up and down somewhat violently on my head. I asked Scott "Scott, what on earth are you doing?" he replied, half awake at this point... "trying to keep you warm". I thought to myself.. yeah sure, okay..., then I asked "are you dreaming?" and he said "yes". Really bewildered as to what he could possibly be dreaming about that would make him flap the blankets up and down, I asked "about what", and he said "you wrote a square on the board and I have to erase it". I just said "oh, okay" and went back to sleep. But we both laughed a lot about it at breakfast that morning.. Scott only slightly remembered it. It was quite funny, I still don't see how flapping the quilt would erase the white board in his dream, but dreams are funny things.
So, remember to ask questions if someone is doing something really strange in their sleep, because depending on how coherent they are, you could get some pretty humorous answers.