working for the weekend

*this is long. read if you want.*

so... i've never looked forward to weekends so much in my entire life. yes, weekends have always been wonderful, but i have never appreciated them the way i do here. there are a few reasons for this, and they all hold equal weight.

first of all, teaching is exhausting! i have so much more appreciation for my teachers and my friends who are teachers and all the work that they do. to put it how my best friend kellie (who is in her first year of teaching english) put it, you are basically putting on a show the whole day. as a teacher, you are expected to show up to school and be on your game, able to hold the students' attention while teaching them as much as you can in the most effective way. i could write a LOT about this, but it basically comes down to this: teaching is hard in general. teaching when the students can't understand 99% of what you say is even harder. and for that reason i so look forward to those glorious 2 days when i just get to relax.

but that is not the only reason i look forward to weekends. one of the main things i look forward to is church. i honestly get really sad when something happens that keeps me from church. it's a time where i just get to worship and be surrounded by people who love the Lord. i wish that i could describe to you the feeling i had the first time i walked into the english service at the church i've been going to... again, i could write a lot. but i'll just say this: God put me there at the perfect time, and He is so good.

and the other reason i love weekends is the fact that i never really know what is going to happen. sometimes i end up just having long days of relaxation and doing nothing (which i cherish!). but most of the time i end up doing something completely random and awesome. i guess none of it is that random... usually it's actually planned. but the thing about korea (and doing stuff with koreans) is this: you can never really plan it. it will almost always end up being way more than you signed up for, and it's great! this weekend involved one of those experiences and also lots of other fun stuff. it was a good one. (i guess i should also tell you a little about thanksgiving...)

so thursday i stayed home from school (as i said in my last post). but about a month ago, i was invited to thanksgiving dinner with fred, the man who gave me madeline. so i went to dinner, not really knowing what to expect. it ended up being a beautiful dinner with about 10 or 12 of the most random people that made me feel like a complete underachiever... it was wonderful though. everyone was really nice, the food was delicious (not thanksgiving food, but good still), and the night was just good overall. i will probably have to write a full post about fred, but for now i will just tell you that i am honored to know him. he's korea's longest living expat (he's been in korea for about 50 years and on jeju for close to 40), and he's basically a local celebrity among jeju natives and the foreigners living here. why he likes me, i don't know, but i'm glad :)

anyway... so friday nights i usually watch the office with caleb. i like it because it's when we catch up (we usually don't really see each other during the week...). this week there wasn't a new one, but we didn't realize that so we still hung out for little while. then i went and had pizza with a few friends from my orientation group, then i had dessert and good conversation with sari (my friend who lives in my building and who i do yoga/pilates with). that conversation made me a lot more excited about life. she cracks me up and makes me happy. it was good.

saturday morning i had my class that i have every other week. there are usually between 4 and 6 kids in there (this week there were 6). they are all low level middle schoolers who "volunteered" to be there (i'm pretty sure most of them are only there because they're parents made them). we ended up doing a really short lesson on summarizing then played scrabble the rest of the time... it's hard for me to force the kids to do stuff because i feel bad that they have to be in school on a saturday morning. after the class i had lunch with mrs. oh, my self-appointed korean mom. she's precious and i love her.

after lunch i had a few hours to relax before i had to meet up with nikky, caleb, and a couple other korean girls from church (caleb's church, the one i was going to before i started going to the foreigner service. i actually love the church and the people there... it's a tough decision choosing which one to go to, and it makes me sad that i can't go to both!). they were going to take us to a 사믈노리 concert, but first we stopped by the coolest hair dresser ever to pick up one of the girls who was in the middle of getting a perm (i'm telling you... random. it's fun when you have no idea what anyone is saying and then you just end up at these places... it's like a game to guess where you'll go next!). anyway, after that we went to the concert, which was awesome. it was a lot of traditional korean stuff, and it was really fun. after the concert the performers made caleb and i dance with them. (everyone else joined in if they wanted to, but we were forced because we were foreigners.) after the concert we went to get some chai at bagdad, an indian restaurant really close to my apartment. caleb left early, and it was just me and the 3 koreans (nikky was the only one who speaks english). but even with the language barrier, it was still really fun being out with the girls and talking about boys and life. i taught them MASH (so funny... they're all 28-30 and they loved it), and we just talked and laughed at how we couldn't understand each other. then afterwards they wanted to give me a ride back ("dangerous because you are beautiful!" haha... it's really not dangerous at all!), so i was following them to what i thought would be the car. instead we ended up at a stand getting fried octopus balls. yep... this is korea, and that is what they eat. then we went to the car and they drove me the 2 minutes to my apartment, where we sat in the car and ate leftover kimbap from dinner. it was so fun being with a group of girls just hanging out and laughing and eating midnight snacks... it was just what i needed. they blessed me more than they will probably ever know.

so after a really fun, late night i went to church this morning, where the message was so simple yet so profound and great (it was about loving and following Jesus, out of John 21:15-22).

after church i had to rush out to catch a ride with alpha down to seogwipo to go to the jeju united finals match! it was cold, but it was so fun, and they won! it was definitely very exciting. after the game a group of us got some food then caught the bus back home, where i came in, put on sweats, and collapsed with my computer on my lap.

and that brings me here... writing this long post while i put off planning my winter camp lessons. dang.

that was really long... sorry. but that's what i've been up to.

i promise i go back and forth in my head every couple minutes (not exaggerating!) between happiness about being here and sadness about missing home. it is weekends like this and the moments i've had that really add to the happiness... and i thank God for that!

He is good to me.