Travels with Jon and Kate!: Good times in Term 5

We've had some good times with our students this term. After having been here just two weeks shy of a year, I feel like we've established ourselves here at Suncheon SDA. The students know that we're good teachers and that we're fun to hang out with and we've developed some great relationships with our students. The first major activity of Term 5, our last term here, was an art festival in the town of Gwangju, the closest major city to us, about an hour away. Apparently a lot of cities have different festivals every two years, called Biennales, so people were excited to go back to Gwangju's Biennale.

So we made plans to go with a students of ours, May, and her friend tagged along. We arrived and began checking out the art which, let me tell you, was quite strange. Most of it was very modern art (as you can see in the picture of the giant piece of ginger and carrot). Some of it was nice though. We browsed the exhibits for a while and met up with another of Jon's students, who lives in Gwangju and decided to join us. After we'd had enough art, the most exciting part of the day for Jon and I was lunch :) Gwangju is a much bigger city, and has 3 SDA institutes, an ABC and a conference office, so there are lots of all vegetarian restaurants in town (while there are none in Suncheon). So our students found one of the restaurants for us and we drove clear across town to get to it. But it was soooo worth it! It was delicious! We went back to the festival for a while and heard some jazz music before heading back to Suncheon.

Our next major activity with our students was going to the Jungheon Woodlands. My religion student Young (who just moved to Seattle and will be going back there soon), and my English student Beatrice took Jon, Joel and I to some Cyprus Woodlands during our first day of Chuseok break. The path was nice and soft to walk on (sawdust?) and it smelled lovely. The smell is actually supposed to be good for you. We walked the paths for a while, but unfortunately our most recent typhoon knocked a lot of fences and trees over so we couldn't go to the top. We had some kimbap and fruit, and when we came back we stopped at the gift store where they have all things Cyprus. After Beatrice tried to buy me about five different things, which I insisted I didn't need and didn't have room to take back but thank you anyway, she finally couldn't help herself and bought me a little whistle made of Cyprus to scare off any predators. It is now on a string attached to my phone, so mom, you don't have to worry anymore, and I don't have to carry mace either. I've got my Cyprus whistle :)

After leaving the souvenir shop, we headed down the rode to an observatory the lady at the shop had recommended. Of course, it would have been better at night, but it was still pretty cool. We got to look at the sun :)

In most recent events, this past weekend my level 4 class took Jon and I out to the new (and only) Thai restaurant in town, followed by a nice leisurely afternoon chatting at the coffee shop. I didn't realize the Thai restaurant would be that big of a deal. I mean, I know they love their Korean food passionately, but they said after lunch that it had been a big challenge to eat another culture's food. It's moments like that when I'm really glad I'm from America, where we basically eat another culture's food every night of the week. I like that about us.

Then on Saturday, our Korean church decided to move our church program to a park about an hour away, at the foothills of the tallest mountain on mainland Korea (Jiri Mountain). We had a nice afternoon, did an impromptu special music with the three students that came, they joined us in Sabbath school and a short English church program, and then we enjoyed our picnic lunch and relaxation. It was some lovely scenery, with mountains all around, and a river running through the valley. Mountains are a bit different here. We asked them which one was Jiri mountain and they just said "all of it!" I think a lot of times when they name mountains, they're actually naming small mountain ranges. And now the term's almost over! This coming week is term projects, then final tests and parties and then HOME!