camp, then vacation

I haven't been online so much the past week. From last Saturday to Wednesday, we had the first annual English camp at two different locations, both schools who let us use their facilities for free. Everything went really well. We had a great time with the kids and the parents kept telling us how glad they were that we were there. Wednesday night, we had a little performance for the parents and then a few of us took off on a little vacation! We had to say goodbye to the girls who came for the summer before we left on vacation. They left on Friday.

So, Scott, Jason, six Korean friends and me went to stay in one of the guy's family condos in a resort town not too far from the beach. It was really great. We left as soon as we could after camp ended on Wednesday night. While the rest of the gang was waiting on us, they went shopping for groceries for the three days we were there. They bought a few things from the bakery for us Americans, but most of the food money was spent on a 5kg bag of kimchi, a bag of rice, meat for grilling Korean style, water, and a few snacks. We were really amazed when we saw the huge bag of kimchi, but we ended up eating almost all of it - it was served for breakfast and dinner (we ate lunch out). The first night, we were getting ready to cook the meat, so somebody opened the fridge. I walked in the room and smelled something - I thought they had started cooking already, and I said "Something smells good!" Well, it turned out to be just the smell of the open kimchi bag in the fridge. Jason and Scott made fun of me for that. It is a little scary to me that kimchi smells and tastes so good now! I told Jason I might be addicted, but he said that since I still haven't bought any for myself yet, I definitely have nothing to worry about.

The first day, we went to a national park "cattle ranch." It was really pretty - not anything like a Texas ranch -lots of green, rolling hills. The best thing about being there, though, was to watch our friends be so picture happy. They took lots of pictures of each other, and then asked "how did I look in that one? is it ok?" The funny thing was they took a lot of pictures of themselves - even though there were many of us available to take pictures, they chose to hold the camera up in front of their face and take their own picture - sometimes many, until they got one they were satisfied with. After the ranch, we went to the beach for a few hours. That was a lot of fun. We went to another beach the second day that was a little prettier and a little less crowded.

This morning, we got up and packed up. We had kimchi jjigae (kimchi soup) for breakfast. All of us Americans even ate it, but maybe not as much as the Koreans did. That's a pretty monumental step - to be able to eat kimchi, especially kimchi jjigae for breakfast. We took off towards Seoul and stopped at a Buddhist temple along the way. It was really crazy for me to watch people bowing devotedly to the huge gold Buddha statue and then offer money to it. Wow.

Tonight, Jim Bob had a little barbecue for the team on the deck/roof of his apartment. It was really excellent to just hang out with everybody and relax. It was our first barbecue in Korea! Meat is pretty expensive here, and barbecue pits are hard to come by, but JB worked it all out and it was a really great time. Bob and Cecilia Belvin are here. They joined us and we got to pray together some at the end. It was excellent.

Now back to real life. As Jason and I rode back into Seoul tonight, I was a little sad about coming back to the city, but I really do like it here. It's just that a little vacation in the country with all the great scenery can spoil you!