He Leadeth Me... And, Free Stuff!

Today, during the morning meditation, I was handed a hymnal by the vice principal.  While all of the rest of the staff sang He Leadeth Me in Korean, I quietly sang in English.  It was kind of cool that we were all singing the same song, but in different languages!  Afterward, as I returned the hymnal to the Vice Principal and thanked her for letting me use it, she asked if I had my own.  I guess it must be common here for people to have their own hymnals...  I am also supposed to bring my Bible to school with me to use during the meditation time.  I think The Message (a version of the Bible that is written in contemporary language) will be quite a bit different from the version they use...  (Today's picture between meditation and the morning English lesson was from Lady and the Tramp...no more Maggie Simpson)...

I continued to observe Emily's classes today and she even let me teach the last couple.  I started to get the hang of it and even talked quite slowly!  Tomorrow is the first time I teach on my own.  Holy. Cow.  Please pray.  

For lunch today, the English Department threw a going away party for Solomon (the teacher I am replacing) and Emily (she leaves at the end of September).  They provided chicken wings, two kinds of Korean pizza, frozen concord grapes and an ice cream cake.  The pizza was AWESOME!  One kind was Idaho Potato.  It had peppers, small fried potatoes and cheddar cheese (I think... and probably other stuff, but I can't remember...).  It tasted a lot like breakfast pizza, which I haven't had in a really long time since most breakfast pizza comes with meat on it...  The other kind was called Sweet Potato and had beef (which I picked off, but got promptly snatched by another staff member), some sort of fruit that looked like canned peaches but was much sweeter and boiled potatoes.  They served the pizza with chop sticks, which was a new approach to pizza for me, but then we ate it with our hands.  With the pizza, they served a mustard sauce, hot sauce, garlic sauce for dipping the crust and a cup of pickles.  To accompany the chicken wings, they served some kind of pickled radish that tasted kind of sweet.  They were really good!  They also served Pepsi!  I couldn't really taste much of a difference from American Pepsi, but Solomon said the Pepsi here is much sweeter...  It all tastes super sweet to me...  I don't think (knock on wood) that I have encountered a Korean food that I have not found tasty!  The only thing that I'm not sure about and will take some getting used to is a certain kind of tea (i have no idea what kind it is...someone left me a whole bunch of it on my desk yesterday...).  It tasted like rice, but burnt or something...  It tasted much better to me after I let it get cold.

After the last class of the day, all of the native English teachers were leaving the English Cafe (the building / floor designated for all English classes) and Solomon told me I could have his bike.  He is moving to Seoul to live with his fiance and is not taking his bike with him.  I don't know how much I will ride it, but it's nice to have the option I guess.  It looks pretty nice, is only two years old and he also gave me his lock!  Pretty sweet deal!

Right now, there is some sort of truck outside broadcasting some kind of message throughout the neighborhood over a loudspeaker.  It sounds like propaganda of some sort, but I have no idea what they are saying and they keep driving around the block repeating the same couple of sentences over and over...  Never a dull moment in Korea, I guess...