Is it bad that I havent posted since Christmas?!

Yes.

What I have doing? I made it back to the states alive which is a bonus. But what I have done effectively is mope around trying to decide what to do next. I did make progress in this since I learned that I like studying clowning more than actually clowning. So I am applying to library graduate schools to get a masters in library studies and then a Doctorate in Folklore in order to create a clowning and physical comedy library/archive.

I have also been reading a lot of theology, and listening to lectures on various subjects. I learned that "lewd" originally meant "lay" as in "Lay people." So that the people who were not ordained ministers were "Lewd ministers" rather than "Lay ministers." I hope I am not the only person who thinks this is absolutely hilarious. But if I am, oh well.

So yeah...

That's pretty much it. More or less.

Well, I have been in Japan the last couple of days hanging out with Mike my brother who has been taking better care of his blog on the subject than I have.

I came two nights ago and we stayed at a hostel, got up the next morning and wandered around Tokyo for a bit. We went to a huge park with several museums and a zoo. We went to art museum and saw Monet's "Water Lillies" which is one of those pieces popular on posters that you can get at Hobby Lobby. It was really cool to see the original. We also rented a swan paddle boat at the park pond and nearly were massacred by ducks and geese and sea gulls when we threw a bit of bread in the water. We had lunch at a little Japanese noodle restaurant, and had to just point at a couple of items in the menu since they didn't have pictures in them. It turned out alright. Then we made our way to ARI and got in, just in time to catch the end of dinner. The guys then proceeded to the guys dorm where we drank a bit of wine, and watched "Jesus Christ Superstar."

Yesterday I worked at ARI with him and it was fun. We took care of chickens, and collected fire wood. Last night a group of us went to a local church for candlelight service, then came back and watched "Love Actually."

We got up this morning and opened presents. Mike got a tarp tent, and I got a certificate for a monster puppet from monsterpuppest.com. We also found chocolate and the traditional set of legos in our stocking, along with a tooth brush and huge peppermint stick all we did was feed the chickens, and then had the rest of the day off. We rode bikes to the store, played ultimate Frisbee, read, played music, and walked to and around town.

We are heading out to north Japan tomorrow to look around and visit a Mennonite ex-pat and his organic farm.

I just wanted to say happy Christ Mass to everyone!!

Annyong!

Well, its my last day in Korea. I am almost packed. I said goodbye to everyone at church tonight and I am going to miss them.

I am not really ready to reflect on my eleven months here.

I have had a lot of fun the last few weeks. I have eaten way too many pizzas with Mike my roommate. I discovered some awesome hot chocolate at Accapellos, a coffee shop in Yesan, and wished I had tried them there earlier.

Last Thursday all the church and school staff went out and had a five course meal of Duck. We had it grilled, with kimchi sauce, roasted, and in a soup. Then we had a ice yogurt dessert. It was the most fantastic meal I have had here I think, and I have had some pretty good ones.

Then we went bowling in Yesan. We played two games, guys against guys and girls against girls. For the guys, the pastors (Pastors: Cheong, Kim, Lee and Kong) were on one team and the other four of us, (Mike, James, Brother Kim, and I) were on the other. The pastors won. James used to run a bowling alley in the states, so he helped me get from lowest of all in the first game to beating Mike in the second. It was a blast all the way around. Now before you go thinking they did all this for me, because I was leaving it was also the Pastors Wife's birthday, and a goodbye dinner for Pastor Kong and his family because he got a new job in another church. His daughter, Kong Ju'n A, or "Paige" (her English name) is in my seven year old's class, and one of my favorite students. I am definitely going to miss that family.

So now I am almost packed. I am going to unplug this computer and pack it as soon as I am done typing this. I am heading to the air port tomorrow, and flying to Japan to see Mike (my brother, not my roommate) who is working at ARI there. Though if you follow this blog you probably already know that. A week later it a nice long 11 hour or so flight from Tokyo to Dallas Fort Worth and home!

Peace!

Remember Remember...

Okay I suppose since I told everyone about a week ago that I would post another post, I should. Lets see, November...

Well the big news is that I am back to plan A2 v3.6. Plan A after college was: join Peace Corps, go to the Clown Conservatory, join Circus, Clown for x number of years, go to Grad school and get a doctorate in Folklore and study clowning academically. Well, the Peace Corps fell through and I came here to Korea and taught. Hence A2. After that I didn't really think about it. So when it got about three months out of leaving I started coming up with plan B which was stick around Korea and teach until the Clown Conservatory. Then it was B2 with staying a whole nother year and teach and save money. But I have now decided to face my fears of the unknown and go ahead and move back to a version of plan A2 which is to go home see the folks and maybe if I have the money to do it, see some friends around the states as well, and then set myself up in San Francisco and work and apply to the Clown Conservatory (just need to make my audition DVD now!). Also thrown into all of this, is seeing Mike in Japan for Christmas and probably new years as well. I am sure it all will work out.

But lets see. What actually HAPPENED. Not much. Well okay a few things.

Mike (roommate) and I went back to the National Park we went to when I first came here. It was absolutely beautiful. The weather was pleasant, and there was no ice like last time and the trees were all sorts of different colors.

One of the best pictures of Mike and me ever.

A pool. It was my desktop background for about a week or so after I got back
Stone staircases are awsome!

We had thanksgiving. Mike and I were going to make hamburgers with some very expensive ground beef I bought after a communication failure at a local butchers (I was trying to buy ground pork) but I had forgot to defrost the meat. So we ordered some pizza and ate that. I missed the family all brand rolls. As it turns out, we had the hamburgers on Monday, and they were amazingly delicious. I think they ground up some steak strips for me.

Sunday night was the church dance off. Yes, you read it right. Dance off. It was probably the most foreign thing I have seen here. All the various groups in the church, I am not even sure what all of them were, had a team and something prepared. The other teachers and I were a part of the Kindergarten team so we teachers acted out the Story tree Story "The Big Turnip" which is about a farmer and his wife who want this big turnip but it is sooooooo BIG! that the enlist the help of their animals one by one to help them pull it out. Originally it is the Farmer, his wife, the Cow, the horse and the lamb. Our version was limited by costume availability and was the farmer (James), his wife (Beth), the Kangaroo (yours truly), the Frog (Mike), and the Chicken (Mrs Lee) and the turnip was played by Mrs Chang.



Then we and the Kindergartners danced and sang the songs that go with the story. It was well received, and much to my surprise not the weirdest nor funniest dance that evening. There was the youth group who danced and then did outrageous things to each other, there was the synchronized swimming dancers, the middle aged ladies in black face doing the macarana to a praise song, the old men holding hands and rocking and singing for their dance, the satirical parade group, the group of middle age men in animal costumes (the same ones we wore, but more of them) and lipstick, and to cap it all off, the transvestite pastors. The macarana women won. Everyone walked home with washer detergent.

Yay Korea!

Oh and I shaved and got a hair cut. I have yet to hear anyone go "Aw you looked so good in that beard what were you thinking?" and lots of people going "Oh Robert very handsome" and giving me thumbs up signs so I suppose it is a good thing.

edit: My Blackbelt came in!!

Victory is mine!!

Black Belt

FINALLY 15 years after I started in it, I am a Black Belt in Taekwondo!! Yay! Huzzah! and general exclamations of happiness. I will getting the actual belt (it has to be embroidered with my name first) next month, and the certificate saying I can teach TKD in Korea in February. I probably won't be here for the later so they will forward it to Wesley and it will be sent it to me.

Just so y'all know.

Has it really been a month? I wasn't really planning on writing anything until I could take some pictures with my black belt on. But since that hasn't happened yet, I should point out that other things have indeed happened this last month.

Like... um... uh...

Black belt test? Well I suppose so. Yes that did happen. We traveled all the way to Deacheon, and took it with like nine hundred other red and black belts (some of the black belts were testing for their second and third degrees). I was in a gymnasium on a basketball court, the environment where I started Taekwondo, which was nice and mythic for me. We sat for about five hours watching others test before I got to test.

I am not in this picture. This is just some the people there before things really got started.

I think it went well. I was a bit enthusiastic perhaps in my shadow free sparring, they kept on telling me "slow down" but after fifteen years of waiting to get there, I was pretty excited. We still haven't gotten official word yet as to results. But I think all is well and expect to have a black belt around my waist in the next couple of weeks.

What else? We finished a term with the older kids. That was good. Now we have a new schedule with some new books which I like so far and our classes are very small which is great.

Also and perhaps more interestingly we had our English Musical with the kindergartners. I can't believe I didn't mention we were doing this in my last post. What it was, was that we (read Beth) made a play version of the story tree version (you remember storytree right?) of the Shoemaker and the Elves. I think it was one of the six year old classes stories. We had the seven and six years olds act it out (complete with all the dialogue in English) and all the three classes, do various songs and dances from the book and video. We also just for fun, had them all answer questions like "What is your name?" and "Who is in your family?" and "What is the velocity of a unladen swallow?" and we sang "Jesus Loves me" in English. So it started as a simple idea and grew into a extremely complex and involved month and a half long project. I drove all the English teachers crazy except me, who had all ready been through the fire of endless repetition of story tree songs and words over the last four or five months. I ate up getting to teach the seven year olds their lines, and watching the same two minutes of video to teach the five year olds the song and dance was broken up nicely by their acting up and me trying to get them to pay attention at all. Towards the end of it, I had no problem letting the Korean teachers direct, do the music and panic.
Naturally as with most all theater productions with small children it went off quite well and everyone had fun.

This is the kids singing a song.

Well, okay, at least the parents, kids and I did. The other teachers were very glad it was over. One of the students parents took us all out to dinner afterwords and I had some delicious spaghetti.

Other big happenings... Halloween of course! We had a "harvest festival" Halloween afternoon and got the kids to play games, eat food and win prizes. I got to practice my almost nonexistent balloon twisting skills. I didn't dress up for it but I did wear my red hat, and twisted a hat for myself, Mike and James. I also made several swords and a couple of puppies that I gave away. I was great fun, and I got to try a great traditional fried sweet bread made by Soo Min's mother. It was masshita!! (delicious).

Look at all the funness!

No applause. Just throw money.

I also hit Seoul this last weekend and saw a beautiful palace there. These are all pretty self explanatory pictures...



Oh I am planning on hitting the states only for a about a month and then comming back to Korea to teach some more and earn enough money to pay off student loans and get a good start on paying for the Clown Conservatory.

That pretty much covers the month.

Peace!

September...

September... teaching... lots of teaching. I went to Seoul, and got some supplies, more books mainly and I also spent some quality time failing to find a magic shop in the rain. I did find a nice coffee and wine house to sit and read in though.

I also have been jogging and I am pleased to say that I can now jog for thirty minutes straight. This ability has greatly increased my fitness over all, and now I am not completely winded after free sparring matches in Tae-Kwon-Do or at least not as completely winded as I was.

If it looks like we are about to knee each other, we probably did. I am in the blue.

Me and my sparring partners, who are better than me, but slightly smaller which somewhat intimidates them. The little black belt on the right was my photographer for the night.

(to continue...) But is this good enough? Am I content just to run in giant circles and also kick people for fun and health? Of course not! So now my roommate Mike and I have decided to start to follow the crossfit workout. "Crossfit" is short for "cross fitness" which means it makes you fit for any sport you want. It does this by working out a couple of bits of your body intensley at a time. All the workouts should take about twenty minutes and there is a daily workout posted on the crossfit website. They are all pretty high impact, and difficult. However you can scale them down and work your way up. All you have to do is get a hold of the equitment or figure out substitutes (which they help with) and do it. So it should be good. We started today, and like they said, it was intense.

I don't know if I mentioned this before, but secretly, besides the obvious health benifits, I am doing this in anticipation of going to the Clown Conservatory.

Lets see... Ah! Mike and I also went to the mountain near Doeksan last weekend. We saw wild goats, some squirrles and a snake, as well as ofcourse a huge mountain we hiked up. This time I did bring my camera.

A view from about half way up the mountain.

Me. You asked for it. :)

Another one of me by a small waterfall on the mountain

Going down?

Finally, I am delighted to say that my spiritual awakening to the always present presence of God is still going well. Miraculously well really. I don't know how describe it adequetly other than to say that I have started to be able to actually do the things Jesus tells us to do out of love rather than because it is the imposed right thing to do or out of fear that people may think ill of me if I don't do them. It is incredibly liberating. The weirdest thing though is I can see God helping me.

For instance, Mike and I had planned to go to the PC cafe after I got out of Tae Kwon Do. But the guys at TKD asked me if I wanted to eat with them. I said yes. Then I remembered that I had told mike I would meet him after TKD and I didn't know how long we would be and I didn't want him to worry about me or get upset that I didn't show up on time. But then I came back to the present and let it go. Thinking that we were going somewhere to eat. I go down stairs from the gym and walk outside. Looking for further instruction, I turn and there is Mike coming around the corner to go to the bathroom on the first floor of the building my TKD gym is in. We exchange news and there is no problem. If I had come outside two minutes before or after or if I hadn't come down at all thinking we were going somewhere (turns out we weren't, one of the blackbelts went and got some microwave burgers from the cornerstore down stairs) we would have missed eachother and he would have been wondering about where I was and concerned for me and I would have had a hard time not feeling guilty about it.

Now this may seem like a small thing. A conicidence perhaps. But there have been an awful lot of them lately and they all revolve around grace, love, need, and peace. I have been seeing what I need to see, and hearing what I need to hear.

Amazing grace how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now I am found
Was blind, but now I see...

I get it.

Peace.