THANKSgiving hola back!!!

     First off, HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!!! I think about where I could be today. It is roughly 6pm in Huntsville, a placed filled, at the moment, with most of my lovely family. To tell you the truth there is no way to describe how much I love them. I try sometimes, but I have been divinely blessed with the people I am stuck with. They are clever, absurd, hilarious(!), dramatic, understated, affectionate, bold, conservative, wild, reliable, loving, and imperfect, but they are mine..THANK GOD!!! My favorite part of Thanksgiving day is pregaming in the kitchen. I normally avoid constant recipes, oven temperature monitoring, dishes, chopping, poking, kneading, more dishes, and mass amounts of cooking all together. This year I find myself remembering only the tasting, snacking, joking, bustle, and overall cheer among the kitchen goers and those who pass by for samples. Everyone has probably already had firsts and seconds, dessert, thirds, breakfast, second breakfast, elevenses, luncheon, afternoon tea, dinner, and supper. They are likely spending time together or apart, but in the same house, hot tube, or in the car on their way to see the Christmas lights show we go to every year. It is probably warm and cozy wherever they may be. I miss them.
     However, I am also so thankful for the blessings that I am experiencing where God has lead me today. Truthfully, I ate instant cup-o-ramen for dinner, and I am alone in may classroom at school, but there's some adventure mixed in there. I live in a country whose language I have wanted to learn since high school, I have learned to enjoy reading, and I get payed to teach a fun group of kids that make work SO interesting! I have also been blessed with a church and some friends who share some of my experiences as a cultural nomad.

     The church that I am a part of here is really great! It has a huge number of foreigners and Koreans that go, which makes me feel like I stick out less, but that I am not trying to only hang out with foreigners. This is the church that I first attended on my second week here, and although I visited a number of other churched closer to me, I decided on this one and I'm so very glad that I did! It is a part of a bigger Korean church close by. It takes me about an hour and a half on the subway to get there, but it is worth it to be a part of a great christian community, with people from all over.

     I really wanted to join a small group/bible study when I first settled on this church, but the small group sign ups only began in September. There was a list and brief description of all of the groups and qualifiers, like age, gender, or marital status, for some. I perused the times that they met and started to panic a bit, because I couldn't meet at any of their times. The only ones that worked with my late work schedule, met on Sundays, but had already filled up. I was feeling super discouraged, when I made it all the way to the bottom to find one that met on Saturdays! Under the descriptions is said that it required strong commitment from it's members to be able to be there for 6-7 hours, beginning at 9am, every week. WHAT?! Oh...it was a hiking small group...haha. I am not much for hiking or physical exertion of any kind if it is not  fun, in some way, or competitive (like a race, a sport, or a game). So, I don't normally hike on purpose. I was also concerned that I might want to go some where some Saturday or do something wild and crazy that would take up some of that 6-7 hours. *sigh* decisions... It wasn't very full so I still had time to think about it. I eventually decided that it was worth it to make friends with people who I could talk to about God and could encourage me, and just new friends in general.
     It is almost the end of the small group term now and I have loved been so blessed to be a part of this group! It was definitely a blessing that I had no other option, because if I had I may not have chosen this one. It forces me to exercise. Like I said earlier, physical exertion, unless it is competitive fun, is something I avoid. However, since I committed to this small group I have also committed to running three times a week. Honestly, I hate running, but I feel good and I know it's healthy; I'm actually getting a lot better at it! It also allows me to spend a lot of time every week with the people in my small group and I get to know them a lot better than if we just talked for an hour or two. Selfishly I love the part of hiking that doesn't allow people to just spontaneously decide to peace out; I mean a few of us want to make it to the top every time haha.

     Oo and something so cool that happened the other day, my prayer partner, was at a men's conference put on by the church. I told him that I would pray for him and all the other men there. It was after class and I was in my class room alone, with an hour or so left until I would leave school left. I began to pray. And I felt like that Holy Spirit was in me. I know that God gives us his spirit for keeps once we are a part of his family, but I haven't ever felt like that before. I have felt like God used me, but never like I was a temple of the Holy Spirt. I felt like he was a prat of me for the first time. Does that make sense? Haha I may seem fairly absurd, but if you are reading this you are probably my friend and I thought you'd want to know about what is important to me haha. Well that's me. Thanks for reading. Happy Thanksgiving to all and to all a good night!!!

     P.s. if you have read thus far I can only assume it is because you love me haha...and just so you know, there is no opposition on my side if you feel compelled share some holiday cheer, by sending so nonperishable edibles (pulverized or not), they would be greatly appreciated. ;)

     P.s.s. My address is.....

Haley Bledsoe 

408 Hyundi I Park Mall, 1289, Jung Dong, Wonmi-Gu, Bucheon

South Korea

School, School, Scha School's cool (for the teacher ;)

      Hey Oh! It has been many moons since last we met...so I will just have to fill you in a bit :)
I am currently sitting in my classroom at school eating my dinner. To my left are educational posters, one of which has a map of the world. On my right the wall is decorated with drawings and writings from my students. Most of them wrote about their favorite candy, Halloween, or what they like to do in the fall. In honour of Halloween, which was thoroughly celebrated at school a few weeks ago, I decided to let them do something fun, like colouring, for a whole class period. I'm pretty pumped about it haha.
     For Halloween, the hagwon* that I work for was covered in spiderwebs, scary masks, banners, a couple of pumpkins and generally looking splendidly like Halloween! I have never dressed up to be scary on Halloween before, but this year part of my job was to try and scare at least 70 children, so I gave scary a go. It was so much fun! I don't know if you know this about me, but I really enjoy playing jokes on people. Normally I refrain from scaring people, because friends are good things to have and not everyone takes my idea of innocent fun, in the same way. You can imagine my excitement, then, at being asked to scare the living daylights out of students who, up to this point, I had been trying to calm enough to teach. I was seated at the back of a classroom that had long staggered sheets of black plastic hanging from it's ceiling. A youtube loop beside me was playing actual sound recordings of terrified people screaming in haunted houses. Because the room was so dark the students couldn't hardly see me. They were told to go find me and say "trick-or-treat," at which point I would give them a bag of freshly popped fair-style popcorn. Some times I would sit and play dead until they had stood there long enough to be able to see me a little and had recited their line two or three times; other times I hid behind one of the sheets of plastic and jump out just as they rounded it. Needless to say, I throughly enjoyed myself and in-between kids I would snack on the popcorn haha. One of my boys, who is about 12 years old, screamed when he saw me even before I moved. Other kids were so scared of the dark room that they had a friend go with them. On the way out of the room another teacher would jump out of a box and try to scare them again...it was fun!

     Next week, open house will begin at school. The parents of the students will be welcome to come to select classed throughout the next three weeks. I am pretty nervous! Parents are scary. The English level of the parents will very from one extreme to the other and I have no idea who will show up. Most of my efforts in class have been aimed at preparing for that.

     I am really starting to love my students which makes work a lot more fun. I sort of have a middle school boy sense of humor, which works out great seeing as I teach middle schoolers every day. Some of my kids are so funny I can't even handle it; true story! Almost every day, one of my students will say something, that is hilarious and those students make class more fun for all of us. The Korean teachers have to be more strict with the kids (I'm not sure they think the students are as funny as I do most of the time), so I get to be the easier more fun class.

     Last Wednesday, one of my middle school classes ALL forgot their books, because of a miscommunication. So, I decided to try and get them to write something. They like to talk a lot and have almost no motivation to do their work in a timely manner. One of them asked me to sing, because they wanted to be entertained. I told them that if they finished their writing I would sing. Nate, my student with the least written, was taking his sweet time and I told him that I would sing part of a song when he finished half of his writing. They wanted me to sing "Let It Go" (p.s. Frozen is super popular here). He finished, so I sang every thing until the chorus...obvious cliff hanger. Eventually they had all finished writing, and I sang, as promised. They were an excellent audience, swaying with their hands in the air, until part of they way through, when they stopped. After I finished, I realized that on of the Korean teachers, from down the hall, was looking through the glass in my door. Then it hit me, that I must have been pretty loud. The teachers whose rooms are on my left and right didn't have classes, but apparently the sound carried all the way to my bosses office...I was so embarrassed! I don't usually get embarrassed very easily, but I was pretty bad. I spent the rest of the time explaining, apologizing, or waiting until an opportunity arose to do both. It is pretty funny now. I have students who still ask about it, who I'm fairly certain were in the middle of a test at the time. *sigh* oh well. C'est la vie. haha



*The general term for the many after-school private institutes that children attend in Korea.