에버랜드

Everland

Gabe, Susanna, and I spent all day Monday at Korea's Everland theme park with Elizabeth, Stephen, and three of the home schooling high school students. After one of the roller coasters, Min-Jae joked, "I was scared so I tried to grab Gabe's hand. But, I looked down and couldn't find it! Then, I looked over at him and realized both of his hands were waving around up in the air!" Wild Americans, right?

My favorite picture of the day...I'm not sure what Gabe's doing, but it looks like he's trying to massage my head. I think we all make pretty good monkeys!

Waiting in line
We like segregating boys and girls
Everland's newest roller coaster (wooden)
Butterfly garden
I guess Stephen was disappointed they didn't have pony rides, but he soon realized that riding sheep doesn't work out too well.

Min-jae enjoyed feeding his map to the goats

The scenery while waiting in line

At least Gabe seemed to enjoy his job...


The parade was rather entertaining. I think it was alien themed - I wonder who created these wild costumes!

FMI Retreat

Friday and Saturday, the FMI team here in Korea (Pents, Willings, Sumralls, and Voellers) took a 2 day trip to the west coast of Korea. I enjoyed being with all the families, and I was especially thrilled to get sunburned while walking around on the beach. We stayed at a picturesque pension house and packed a lot into 2 days including football, soccer, grilling, a treasure hunt, team meetings, worship time, painting nails (well, the girls), climbing on rocks, shell collecting, etc.

Our lodgings



Football in the front yard - I'm sure the Koreans enjoyed watching :)

Don't worry - if you ever get hungry walking on the beach, you can always stop for a snack of boiled silk worm larvae, conch shells, sea cucumbers (which are creatures, not vegetables), octopus, sea slugs, etc.

Some Korean ladies working...there were quite a few women out on the rocks harvesting clams. There were also women diving out in the ocean.

Caveman Gabe comes back from hunting - empty handed


Not sure what Stephen was doing...
Notice the misty islands in the background


Nice skills



Dad and Mom enjoy the view
Pents and Voellers


The gardeners head for home...

The botanical gardens we visited were full of blooms
An ancient Korean chimney

The whole team
This lady really enjoyed posing for her picture :)


Julie

Exigency

Want a sample of logic class with the middle and high school students every week? I prepare and teach this class, and have recently begun using Gabe and Susanna to do weekly skits. (You know students - keeping their attention for more than five minutes involves flashing lights and blaring noises.) Anyway, Gabe decided to be "professional" this week and video record the skit ahead of time. We were studying the fallacy of exigency which basically means the only reason you are told to something is because you are running out of time. ("For a limited time only" advertisments fall under this category.) The best part of this skit is definitely the deleted scenes.

아름다운 봄과 꽃들

(Beautiful Spring and Flowers)

Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. -II Corinthians 6:8

Spring is blooming here in Korea. Cherry blossoms line the road, and the azaleas are slowly beginning to appear on the mountains. Seeing spring after a long winter is a welcome sight and something that our family has never experienced.

Yesterday, our family, the Sumralls, and all of the Global homeschooling staff were invited to lunch by some ladies (members of Global Mission) who wanted to do something special for the homeschooling leaders. After a walk in a park, we went to eat at a traditional Korean restaurant - the nicest restaurant I have been to in Korea. The beef was brought to us raw so we could cook it over hot charcoal grills in the middle of our tables. As per usual, there were about 20 different side dishes, most of which are very good but very different from anything you find in America.

We spent the afternoon with a couple other homeschooling families, riding bikes in the park. It was nice for the girls to ride a bike again; we've never done it in Korea before. The whole day was an enjoyable break from co-op preparation (and now I'm catching up).

With spring has come a site I've never seen before - at the park, on the side of the highway, in the middle of Suji, anywhere where the "weeds" are growing, people are out harvesting greens. I was quite surprised the first time I saw a tiny, old lady on a steep hill next to the road, pulling weeds for supper!

Of course, being a traditional Korean restaurant, we sat on the floor. The strange silver pipe in the middle of the table sucks up the smoke from the charcoal pit.
Someone had the genius idea that we should also cook our salmon sushi! The Koreans were probably laughing at such a waste of good sushi; we saw it as a way to make the expensive fish edible. Actually, we enjoyed grilling whatever we could get our hands on :)

Some of the kids

It's been a LONG time since I've seen Mom on a bike :)

Cute basket, Susie!