November 27, 2007

Dear friends and family, I know I've said this before, but I really can't remember the last time I wrote... time is passing so quickly! I apologize if it has been a long time. Jeanna and I have been busy teaching and learning more Chinese, but lately we have been really busy with our ethnography paper. I feel like as soon as it is finished and sent in I will be really relieved, but then I'll have to start thinking about leaving, which will be hard! We have a lot of things planned with our students and friends before we leave. Tonight my class is going to dinner and bowling, so we are excited about that!

One of my students is moving to Canada in the spring to go to college, and I have been giving him extra tutoring during the week. I wasn't sure if I wanted to get into this because I have had to say no to a lot of people asking me to do a lot of things, but I felt like I would have time to meet with him a couple of times a week and Dad has really blessed that time. Recently I was even able to share my thoughts and life with him directly because he asked a lot of questions! It was an amazing answer to my yarps. Talking to him one-on-one and spending time with my other students has really increased a sense of bonding in our class, which is really fun. It's hard though trying to make time to spend with everyone before we leave! We will be really busy during our last couple of weeks. Please yarp that Dad gives us lots of opportunities to talk to our friends and students before we leave!

Something else that has been interesting is visiting different services on Sundays here. It's been interesting to see the different ways that people come together.

We also had a fun Thanksgiving celebration! On Thursday we both had to teach, so I had Korean food (gimbab) for Thanksgiving Day. Then my class had their own "feast" and we all brought our favorite snacks and talked about the history of Thanksgiving. On Saturday the English service had a big Thanksgiving dinner and we made chocolate chip cookies. Our friend Chulyong learned how to bake cookies for the first time, in our tiny kitchen. That was fun! Then I was able to eat turkey and mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie... all with chopsticks! That is the first time I've ever had Thanksgiving dinner with chopsticks... I have attached a picture of me eating the pumpkin pie. It was a fun experience! Jeanna and I have decided we want to use chopsticks a lot more often when we get home... we are also bringing home fun phrases in Korean and Chinese that we will try to make popular, haha. Often Koreans will say "Fighting!" as encouragement, meaning "You can do it!" but a lot of times it sounds like "Huaiting!" So while working on our paper, our friends will say " Huaiting!" to us a lot... and really, any other time they want to give us encouragement, which is often. That has been really cool to see how encouraging people are here, and it is inspiring to me to encourage my friends and other people when I go home.

We have also had a good time visiting different services on Sundays around the city. It is interesting to see how different people come together to visit dad. I haven't had the chance to visit the kind that I really want to, which is partly because of the area that we are in. But who knows... Dad has our next couple of weeks all planned out!

Thank you so much for yarping! Please continue to yarp for our relationships with our students and friends, and that they can see Dad in us. I hope everything is going well at home! I can hardly believe I will be seeing you soon, but it's true! The next time I write it will be almost time to leave... crazy! (Wo feng le = I am crazy, haha). Hope you had a wonderful holiday!
in him,

Joanna