Staff retreat

After listening to today's reading music you might want to check out the actual video, only because it was filmed outside of where I go to church. I walk past the graffiti-covered play ground almost every Sunday: Love Love Love by Roy Kim.

So, updating every day hasn't been very successful, sorry about that! I guess these are kind of long to read everyday too, but I will try to be better at it. The main thing that happened since I wrote was our staff retreat to Yangpyeong! I actually kind of extended the retreat to be like 4 days for me, because I stayed over at the Connexus housing from Thursday Girl's Night on until going back to my host family's house Sunday night. So fantastic to hang out with everyone in a non-work environment!

At Yangpyeong we stayed at a great hotel with two suite rooms that hat two rooms each, a living room and a kitchen. We first arrived to find everything dark in the first room: the cooking team who had gone ahead of the teachers apparently had blown a fuse in the room by using *gasp*  two griddles at once. At least, that's what the hotel repairman said. I kind of think that was not really the cause, but from then on we cooked with one griddle in each room.

After a great meal of pork bugolgi, we played some good old Four Men On a Couch. Now, I had not played that game since youth group, and had forgotten how much it taxes the brain strength. I was feeling good when I could do remember the real names of at least two people in the circle, but Minji and Hyunho and Karen were suzies-on-top-of-it; they could remember almost everyone. I was in awe. So for future reference, this is an easy game to play even if you don't speak the same language, because it only involves saying names.

And, as this was a gathering of mostly anabaptists, you know of course what we did. That's right, peacefully battled each other in Dutch Blitz. There was not any shouting or complaining at all....

To sleep, as Korean hotels often don't have beds, us ladies just threw all the yos on the floor and slept in proper Family Outing style. I will try to add the pic of the room later. So great.

Next morning after breakfast we headed off to do some railbiking! probably most of you saw the pictures of that on facebook, so I won't describe it in too much detail, but basically it's similar to paddleboats only you have wheels and you're on a train track. Very fun!

I feel like this is turning into a "and then... and we ate...." type post which is one of my least favorite things, so I'll try to wrap it up. Because everyone was just feeling like lazing around, on Sunday all of the teachers decided to be church skippers and rest at home. Turns out it rained almost non-stop all day, so that was a good choice. We watched Johnny English which was hilarious. Picutre Mr. Bean meets Get Smart, if you haven't seen the film. Apparently there is a sequel, which I am most definitely watching.

Studying for TOPIK has been going ok I think. I've met my goals so far, but we'll see how I do when I start taking practice tests.
I have also just started reading The Three Musketeers for the first time! The good news is that it is as good as the Wishbone version. Now I want to go watch that.

Well, that's all for now...nothing to report teaching-wise really...I'll try to write a post related to that this weekend.

Thanks for reading!
-Abby