A day in Korea

When I’m not sick and in bed sleeping I have a pretty busy schedule. The whole month that I am here is one big camp that kids from all over Korea have paid nearly $3000 to attend. The purpose of the camp is to help improve the English skills of the children in a Christian environment. So the structure is a lot like a camp in the U.S. would be. They have a pretty set schedule that they follow every day.

What is hard for me and probably many Americans to imagine is that the age of the campers is from 7 or 8 years old to about 16. Could you imagine being sent away to a camp to learn English for 3 weeks by yourself when you were 8 years old? It’s pretty crazy! For the most part the kids are pretty good with being away from home.

So here is what I do all day!

I usually wake up around 7:30 A.M. and get ready in my dorm room. We have bathrooms and showers on our floor just like a college dorm in the states. I finish up any last minute lesson plans, check my e-mail and rush out the door for breakfast and staff meeting at 8:30. At our staff meeting we discuss the day and any other specific things that need to be addressed.

Foyer - Outside of Dorm rooms and Staff Lounge -

Staff Lounge - In Dorm

Dorm Room Hallway -

At 9:00 A.M. I have a homeroom class. Every teacher has a homeroom class. This is the only class that I get to see every day. Each homeroom is named after a different city around the world and is assigned a missionary from that area to learn about during camp. My homeroom city is pretty easy for me…it’s Chicago! Our class missionary lives in Cairo Illinois. So every homeroom period we have a game and a lesson about missions, Chicago, or our missionary. They are a pretty fun class. Here is a picture of my homeroom class.



At 10:00 A.M. I have my first class followed by another class at 11:00 A.M. I am teaching bible and was assigned a text book to teach from so my lesson prep is fairly easy. I usually begin the class with a game (the kids love hangman!) and then I have the students go around the room and read one paragraph at a time from the book. I then write some vocabulary words on the chalk board and have the students write them on a sheet of paper. Then I will have the students pronounce each word and I then define it for them. After we define all of the words I read the story out loud to the class. I will stop every few sentences to explain what is going on or act scenes out.

My Class Hard at work -

Its really neat to teach bible to these kids. Korea is a pretty Christian country but some of these kids are still shocked by the stories! My first lesson was on the birth of Jesus and in several different classes it was amazing to see the shock on some of the students faces when I told them that God’s Son was born in a stable! I hope that I always have that sense of wonder and awe about Jesus!

After my 11:00 A.M. class I have to take my students to lunch in the cafeteria. It is about a 5 minute walk from my class room but it is very cold out! I will eat lunch with whatever class I happen to have that day and after lunch I will walk the class back to the dorm room. I then have a break from Lunch until 2:00 P.M. (I’m usually online around then which is about 11:00 P.M. in Indiana if you want to try and catch me on msn or facebook!)

After my break I have a 2:00, 3:00, and 4:00 P.M. class. At 5:00 I am responsible for leading a club. Each teacher is required to lead a club every afternoon. Some of the clubs offered are soccer, beadwork, film, African dance and card games. I am co-leading the Music club with my friend Kendall Ludwig. Students go to their club with their homeroom class and get to go to a different club every week. Last week I posted a video of our kids playing shakers that they made in our club to a song that I said Kendall wrote. I know that Kendall didn’t write “River of Life” I just uploaded the wrong video! So here is a new video of our kids shaking their shakers to Kendall’s song.



After our club Kendall and I take our 20 kids to dinner. We eat with them, walk them back to the dorm and then we are done for the evening. It’s a pretty full day. Once I get feeling better I will have some pictures up from around town and some different buildings on campus and things.

Hope all is well!

Love, Joy & Peace!