These were at a temple in Yeosu for Buddha’s birthday.

Boseong green tea plantations.

This was taken in Yeosu this past weekend.

Spring Day

Twenty-Dozen

Lately I have been thinking a lot about home. Granted, we are always thinking about home, with Twitter, FaceTime, Facebook, texting, etc. But more than usual, I have been thinking about what home is and when we will really be home.

We have been in Korea for 5 months now, and I would say we are used to it. We have become comfortable in our jobs. Comfortable in our apartment. In the culture, to an extent.

We still haven’t really learned any Korean, but we also don’t have much of a desire to. We are here for another year at the most. And at this point, I can’t see any real benefit to being proficient in Korean when we return to the states. We’ll see if we get that desire anytime soon, though.

Anyway, we are comfortable here and it is beginning to feel like home, but we still have days where nothing sounds better than going to Jacob’s Well, watching a Royals game or having a date at the Nelson.

No matter which way you look at it, we are going to spend the majority of this year in Korea. And I am completely okay with that. I think we need to be here financially and I really want to stay at my school because I am beginning to see the benefits of developing relationships with the students. But when we do return home, it is going to be such a big change. Obviously it will be the start of a new chapter of our lives and of our marriage, but more than any of that it will be the start of the life I have had in mind.

I still don’t know if that is a good thing or not, but a life as an adult that I have throughout my youth is a big thing for me. Living in Korea and not really having anything to worry about, relatively speaking, has still never felt like real life.

I take a bus to work. I work at a school. I live on a university campus. I don’t have any real payments. I can’t control my own heat. I’m not a part of a church.

I could go on, but doing so makes me feel worthless.

Basically, I am looking forward to our return because I haven’t had the “right of passage” into adulthood yet. Whatever that is. Maybe it’s a car payment or a checkbook to balance or an annoying neighbor to have to deal with. Whatever it is, the life I am living in Korea is nothing short of incredible and we are so blessed to have jobs and very few payments and friends that we have made here, but it all doesn’t feel real. It’s like purgatory, I guess.

Well, whatever life is right now, I still really enjoy it.

Mylo Xyloto

I just finished listening to Coldplay’s new album, and I hate to say it, but it is not worth your 45 minutes. Or your $9.99.

I have been a huge fan of Coldplay for as long as anyone. “A Rush of Blood to the Head” was released and I jumped on the wagon with the rest of the theater kids at LSHS. I picked up that, Parachutes, and anxiously awaited X&Y and even saw them with my summer fling of a girlfriend my Junior year. To this day one of the better outdoor concerts I’ve attended. (Rilo Kiley opened.)

Viva la Vida was released and my friend Chase and I listened to the first single, Cemeteries of London, at work and weren’t in love, but still got the album and really liked some of the tunes.

Before listening to Mylo Xyloto I thought to myself, “Coldplay can do anything and people will like it. The 3 songs I have heard from this so far are the most Top 40 style Coldplay songs I have ever heard and I think they want it to be that way.”

Unfortunately, that is exactly what Mylo Xyloto is. It is a mainstream radio-play album with tracks that say “Coldplay & Rihanna” under the artist name if you buy it from iTunes. That’s just annoying, because then whenever you’re scrolling on your iDevice through artists, there is Coldplay, then there is Coldplay & Rihanna. Ugh.

iTunes library organization aside, I am going to talk about the position Coldplay was in 4 years ago when they still had “mainstream indie rock” in the palm of their hand. Whatever that means. I couldn’t think of any other term, but I imagine you know what I mean. Around the time of “X&Y” they redefined arena rock. They were selling out arenas and amphitheaters daily, leaving audiences awestruck with the big sound that can come from now some of their soft songs like “Fix You” and “Clocks”.

Somewhere along the way they decided that wasn’t good enough and needed to write huge songs that follow the “two-thousands pop song structure”.

That said, I read that Mylo Xyloto has hit the Number 1 spot in all of iTunes’ stores worldwide. Maybe this is something they really wanted to do. Maybe they really do like all of the music on “M X” but I can’t help to think that they threw a lot away when they stopped writing songs like they did in the Parachutes and Rush of Blood era and became a part of the noise that is this loudness war.

Mix quietly. Darcy Stevens, one of my favorite professors said, “Music these days needs B.A.L.L’s (Bigger Audio Loudness Levels).”

It doesn’t. There is too much loudness out there. Listen for the silence, not for the constant fortissimo.

The Loss of a Hero

I hadn’t thought about it like this until my mom sent me a message that read “I’m sorry for your loss. I know he was one of your heroes”. That’s it. He was one of my all-time heroes and always will be. The fact that so many people received the news on a device he invented is testament to his hard work.

Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle. – Steve Jobs

Youth Lagoon – Montana

Everything about this is incredible. I was listening to the Youth Lagoon record today and found this. Really inspiring.

The First Five Weeks

We have been in Korea for exactly five weeks today and I am happy to say that things are going really well. Here is a week by week analysis as far as I can recall:

Week One: Arrival and Orientation (It’s funny because we are in Asia)

We arrived on my first transatlantic flight via Singapore Air, and I can do nothing but highly recommend flying with them (or any non-American airline) if you get the chance.  Maybe this video will sum it up… Well put, Shawn. It was like that. We were greeted at the Incheon International Airport by a KNU representative named Terry who took us immediately to KFC, even though 2 of the 3 members of our arrival party had just said they were vegetarians. (A foreshadowing of what’s to come in terms of Korean Dining? I think so…) We were then taken back to our new homes. The Native Speaker Dormitory’s of Korea Nazarene University. But we like to call them apartments because we are out of college now.

The next week consisted of us watching videos about our new city, Cheonan; meeting with higher-ups in the KNU realm; checking to make sure we are healthy; and meeting our Head Teachers at our schools. We were both positioned in elementary schools in Cheonan in relatively good parts of town. Lisa’s school is within walking distance (read: there is no bus that goes that way, so she has to walk) of our apartment and mine is about a 25 minute bus ride. Both of our head teachers are young and could be some great friends even if we didn’t work together.

Week Two: Teaching?

Our second week in Korea consisted of us preparing to start our jobs teaching and getting ready for what we’ll be doing for the bulk of our time here. For me that meant sitting in an office without Internet or a computer while other Korean teachers plan lessons and teach. This is an extremely difficult process for a plugged in twentysomething like myself. I did some Seoul searching. Turns out it’s just North of us.

Dad joke. Anyway, the first week was really uneventful for me. Lisa was put straight to work, however. Within the first week she had tons of lesson plans that she found online, while I had just read the same articles on the upcoming iOS 5. (I could really go off on a tangent here, but I’ll refrain.) After we both got in the classroom, we soon realized this job was a perfect fit for both of us. We both really love being around the kids, and the teaching aspect is actually pretty enjoyable.

Week Three: Chuseok

The Korean “Thanksgiving”, called Chuseok, falls on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month. That is about as confusing as the holiday itself. Seeing as this was our first opportunity to go out and see Korea, Lisa and I were very excited for the 5 day break. We mulled over our Lonely Planet guidebook and settled on a hike just outside of Seoul in Bukhansan National Park. Our plan was to go out there with our backpacks, sleeping bags, tent and backpacking cookware and take on the Korean terrain.

Unfortunately, the expedition did not go as planned. In short, we traveled by subway for 4 hours, got to the base of the mountain along with about 1,000 other 50-75 year old athletes, only to find out “no camp”. Bummed and exhausted, we headed back to Cheonan the best/only way we knew: 4 hour subway ride.

Needless to say, Chuseok was a nice break, but probably could have fallen at a time that was more convenient to our planned adventures. Also, the guidebook said we could camp there, but recent mudslides from the summer had other plans for the christening of the Wiley’s new tent.

Week Four: Actually Teaching

By the fourth week we both had gotten the hang of things around our schools and were beginning to learn our students’ names. (More on this later. Sneak peak: Hamburger and Big Boy are two of my 4th graders.)

Lisa picked up two after school classes, one for students and one for teachers. Both of which she enjoys. Nothing new to report, really.

Week Five: Finally, Catan!

We had heard a rumor that there were some people in the program played Catan, but we had yet to meet these people. Finally, in the fifth week of being here we found Catan friends. Four of which we taught the game, two already knew of it. For those unfamiliar, Settlers of Catan is a great game where you try and develop settlements, cities,  and metropolises (among other things) to try and become the lord of Catan. Major nerd alert, but even the most “normal” of folks find it exciting.

Lisa won last week with something I had never seen before, all three metropolises. Pretty incredible.

That’s basically all there is to report from this side of the world for now. I’m sure I will share more stories as they come up and probably expand on more stories as I remember.

Thank you for all of your prayers and support in our time of transition, sorry if we haven’t kept you as updated as you wanted. This will be our primary source of updating everyone, more personal stories available upon request.

-Cameron and Lisa