Staff Retreat with CCA

So I know I've written 3 posts today, but I actually had time, and wanted to get completely caught up on my blogging. Last week from Sunday to Tuesday we had a staff retreat with all the staff members of CCA. I was as excited as I could possibly be about a school function, but was grateful to be retreating rather than working! I had very little expectations since last years retreat was horrible, but I really hoped that this year would be better. In my review meeting at the end of last year, I had told them about my experience with the retreat being the only English speaker in my room and unable to understand/speak Korean, and they listened! This year, they put all the female English teachers together in 3 rooms. They mixed us all up so that we weren't with anyone from our minis, so that was also exciting because it meant that we got to get to know some English teachers that we might not get a chance to spend time with otherwise.

Day 1: We got there and went straight to a dinner place at the retreat center. Next, we went with our teams and put our stuff in our rooms. As soon as we got settled, we went straight to our first session. Caroline graciously translated for me, so I was able to understand what was going on :) I actually really enjoyed the speaker this year... she was lively and engaging as opposed to the most boring man ever last year. Each session we had worship too. We sang songs in Korean and English. I really love the sound of worship happening in two languages simultaneously. It just reminds me that the Lord is all knowing and so intimate with all his people no matter what language they speak! Then we went to our rooms and got to know each other a bit, and went to bed around 12am.

Day 2: We woke up and had breakfast together (all the teams brought their own groceries with money the school provided us for meals) and then went to the morning session at 9am. Amy translated for me for the rest of the retreat and did an amazing job. After the session it was free time! So I chose to ski, I mean how could I pass that up?? Lift tickets, ski rentals, and pants rental only costed me about $45. It was amazingly cheap fun. I mostly stayed with Caroline who was snowboarding, but we ran into Daniel about halfway, so we stayed together the rest of the day. Daniel encouraged me to do some of the harder slopes, and I actually did it! I was so proud of myself. I think I'm finally becoming a decent skiier (sp?). We saved a really challenging run for last, and I was really nervous. However, I actually managed with ease... I can't say the same for Daniel, he was tumbling down the mountain about halfway through! haha. But he's much more daring than me, always trying a new trick or something. All in all, it was a fantastic day! That night we had another session, and then I hung out in Erin's room until about 2am. Eeek! I was so tired the next day...

Day 3: basically we just had a morning session and then hit the road. We stopped at a super nice rest stop on the way back to Suwon and had lunch there. We got home about 3:30 and I went right to my bed for a 3 hour nap. It was wonderful :)

Here's some pictures from the weekend...
The view from our condo :)

more views from our balcony...

The inside of the chapel we had our sessions in

playing some kind of game to see who could not have any reaction by being flicked in the face... so interesting...

Carolina on the ski lift!

Me on the ski lift!! It was sooo fun!

Daniel putting his board on at the top of the mountain getting ready to go down...

Caroline ready to go down the mountain... this was our favorite run.

Daniel and Caroline on the ski lift going up the mountain...

An easier hill, but it got steep towards the bottom. Still fun though... lots of people fell on this one though because it was the only somewhat beginner coarse, so it was hard to dodge the unpredictable...

At the top of the mountain!

The scary slope part one...

The scary slope part 2...

Woohoo!

I ended up having a really great time, and got to know some more people better. It was nice to see all the staff out of their element and just enjoying themselves. I am SOOO grateful to Amy for translating for me for most of the weekend. It's such a gift to be able to translate simultaneously like that, and she was awesome. It's a really difficult/frustrating feeling to not be able to understand most of the time, and she gave me the greatest gift of being able to understand! God was able to speak to the speaker, then to Amy, then to me. I'm so grateful. I know it must've been really hard to talk for those lengthy 3 hour sessions, so I'm really really appreciative. I learned a lot of things, but the most important one being about acceptance. Basically you never know where people come from or their previous walks of life. All people really want is to be loved and accepted, and God calls us to do just that. I DEFINITELY needed to hear that, so I'm thankful that God used this retreat to teach me.

I'm looking forward to the new year at CCA even if it has been extremely difficult already.

I met all my kids and their moms last week during our kindergarten orientation, and it made it all finally feel real. I'm a homeroom teacher. Same 22 kids all day. I can't wait. Plus, I got all the cutest kids :)

Today is Stephanie's birthday, so HAPPY 21st BIRTHDAY STEPH!

We have Monday off thanks to Korean Indepence Day or something along those lines, so I'm excited for the break. Then the kids come for real on Thursday! AHHHH am I ready??? I hope so!

This is a video of Daniel and Caroline boarding... Daniel is in the brown jacket and Caroline in the bright green. Enjoy!

I hope you all have the most wonderful week! I haven't done any lyrics for a while, so here ya go:

Nothing Left of Me: Joel Engle
(Listen HERE sorry the video is kind of weird... but that was the only one there was)

Your sacrifice is brokenness
A heart that's full of
Tenderness come and break me Lord
To seek You in Your righteousness
To find You in Your holiness
Come and take me Lord

That I could learn to trust You
In every way to love You
Strip away all that remains
for Your glory and Your
Name 'til there's nothing left of me
Burn the kingdoms I have made
that You would shine
And I would fade 'til there's nothing left of me
'til there's nothing left of me

Your Spirit is the only One that can conform me
To Your Son let Him move in me
Your grace is written deep in me
You've signed my heart to purity with Your holy blood

구정 Lunar New Year Adventures

Anthony was very happy to celebrate the Lunar New Year.... I believe this was Friday night at TGIFridays. Yeah, Anthony didn't ask permission to use this hat, all the waitresses were staring at us. It was awesome.

Fast forward to Sunday night. The actual day of New Years. We went for Samgyupsal mostly because it was one of the only places open. I've never seen this kind of dome grill, so I thought I needed a picture.

Kathy wasn't eating, so she served us our food. So nice :)

The other side of the table... Anthony had cold noodles, and Cameron and I ate Samgyupsal. Yummy!

At a place called CanMore or something like that. They have potbingsu... my FAVORITE desert in Korea. And, it's so fun because the chairs are actually swings hanging from the ceiling. Kathy and Anthony were on this side...

And Steph and I swinging happily together on this side...

Cameron got rejected to sit in the swing with us, so he had to sit in a rocking chair on the end. Muahahaha.

Our wonderful treats! They gave us toast and whipped cream. I thought that was so interesting, but it comes complimentary. Holla! The front one is basically a pile of shaved ice, ice cream, cereal, and fruit. Anthony got fresh kiwi juice, and the back one is a fruit potbingsu. YUMMM!

So it was during this meal that we were contemplating what to do on our Monday off the next day. We talked forever with no conclusions, so we came up with a compromise. All five of us would choose one activity they would like to do, and we would spend the whole day doing those activities. So, it was decided like this: Kathy-Ice Skating, Stephanie-Cake Decorating, Cameron-stamp hunting competition(more on this later), Anthony-Boba Tea, and Myself-Karaoke (I hadn't been in Korea in a Lonnnnng time).

And so the adventure began....

We met Monday morning at my house at about 9:30 (without Anthony because he had plans, so had to join us later). So here we are ready to start our day of adventures.

Kathy and Cameron riding on the bus to the ice skating place...

Stephanie and I on the bus to go Ice Skating. This was quite the adventure finding the place. We knew what bus we needed to take, but once we got off the bus we had NO idea where we were going. We walked around for a while, and thankfully Kathy was kind enough to ask someone for directions :)

KATHY'S ACTIVITY:
After we got our helmets. You HAVE to wear them sadly. But Hey we looked really cool right? We even all had a different color! haha...

Cameron and I working our magic on the ice...

Kathy and I during our couples routine, we were amazing.

All the special kids lined up in a row...

After we finished... we were tired already! (Please see the bottom for some very special videos of our ice skating time!) Next, off to decorate cakes!

STEPHANIE'S ACTIVITY:

Step 1: Choose your type of cake. We went with Chocolate with white icing. Kathy and Stephanie waiting while our cake was iced by the professionals... I'm grateful for that or it might have been hidious :)

STEP 2: You can choose all kinds of phrases, words, and pictures to get put on your cake. It's basically just a stencil and they sift cocoa powder over it. So cool.

STEP 3: Choose your decoration icing. We went with chocolate. It was soooo yummy. We might have ate a little out of the bag :)

STEP 4: Start decorating! We took turns making the border with our star shaped tip. It was really really fun.

Cameron getting in touch with his masculine side... haha. He surprisingly did a fantastic job.

Next, we made a border around the Happy Forever with our tubed icing.

STEP 5: We decided to make little people to represent the 5 of us. This was me :)

STEP 6: Put all our little peope on our cake.

STEP 7: Putting chocolate shavings in each star and around the cake...

It was so fun, they have little tweaser type things so you can carefully arrange the chocolate pieces on your cake...

FINAL STEP: Writing our names beside our little people to personalize it.

Steph writing her name next to her mermaid I believe we called it! haha.

Like I said, we might have ate a lot of the tubed Icing... Kathy literally squeezed it into her mouth at one point. It was kind of awesome...

Our final product! It was so cute!!! Kathy did Anthonys, that's why it was the best... such a talented little Korean.

The fabulous cake decorators with our masterpiece. If anyone in Korea is reading this, please go do it!!!! It's SOOOO much fun! It's a perfect date place, and fun place for friends too! For everything, we only spent about $20 bucks, so only $5 each, so it's a really cheap activity! Next, Anthony finally met up with us, so we were off to start Cameron's activity.

CAMERON'S ACTIVITY:
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There's nothing here because Cameron's activity kind of crashed and burned.... Basically, what happened was that one day Alyssia had told them at work about a Stamp Hunt she had gone on previously. It's basically these big Korean stamps that we understood as being hidden all over Suwon Station. So, we decided we would split up boys vs. girls and see who could find the most stamps in an hour. However, much to our dismay, there were no stamps to be found :( So at the cost of Kathy looking so silly asking Koreans about these hidden stamps that in fact were not in Suwon Station, we didn't get to do Cameron's activity. We later found out that they were actually hidden all over Hwaseong Fortress, not Suwon Station. Minor misunderstanding. Nontheless, we had to take a rain check on Cameron's activity!


ANTHONY'S ACTIVITY:

After the searching of the stamps, we were all tired of walking around, so we decided it was the right time to do Anthony's activity, getting boba tea. However, we were unable to find the place we were looking for, and again, after much searching, we settled on another place. This place could quite possibly be the pinkest, laciest, girliest, couplyest place I have ever been too. It was really ridiculous, and quite funny that it ended up being the place we went for Anthony's activity since it was so girly.

Jake joined us, and so him and Anthony sat together since they both still needed to eat lunch. Each table came comlete with a cute little lamp, flowery table cloths, and gaudy chairs.

Kathy and Cameron... as you can see, we even had lace curtains over our table like a canopy... so funny.

The non eaters, only drinkers table... we also ate our cake that we had just made. It was so yummy! I was very surprised since cakes in Korea are usually extremely disappointing.

Oh, and this was a treat that we got to see on our way out of the cafe....

I think this guy (yes it's a boy...) most definitely lost a bet. He was dancing in the street. It was kind of awesome... haha! Now, on to the last activity of the day, Karaoke.

ASHLEY'S ACTIVITY:

Kathy singing 1,2,3,4 by Plain White Tees... such a cute song.. Listen to it HERE.

I don't know what they were singing... but it must of been good for Cameron...

Singing Backstreet Boys I'm pretty sure...


THE END.

To finish up our day, we met up with a friend, Sung, that we met at DBU.

Eating Itallian food... from the left, Sung, Cameron, Me, Stephanie, Jake, and Tones... Kathy was taking the picture.


These last few pictures are just random from Steph and I's adventure to Seoul last Saturday. I just wanted to get caught up on blogging :)

We were excited to take the train home instead of taking the bus back to Suwon, it's a little bit more expensive, but sooo much more comfortable than taking the bus. The people in the train probably thought we were crazy because we were so excited.

About to get on the train....

Woohoo! So fun!

And like I said, these are the videos of ice skating... Enjoy!!!