A Quick Update

Dear Friends,

It has been a very full week and a half. I can hardly believe that that much time has already passed. This has been a good place to spend time. Living here is a far cry from living alone, as I have these last two years, and I’m enjoying the company of over fifty squirmy, laughing kids.

We’re kept to a pretty rigorous schedule here, though. Raising at 5:45. Breakfast of kimchee and rice. Teaching, walking kids to school, and watching babies in the morning. Just before a lunch of kimchee and rice, I usually manage to squeeze in a ten minute shower. If one can say ‘shower’ of crouching on the bathroom floor, and using a little scoop to pour water over oneself from a bucket. We have a little bit of free time in the afternoon, and after that more teaching. Then dinner of guess what. Yup, kimchee and rice. Bed time is around 10:30, at which time we roll out our thin mats on the linoleum floor, hang up our mosquito nets, and sleep like the dead until the morning sunlight streaming in the windows wakes us to another day.

It’s really not as bad as it sounds, though, when one has grown accustomed. I really enjoy being with the kids, so except for the language barrier (which still exists…will I ever be fluent?), spending time with them is more relaxing than it is stressful. And, aside from rising with the sun, I don’t mind having a rigid schedule. I think that it has helped me to adjust more quickly than I would have, had I been left to myself.

I get Friday evenings and Sundays off. I would probably stick around here and kick my feet up, if there was a place to do that. But the only places to sit are on small, plastic chairs, or the linoleum floor. So on Friday evenings I slip a book into my purse and hike (we live part way up a mountain) to a coffee shop. And on Sunday, after church, I take a bus to the house of a friend who’s gone all day, and crash on the couch.

The dorm where I’m living also houses eight high school girls and the dorm mom. I share a room with another summer volunteer, a Korean American girl named Ye-Kyung. She and I get along well, and have become friends very quickly. Perhaps that’s inevitable to two people thrust simultaneously into the same unfamiliar environment.

I have to take off to teach another class. But I’m glad that I got the time to fill you all in a little bit on where I am and what I’m doing. I hope to be able to write again soon. Meanwhile, all my love,
Elisabeth