Handong Community

One of the wonderful aspects of living on campus at Handong University is the campus community.  I've written before about the students and their love for music, but here is a bit about the faculty families on campus.  It is very much like Mayberry RFD.  You see your neighbors everyday and socialize together on a regular basis.  Almost everything, somehow, ends up involving a meal with all sorts of homemade goodies to share.  Susan came down with a cold a day or two ago.  The kids and I went over to another professor's family apartment for dinner and a meeting with  students who participated in the Cambodian Law and Development project we were part of during the Winter break.  The neighbors across the hall had heard that Susan was ill with the flu and packed up some homemade bread, sea salt and tea to help speed along Susan's recovery.  A few minutes ago a student dropped off some Vitamin Water with extra "C" along with some Korean radishes.  Although these were prompted by Susan being under the weather, it is a common occurrence for someone to drop by with some sort of delicious treat, just because they were thinking of us and happened to be walking by.  I continue to marvel at the freedom we can allow the kids on campus.  I've mentioned before that we often don't see the kids until dinner time, and then only in the form of a telephone call asking if they can stay longer at whatever they are doing.  Being a college campus, there is much more of a transitional nature to our community.  Students graduate, Professors come and go, families move, but through it all there is a vibrant aspect to the process.  You always wonder who will pop up next, and from what part of the world.  Just this week Mary helped welcome a girl her age to the campus from Iowa who's father is a professor.  Mary now has a new friend with a delightful sense of humor.  Her Dad is the one who's shoes I "stole" during our Christmas potluck a couple of months ago.  Yesterday we were joined for dinner by a visiting professor from Washington D.C. who is the president of a chapter of the Christian Legal Society.  Instead of Narnia's "Winter but never Christmas" during the reign of the evil queen, we seem to enjoy Christmas all year long.  Because this is a large and vibrant campus, there is always a lot going on.  Still, we have learned to pace ourselves and enjoy the experiences each day brings to our doorstep.

A New School Year

Unlike the US, the Korean school system is tied to the calendar year.  This means that college freshmen start their classes around the first of March and end their year in early December.  Handong University is buzzing over the anticipation of this year's entering class.  Before classes start, the university faculty retreat takes place.  In Korea, a retreat is a bit different than retreats in the US.  Here the focus is on the faculty simply being together.  This means a schedule that can run from 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 at night.  A well known pastor is invited to provide a series of sermons to offset some of the more mundane campus business that is conducted.  Refreshments are brought in and meals are served at the dining hall adjacent to the large chapel where the faculty meet.  I've mentioned in earlier blogs the Korean love for music and singing.  Students seldom have events without singing and the faculty is the same.  It is a delight to hear the collective voices of faculty members enthusiastically singing wonderful old hymns of the faith.  One of my favorites at this year's retreat was "I Know Whom I Have Believed".  The lyrics have such a wonderful contrast between those things we don't know and what we do know based on our faith in Christ.  There is so much truth in these old hymns.  This year our conference speaker was Pastor Park Eun-Jo of The Pangyo/Grace Saemmul Church in Seoul, Korea.  Imagine my surprise when he spoke about his daughter who graduated from HILS and is in California studying for the bar exam.  Could that be Jennifer Park who was one of two delightful young women from HILS who we hosted in our Anaheim home for a few days shortly before we moved to Korea?  Yes, and I was able to have a wonderful visit with Pastor Park.  I continue to be amazed with the people we meet that are part of God's kingdom.  On Monday I will meet my new students for the Spring semester.  As President Kim at Handong Global University is fond of saying, "God is Good, All the Time!"  On a sadder note, Daniel, Mary and Robert are also back to homeschooling after the deliciously long Korean winter break from school.  Most good things do seem to inevitably come to an end.

Happy Korean New Year!

Today started the three day Korean New Years celebration which is a major national holiday.  If you're like me, this seemed a bit odd for February.  This wasn't the first time I'd encountered different days for New Years in Asia.  The Laos New Year is celebrated in April.  Why all the different dates?  I knew some dates corresponded to Buddhist traditions, but that didn't seem to explain the Korean celebration in February.  This sent me to Google where I learned that Korea tied it's New Year celebration to the second full moon after winter's solstice (Lunar New Year).  A little more research took me back in time to the Justinian calendar and the movement towards the Gregorian calendar that competed with other ancient calendaring systems which often contained religious significance.  Ouch! My head!

The bottom line is that January 1st is treated as the International New Year based on the Gregorian calendar (originally determined by the Catholic Church in the 16th century in an effort to keep the timing of Easter consistent from year to year and adopted by the British Empire in the 1750s) and is widely recognized among most nations today to keep things understandable in navigation and commerce.  Still, many nations, based on their culture and history have separate New Year celebrations that are still honored by holidays in their countries.  In Asia, New Years celebrations are usually marked by family gatherings, traditional foods, possible ancestral worship and sometimes religious observances (washing the Buddha and adorning them in some countries.)  In Laos it is celebrated, in part, by dumping water and flour on each other and complete strangers as an encouragement for the rains to come during monsoon season.

We plan on celebrating Korean New Year's tonight by setting off some old fashioned bottle rockets and fireworks at the beach.  The fireworks came from the Jukdo Indoor/outdoor market in Pohang where you can find just about anything.  We selected the beach because it seems a safe place to set off bottle rockets.  As near as I can determine, fireworks are perfectly legal to set off In Korea so long as you use a bit of common sense.  However, I'm told another professor's family was surprised while setting off fireworks at the beach when they were surrounded by a Korean military patrol in full battle gear out on maneuvers. 

We just got back from the successful launch of our sky rockets at Bukbu Beach.  Lighting the fuses was a bit of a challenge in the freezing cold winds.  It took three butane lighters to get the job done.  Once again I saw a new side to Susan who enjoyed lighting of the rockets as much as the kids.  Susan is busy preparing a stew for after church tomorrow with the new Marine friends as the kids and I watch Leave It To Beaver.  Tomorrow she'll discover the sand we dragged in from the beach and onto her clean floors (and still another load of dirty clothes.)  That poor saintly woman!

Happy Korean New Year from the Chinn family.

Home Sweet Home!

Thu, February 7, 2013 11:06:20 AM

All the travel was fun, but there is always a sense of happiness when you arrive home.  Our last night in Bangkok was spent at a hotel which we selected because they had a pool.  They allowed us early check in (the night train from the Laos border arrived at 8:30 a.m.) and also late check out the next day.  There were sights we hadn't seen in Bangkok, but we wanted a place where the kids could spend their time in a pool before returning to the Korean winter.  After lots of pool time, we headed off to the airport the next day around 4:00 p.m. to wait for our flight that left at 2 a.m. the following morning.  That is a long time to wait at an airport and it didn't help that the flight was delayed an extra hour.  Of course the kids were all sound asleep by the time we boarded the plane.

Korea now feels like our home and we are all glad to be back.  Arriving home was particularly exciting because of the changes while we were away.  Our apartment no longer seems so sterile with the arrival of new (to us) furniture from the moving sale of another professor's family returning to the states before debarking on another mission to another part of Asia.  We now have couches that aren't built just off the ground, a bed that actually has a soft mattress (unheard of in Korea from our experience - here the mattresses are little more than boards with some padding on top.  Particularly exciting was the arrival of drawers, cabinets and shelves that give us places to put things and the loan of a dining room table we can all sit around for meals.  The finishing touch was a used room air conditioner (called "air con" in this part of the world) that will make things so much more comfortable when summer and the monsoon season arrive.

Yesterday Susan and I took off for Costco to replenish the pantry with food supplies.  It was the first trip driving on our own to Daegu about an hour away.  I was a little nervous about finding the Costco.  We only had to stop once for directions and were delighted on a successful mission.  The freezer is now stuffed with corn dogs and chicken nuggets for Robert, our picky eater who also has a fresh supply of peanut butter.  We also laid in a supply of hamburger for a group of students coming over tonight for dinner.

Susan is hip deep in laundry and I'm off to the office to prepare for next semester's classes.  The kids are happy to see all their friends and catch up on all that happened while we were away.  It is good to be home!

Last Day in Laos

Sadly we left Laos yesterday leaving a sizable bit of our hearts behind. Special memories include riding elephants across a broad and deep river and feeding the gentle beasts afterwards. Robert and Daniel each chose to ride their elephant just behind the ears, clinging to the neck with their legs just as a mahout would do.  The kids loved the elephants, one of which was 14 months pregnant (only 8 more months to go!) There are world class waterfalls in Laos. We visited the Kuang Si Falls near Luang Prabang which are a series of falls each cascading into aqua blue pools below, many of which you could swim in as little fish "massaged" your feet. Actually they are nibbling and sucking on your dried and flacky skin. Soon the whole family was immersed in two of these pools in this exotic tropical setting where the water was cold and refreshing and the kids could jump over one of the falls into the pool below. We reluctantly left to catch a sunset cruise in a small boat on the Mekong River where we could see villagers growing crops on the sandbars now that the river was lower during the dry season. Looking to the 30-40 foot cliffs on both sides, we could see far above us the high water marks left by the river during the wet monsoon season. We motored upstream and then drifted with the current while we nibbled on snacks and refreshments (not dried skin) in perhaps one of the most peaceful and relaxing moments on our trip. We had the best of hosts.  Our friends made us feel right at home and took us everywhere to experience the beauty, culture and, best of all, the gentle and loving Lao people. On our last night, just to make sure we were totally hooked, they took us to an all you can eat Korean BBQ where they provided both a grill at your table and a staffed grill busily preparing Korean marinated boneless ribs and scallion pancakes for a total cost per person of only $4.00!! It would have been easily $30.00+ per person in Korea. I couldn't help but notice the hoards of Korean tourists brought in by tour buses with the same cravings we had. Before boarding our overnight sleeper train the next day we managed to eat more cold watermelon, fried bananas and fried chicken with homemade fries that could put KFC out of business. As we waived good bye, our sadness was lessened somewhat by a strong feeling we would be back.