Thursday, February 26, 2009

home . . .

so sorry it's taken a while to update -- it's been busy!

here is a quick recap and we will give more details about each thing in soon to be published posts

1: last week was english camp. a select 34 students were chosen from my all-boys high school to take full days worth of different types of english classes for the whole week. it was a lot of fun!

2: the english camp lasted monday through saturday, there was an overnight friday night where there was a cooking competition, ski(r)ts, and singing

3: right after camp we had to attend orientation in another city. school begins here in march, so at the beginning of the school year they have an orientation for all new teachers. since we didn't attend an orientation we attended this one. lots of fun, many pictures, will update fully later

4: the orientation lasted until tuesday around noon, then we got home and started back to work on wednesday, where we only have 3 days to prepare for the upcoming new year. craziness. but on our way back to sokcho it got me thinking about home

home . . .

its a very interesting term. you hear a lot of times that a house is a house until someone makes it a home. the bible uses the terminology of us being a temple for God to dwell in, and kind of makes the same kind of statement when it states we aren't who we need to be until God dwells in us, also just like a home needs people in it to be a home, a building needs people to be The Church.

this term "home" has been really tough to get a handle on here in Sokcho. when we first arrived, we lived in a hotel for a week or so and knew that was temporary. when we got to the hotel room after work there wasn't a sense of calm when we went through the door.

then we moved in to an apartment. we did not choose the apartment, we didn't choose any of the furniture. the only things we brought with us were our clothes, computers and that's pretty much it.

it has been very hard to to make our apartment our home for two reasons:

1: we don't know how long we are going to be staying here in Sokcho (no esl teacher really knows!) and

2: it's hard to make a place your home when it's other people's stuff in it.

we tried to get past this feeling by rearranging some of the furniture, and getting some pictures from home. this had a really good effect on Tova. she really felt that it was becoming our home. it has been a big goal of ours to try to make it feel like home. but i still haven't had the sense that it was home

last weekend we had the aforementioned english camp followed by orientation in another city. we left our apartment friday morning and didn't return until tuesday afternoon. we've never spent a night outside of our apartment since we moved in. i was really antsy to get home because there were a lot of things to do at the apartment. i felt a tug to go home just to get things done, nothing else.

the strangest thing happened though on the bus ride home . . . as i was looking out the window as we entered Sokcho i saw the "skyline" of Sokcho, anchored by the expo tower and its weird sibling brother. i had this sense come over me that was almost like when i saw the skyline of chicago while driving from madison, or when i saw the dames point bridge driving back to jacksonville.

it hit me HARD. was/is sokcho becoming my "home"? am i feeling so comfortable here that my body feels relaxed when i see its skyline? i am still trying to comprehend these thoughts. there is/was a part of me that felt like this would never feel like "home" because i knew that it would be temporary. there was a part of me that felt like nothing so foreign (literally,figuratively, every sense of the term!) could even come close to resembling "home" but i guess in some way it feels like home.

when i got off the bus and realized where we were in the city it felt . . . right. and when i opened the apartment door it really felt like i was back "home".

someway, somehow over the past couple of months this little korean city has grabbed a piece of my heart and has claimed it all for its own. it's made me feel comfortable, it's made me feel like i can call it home.

that got me thinking about how we are supposed to feel here on earth as Christians. the Bible says as Christians we aren't supposed to feel like this (earth) is our home, we aren't supposed to get comfortable cause this really isn't home, we're moving soon, and in the end God has some pretty cool digs for us to move in to, and a Real place to really call home, and plant some roots cause we wont be moving for quite a while! (i took my own personal liberties with the exegisis, sorry) there is a pull within us that says "this is good, but there's something better" "just wait, cause 'you ain't seen nothin' yet' "

that's kind of how i am viewing Sokcho as a home now. yes it is home, but i know it isn't. i feel comfortable and all that, but i know that there is something more for me. for the time being i will love this little town and enjoy everything about it, til God calls me to another home.


now, this doesn't mean that i am staying forever, and will never leave. all i am saying is that i don't feel totally like a foreigner here. i feel somewhat accepted as part of my cities community, and i feel like i can come home, and everything will be ok. now, all i need is Charlie to great me at the door, some good arroz y gondules with extra salchichon (i know i butchered the spelling) to smell up the apartment (in a good way), that would be the final touches to home :-)

4 comments:

  1. Quite poetic. I almost felt like I was experiencing it personally. We are "aliens in a strange land." But one day . . .

    Peace
    Dad

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  2. You encapsulized, so beautifully, this particular stage in you and Tova's life, and the effect is is having on you both. And yet, even through the many changes and with the always present concerns, questions and fears which we all experience in this, our temporary home, I felt blessed to understand and touched by your expressions of deep and abiding faith in God's promise of our Heavenly Home. Thank you for sharing your innermost thoughts.

    As always, love, hugs and prayers,

    Gramma D.

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  3. Great post! I get that feeling when I see the Chicago skyline now too, and it's my new home.

    I find it so funny that moving furniture helped Tova feel more connected to the apartment. It reminded me of all the late night re-arranging we did on 3BE!

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  4. Glad it's starting to feel like home! I have a friend/current grad student who's been hired to teach at Saemmul school (a suburb of Seoul, I believe) this summer for about 4 weeks. Do you have any advice I can/should pass on to him? He's had a Korean 'daughter' (home stay student) for about 4 years and so he knows some of the language and culture but I imagine there are unique things to learn while there...

    --Emily H.

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