Entries Tagged 'Cross-Cultural Experience' ↓

Finally, we got to eat some Korean food today. While we had planned to try out Korean food in the last several months at Kimchi Korean Restaurant in State College, PA, we never made it.

Today was our first real experience with Korean food. Because we tasted some bad Kimchi at a Chinese restaurant in Chattanooga a few months ago, we weren’t really sure what was going to happen today. As it turned out, we really enjoyed a large variety of Korean food that we had for lunch.

We spent much of the day today with a Korean family (part of The Holy Flames Methodist Church that we’re connecting with for our cross-cultural experience). They took us to Insadong (a popular shopping district in Seoul), and to lunch at a Korean restaurant.

At the restaurant, we tried out a lot of different kinds of Korean food, including two kinds of Kimchi — traditional (which is very spicy) and a mild version (BTW, if you saw the photo of the pots in Joleen’s post on the Korean Folk Village, those pots are used to prepare Kimchi). We also had Bulgogi, another important Korean dish.

For the main course, we had Bibimbap, another popular Korean dish (we forgot to take a picture of it, but on the way out of the restaurant, we took a photo of a large model of Bibimbap). We also had several side dishes including dried seaweed and Korean pancakes (not to be confused with American pancakes). We completed our meal with a really good cup of plum juice. Again, we enjoyed everything.

We’ve also been trying out different kinds of Korean candy, which tends not to be overly sweet like much of the candy we are used to in the States. We’ve enjoyed all of it as well. The peanut candy (pictured here) is very good and reminds us of Planters Peanut Bars, but much softer.

I think my favorite is the rice candy (see the short sticks in the photo). Their sorta like taffy — but crunchy at first, then slightly chewy, with a mild taste. Another rice candy (pictured here) is very light and fluffy. And yet another rice candy (not pictured here) that we sampled at Insadong today was very soft. As you may have guessed, rice is an essential part of Korean food, including desserts.

Since we ate a big lunch, we walked to Dono Studio this evening and tried a couple of donuts (which we split). Donut shops have become very popular in Seoul. From what we’ve read, Dunkin Donuts has been very successful in Korea. The donut with the green powder is a green tea donut, which was more interesting than anything, and the coconut/strawberry donut was very good.

The next few days look to be pretty busy. We’ll be spending most of the day tomorrow (Sunday) in multiple worship services. Our time with church folks will also include two meals.

I’m not sure how much more, if anything, we’ll say about food, but you’ll definitely want check back in the next few days for a report on our time with the Korean family today, a report on our Sunday experience, and of course, a report on our first visit with our baby on Monday morning!

In an environment where so much is new, there’s a lot of stuff to process. Each morning, I’ve been waking up very early (Korea Time), thinking about our experience here. After a while, I finally get up and write.

We’ve been sharing some observations and impressions about the culture here, including our challenges with the culture. We want to make something very clear as we continue to reflect on our experience with the Korean culture, particularly as we report on our challenges — we are *not* making judgments on the Korean culture. We are simply trying to share and process what we’re learning and discovering.

This morning, I woke up thinking about a word that I learned somewhere along the way: ethnocentric, which basically means being centered on one’s own ethnic group or culture, to the point of viewing other cultures/ethnic groups through one’s own culture/worldview.

Taken to an extreme, ethnocentricity leads one to believe that his or her own culture/ethnic group is superior to others. Because of that, ethnocentricity is perhaps one of the things at the root of racism (among all the other isms).

While the command, “Thou shalt not be ethnocentric,” does not appear in the Scriptures in those exact words, the concept is there, I believe. Jesus instructed his followers to …

go and make disciples of all the nations (Matthew 28.19).

The Greek word Matthew recorded for “nations” is ethnos, which is where the English word “ethnic” comes from. Jesus sent his church to build an international community of people from all ethnic groups and cultures because “God loved the world so much” (John 3.16).

It would be a real twist of the Scriptures to limit Jesus’ instruction, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” to those who are part of your own culture/ethnic group.

Overcoming ethnocentricity, though, may take discipline to intentionally be open-minded about other cultures/ethnic groups, and to not be so centered on your own world. In order to learn from others, we must be as objective as possible, because it is impossible to learn and be close-minded at the same time.

So, on that note, we want to encourage you to read all of our observations about the Korean culture as simply that, our observations. We trust that our observations will be an opportunity for others to learn about the Korean culture, not necessarily to make judgments about it.

So, for example, when we talk about how difficult it is for us to find stuff, our point is not to say that they’re system is dumb or that it doesn’t work or that it needs fixing or that it’s not as good as ours; we’re simply saying that it is hard for us to find stuff because we are used to another system. We could just as easily talk about the difficulty some communities in the US, and particularly in PA, have had relinquishing the old “rural route” system.

We must make the most of our opportunities to learn from other cultures. After all, those of us who are Christ-followers expect to spend eternity together. John’s vision of eternity includes this description …

I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. (Revelation 7.9)

Learning about other cultures can be a real opportunity to expand our world. If you believe that humankind is created in the image of God, then doesn’t it make sense that learning more about other people/cultures gives us a greater glimpse of God?

Earlier, I wrote about some of our first impressions of the culture here in Seoul. Here are a couple more …

Seoul is a safe city. Seoul, with its population of 10.3 million people, is the 5th largest city in the world. Even so, it has a very low crime rate. AsainInfo.com says, “Seoul is known to be one of the safest places to travel in with its low crime rate.” Of course, while no place is completely safe, the U.S. Department of State also reports that Seoul has a low crime rate.

It looks like you don’t have to say, “Excuse me,” here. Every culture has its own social interaction rules. Yesterday, I held the door open for a young couple that was behind us (as I would normally do) and, gaging by the look on their faces, they didn’t know what to think.

But the most obvious thing we’ve noticed is that people bump into each other all the time and don’t say anything (BTW, Joleen discovered this in Manilla, Philippines nearly 20 years ago). We’re used to people saying, “Excuse me,” or “I’m sorry,” when they bump into people. Of course, because we don’t speak Korean, we really wouldn’t know what they said, but I don’t think they say anything. It’s simply part of the culture. It’s actually kind of cool — you can run into people anytime and not feel bad about it.

I now realize why a fight didn’t break out at the Incheon Airport in Seoul as we were heading out to find our bus to our drop-off point. A young woman, driving a luggage cart, bumped the foot of another young woman in front of her, who was also pushing a luggage cart. Ouch!

They hardly even flinched. The woman that I expected to be injured just looked down at her foot to see what happened, as she kept going forward. The woman who bumped the other woman, backed off a little, but neither of them said anything or even looked at each other.

Speaking of reckless driving, we could make an observation about the driving in Seoul, but I think reckless driving is pretty universal, especially in major cities.)

I’m sure we’ll continue to make other observations about the culture here. And in the coming days, we should be able to experience the culture of part of the Church here. We’re looking forward to that, and to what we will learn from them!

Today we ventured out a bit and visited the Korean Folk Village in Suwon. To get there, we had to catch a bus, which meant figuring out how Seoul’s bus transportation system works.

The trick was finding the right bus stop and getting on the right bus. The directions we found online stated …

From Exit No. 6 of Gangnam Subway Station [...] take City Express Bus No. [...] 5000-1 and get off at Korean Folk Village (30-40 minute ride).

No problem so far. However, we realized too late that we should have asked about return directions. We assumed it would be the same bus number and we would pick it up at the same place. Wrong! We attempted to get on one bus and the driver (who didn’t seem to speak English) pointed us across the street; fortunately, a passenger yelled out the bus number we needed.

We have found, ever since we arrived at the airport in Seoul, that people are very eager to help. Also, at two different times at the Folk Village today, elementary-school-aged girls waved to us and said, “Hello.” I think they were proud to use a bit of English.

Again, it was very cold today. I wouldn’t normally venture out in this kind of weather at home for four hours. But we did today, along with many Koreans. The village, which is mostly outdoors, consists of homes representing various economic classes from the past. There were a few museums, which helped us step inside and try to get warm along the way.

We were curious to see how The World Folklore Museum portrayed the USA and, not surprisingly, there were cowboys and Indians. Really just one cowboy and mostly American Indian artifacts. Also included was some information about the Eskimo.

We are safely back at our room and happy that the heater is pouring out warm air — it took a few hours last night until the air warmed.

We would have liked to have tried the food, but we chose not to eat at the Folk Village. People sat cross-legged, with their shoes off, on wooden platforms. That would have been okay inside, but not outside in below-freezing temperatures.

We opted for some rice candy, which is sorta like hard taffy (which we enjoyed), and another sweet rice snack that we haven’t tried yet. We may get a chance to experience Korean food tomorrow.

The Korean Folk Village was a very busy place today because of the Lunar New Year celebration. All in all, it was good to experience a bit of the Korean culture.

Yesterday, when we first ventured out onto the streets of Seoul, there were not too many people on the sidewalks, due to the Lunar New Year holiday. Many shops and businesses were closed, which made eating a bit of a challenge!

We went for a walk to find breakfast and to get something to drink (we hadn’t drank anything since we were on the airplanes, which have a dehydrating effect anyway; we don’t like to drink tap water anywhere unless we know it’s safe).

Out on the streets, we didn’t find a lot of options, except that there are a lot of coffee shops in Seoul, including many Starbucks (Starbucks Korea) cafes, where a cup of coffee costs ₩ 3,500 (Korean currency is the won), which, like in the US, is pretty expensive. We stopped there for a while and sat in the sunshine (through the windows) and got warm. Joleen warmed herself up with a cup of coffee while I had a cup of iced tea (I know, it doesn’t make sense, but I don’t do coffee; I’ve started drinking iced green tea, which I should get to do a good bit here; I figure if Joleen can have an addiction, so can I. Actually, we picked up a couple green tea yogurts at a convenience store yesterday but haven’t tried them yet).

For our afternoon meal, we went to Outback Steakhouse, another familiar place (although we don’t really eat there much in the States). We wanted to go to the Hard Rock Cafe in Seoul, but its cafe has not opened yet (according to the website, the Rock Shop recently opened in January 2008 but the cafe is “temporarily closed”). We noticed that the customers at Outback were all young people, which makes us wonder if the Western influences are not as well received among the older generations (just a hunch).

Other “familiar places” we’ve seen so far include McDonald’s, Burger King, KFC, 7-Eleven, Pizza Hut, and Domino’s Pizza (and perhaps others). Outside of Pizza Hut we saw several red motorcycles/scooters that were used for delivery. Oddly enough, a motorcycle passed by us later that was a delivery vehicle for McDonald’s! We thought that was funny.

As more of the local shops begin to reopen after the holidays, we’ll get more of a taste of the local Korean food, and experience more of the unfamiliar places in Seoul.

Our first post from Korea marked the first 30 Hours of our trip to Korea, from the time we got up at home till the time we arrived in our room at the guest house. So, after our first 30 hours in Seoul, here are some of my first impressions …

Seoul is a modern city. I enjoyed riding the bus into Seoul when we first arrived (after my nap during much of the hour-long trip from the airport to our drop-off point). Seoul reminded me of New York City, in terms of the buildings and the bright lights (I want to get some photos). On our first day here, I was impressed with with the city, at least in the small section of the city we covered by foot today.

Communication is a challenge. We had received conflicting information before we arrived regarding the use of English in Seoul — some said English was fairly common while others said they had trouble finding people who could communicate with them in English. In our brief experience so far, communication has been a challenge for us, especially when we’ve needed directions (more on that in a moment). But we’ve managed pretty well so far (in many ways, it’s a good experience!).

It’s cold! Many people told us it would be cold here. In our research, we discovered that actual temperatures are actually pretty close to what we’re used to in PA. However, it *feels* colder! We walked a lot today — to find breakfast, to see the city, and later, to find an afternoon meal. Each time, our faces hurt. Click here to see the current weather conditions and forecast for Seoul.

It’s hard to find stuff! At first we thought it was us, but after we had a hard time finding Outback steakhouse, we came back to our room and searched online about how to find addresses in Seoul. We discovered there’s no easy system for finding addresses. Addresses sometimes include a number (but it has no connection with the numbers of the surrounding buildings and the number may not even be on the building), there may be a street name (I think), but usually the section of town is given (e.g. Gangnam-gu where “gu” is the section). Next, it gets narrowed down to the neighborhood (e.g. Apgujeong-dong where “dong” is the neighborhood). Apparently, there are 25 gu and 522 dong.Sometimes a landmark is included (e.g. directions to Outback included that a McDonald’s was nearby; although we eventually found the Outback, we never found the McDonald’s!). Well, at least now we know it wasn’t just us!

Internet access has been a huge help! I mentioned searching for help with finding addresses. We’ve used the internet to find out how to get to places (like the Korean Folk Village just outside of Seoul, where we plan to spend most of today). A great resource is the Korea Tourism Organization’s website, Tour2Korea.com.This research includes learning how to use Seoul’s extensive subway and bus transportation systems (we’ll probably say more about transportation later, especially if we get lost!). And it’s great way to keep in touch with friends and family!

We’ve enjoyed our first 30 hours in Seoul!

We will meet Ethan on Monday!

As we arrived inside the Guest House last evening we were given a letter from Ethan’s caseworker informing us that we’ll meet our baby Monday morning (when the SWS office reopens after the long Lunar New Year holiday celebrations). That was welcome news after we completed our 30-hour journey. He is the purpose that we have traveled half-way around the world.

Soon our wait will come to an end. One of the first questions I asked in January 2007 when we began this process, was “How long?” We were told about a year, and it has been probably close to 12.5 months.

I think the hardest wait of all has been the time since we got the call Tuesday, January 29 that Ethan was ready for travel. I was ready to jump on the plane right then and there. We got word from our caseworker at Adoption Horizons and immediately following was a call from AIAA saying that she forgot to tell our caseworker that this week is the Lunar New Year and the offices would be closed. That sent us for a tailspin.

We couldn’t leave immediately, before the holiday, because we needed to set up our cross-cultural experience. Setting up the cross-cultural experience took a few days with the time difference, as we and Rev. Jun exchanged emails.

We are finally here in Seoul. We have our itinerary set. And we are still waiting. But I’d rather be waiting in Seoul than in PA. We will make the best of enjoying the special events during the New Year holiday, probably a once-in-a-lifetime experience. But all will pale in comparison to finally meeting our son on Monday morning.

We’re in Korea! In fact, we’ve just finished a marathon day, so the following thumbnail sketch may not be as good as it could be. This long post (the result of a marathon day) is really a series of shorts posts in one.

State College to Detroit
On Tuesday morning, we got up at 2:45 (Eastern Time) on about 3 hours of sleep (thanks to lots of last-minute baby prep, not the least of which was installing a car seat for Ethan’s car ride home). We drove to State College to board a plane scheduled for a 6:10 am takeoff. As it turns out, it was a good thing that we arrived early.

One of the things we needed to do at the State College Airport was get a paper ticket (as opposed to our e-tickets) printed for Ethan. We discovered at the University Park Airport that Northwest Airlines did not code his ticket correctly when we made our reservations. Thanks to Irene at the Northwest ticket check-in for her persistence on the phone, even before the appropriate offices opened for the day, in getting this corrected before we left State College (otherwise, we would have been trying to get this fixed in Seoul before returning home).

Our first flight was short — about an hour, through heavy fog and, as we later learned, over some thunderstorms (which explained the ride!). We had a long 4+ hour layover in Detroit. But we made the most of that time by walking, talking, and relaxing.

Detroit to Tokyo
This was the long flight. Unfortunately, the long 13-hour flight turned into a 14-hour flight. It was a good flight overall (on Northwest’s largest aircraft) but we landed in heavy rain and turbulence. It wasn’t too bad, but we, apparently, circled the airport a few times before actually landing.

I’ve never flown more than 5 hours on one flight so I was concerned about the length. It really wasn’t too bad. I think I dozed off once or twice; Joleen probably did a little better. Otherwise, we passed the time reading, watching a couple movies; I listened to Sara Groves (including multiple listenings of “When the Saints” — see my earlier post on songs for leaders) and a sermon by Andy Stanley on my iPod.

One of the real highlights of this trip was seeing the Northwest Territories in Canada and Alaska, particularly the mountains there, which were completely snow covered (BTW, our route from Detroit to Tokyo went northwest through Canada and Alaska before turning southwest toward Tokyo).

Even with the longer-than-expected flight, we still had an hour and a half layover in Tokyo for one final connection.

Tokyo to Seoul
Fortunately, the last leg of the trip only took a couple hours. We arrived at the gate around 9:00 pm local time (7:00 am, Eastern Time).

In all, nearly 25 hours had elapsed from the first wheels up to the last wheels down. And with all time before and after the flights, it was at least a 30-hour day.

Finding the SWS Guest House
Imagine landing in a foreign country where your language is not the predominant language. Imagine taking a shuttle bus from the airport and getting dropped off somewhere in the middle of Seoul (around 10:45 pm), an international city of 10 million people, and trying to find your place to stay with not-the-clearest directions (BTW, the shuttle buses drop people off at various hotels. We were told to take the bus to a nearby hotel and follow the map to the Guest House). Our attempts didn’t work out too well. Add to all of that the fact that we were exhausted and that it was bitterly cold.

Fortunately, we found a police station and one of the police officers spoke English well enough to help us. He looked at a map on the wall, then loaded our luggage in a police car and took us to the SWS Hospital. That wasn’t the right place, but he made a call on his cell phone, then walked next door where we found the SWS Guest House.

But not only did he take us there, he repeatedly rang the doorbell and banged on the door and yanked on the door until the night guard on duty came to let us in. We can’t tell you how grateful we are for this officer!

Well, I’m finishing this post at 12:10 pm (Eastern Time), but it feels more like Korea time — 2:10 am! We’ll try to get some much-needed rest tonight and then get out and enjoy the Lunar New Year tomorrow here in Korea.

As I said in my last post, we will both try to post stories and reports over the next several days. We’d like to post photos (and maybe even some video) but the computer in our guest room doesn’t has a USB drive that’s easily accessible (there *may* be one on the back, but it would be very hard to get to). If we run across a PC Bang (especially the free one at the Korea National Tourism Organization), we might try to post them from our USB card reader; otherwise, we’ll wait till we get back home.

Thanks for your prayers over the last several days … as well as those in the next several days!

Our itinerary is finally coming together. We will fly to Korea on Tuesday (2/5) and will return on Thursday of the following week (2/14).

That’s a day earlier than we were planning to go, but due to the holidays, we were not able to book a flight on 2/6 — we either had to go 2/5 or wait till 2/9. We decided to move it up a day!

It has taken us a few days to get our travel arrangements together, but we finally purchased our plane tickets through Northwest Airlines, using their using their adoption fares. Actually, the rate really wasn’t any better than what we could have gotten online (a good site that searches a number of flight search sites at once is kayak.com). But because we needed to to customize our flight arrangements (i.e. return with a baby), we needed to call the airline directly.

Unfortunately, our lodging is still up in the air, though. We hope to find out on Monday if our request to stay at the “guest house” (available for families adopting children) has been granted. If it’s not available, we’ll need to make other last-minute (and more expensive) arrangements.

Part of our challenge this week has been coordinating our visit with Rev. Jun, with whom we will be working on our cross-cultural experience. But we believe we have that schedule pretty well completed as well.

We are scheduled to arrive in Seoul, Korea on Wednesday night (Korea time). We will have Thursday through Saturday on our own — seeing the sites, experiencing the Lunar New Year holidays. On Sunday, we will worship with Rev. Jun and Flame Methodist Church. We expect to meet our son on Monday and spend a few hours with him at his foster family’s home.

Tuesday and Wednesday will be devoted mostly to our cross-cultural experience, and possibly hitting some shops that were closed during the holidays. Then, we will return on Thursday with our baby in our arms.

Well, that’s the plan. It certainly looks to be an adventurous time!

As part of our Doctor of Ministry program at Asbury, we are required to complete a cross-cultural experience. We plan to complete our cross-cultural experience in Korea (when we go to pick up our baby).

Thanks to our bishop, Bishop Jane Allen Middleton, for putting us in contact with Bishop Jeremiah Park (bishop of NY area), originally from Jae-Chun, Korea, who put us in contact with a friend of his, Rev. Yong Jai Jun, in Korea.

Rev. Jun is the senior pastor of Flame Methodist Church in Sung Nam City, near Seoul. Bishop Park describes Flame Methodist Church as one of the most vibrant Methodist churches in Korea. We are in the process of coordinating our cross-cultural experience with Rev. Jun.

We look forward to seeing and participating in the work of the church while in Korea. We are somewhat aware of our Westernized Christianity, and we pray that God will give us a glimpse of a part of himself that we are currently unaware as we observe another part of the body of Christ. We pray that God will deepen our spiritual walks as well as our leadership in his Church!

So, we’ll go to Korea for two purposes: 1) to pick up our baby boy, and 2) to experience as much of the culture, including the church culture, as we can while we’re there. We will post lots of reflection and photos here about our experience in Korea, and we invite you to experience the Korean culture with us by reading along.

God continues to work out all the details regarding our adoption and doctor of ministry journeys. We are so grateful!