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Published: October 10th 2007
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The Second School
Central Christian Academy Suwon Seoul South Korea Well hello everyone,
Sorry I haven't written in a few days, we've been super busy. Monday we visted two schools and were given excellent tours. It was amazing and I have a ton of pictures to show everyone. The first school was 1st grue tade through 6th grade and it was a public school. There were 840 students attending, however, everything was surprisingly organized. They have 36 students to a class and the classes are split into two... 18 students on one side being taught in English and then the other 18 were being taught in Korean. The length of time in class is 80 minutes at a time. Their school day starts at 8:00am and ends at 4:00pm. After that many of the children will catch a bus and go to another school which ends about 8 or 9pm!!! The school year begins in March and goes until January! The admissions process was litterally just luck of the draw. When enrollment opens the will have about 450 students/parents show for each grade!! The students stay in the auditorium while the parents go to get in line. Next the parents one by one have to pull a ball out of a
big bowl and if the color is blue they are enrolled, if the color is green then they do not get in!!! I was astonished. The students were all wonderfully behaved and I could tell the teachers really tried to make the students have fun during the day knowing that they would have to get onto another bus and go to a school which really isn't fun. The teachers were a wide variety of nationalities including Austrailian, Canadian, American, and of course Korean.
The next school that we went to was a private Christian school located about an hour away from this last school. Driving up I was amazed by the beauty of the area. The school is offset from the busy streets up a long drive. We met with Pastor Joseph Kim who had been able to bring 18 of his students to our school for a performance about 6 months ago. Pastor Kim was so nice and so educated, well spoken, kind, and you could see how the students were also drawn to him. We again had a wonderful tour of the school and we were able to take pictures with the children. They were all so
The Whole Group
Me, Gwen, Mary, Mike, Justin, Eun Mee, Pastor Kim, & Kevin (Pastor Kim's Assistant) excited to see us. The school is beautiful, it had a huge swimming pool, hot tub, and smaller childrens pool with which for 1 hour a week the children are able to swim and that will give them credits for PE. The kids seemed to love it! Pastor Kim also has a very loving approach to disabled children. Mixed throughout the classrooms there were children with different levels of disabilities ranging from mild forms of autisum to severely mental and emotional cases. There are only two Learning differences teachers for the students, however, the regular teachers will work with the LD teachers and when it comes time to take a little extra time with those LD kids they would work on the same thing as in the regular class but just with a little one on one with the kids. It was amazing. Pastor Kim said that we are all God's children and that it is discrimitory to say that children with Learning differences should not be aloud to come to his school. Just hearing him say that gave me goose bumps.
After the tour we went and sat in their coffee house, where normally the mothers of the students
The group & the parents
Here's everyone from the parents meeting and our group. would meet to pray and study the bible. We were offered coffee and home made pies. YUM!!! There we sat and talked for another hour or so and Pastor Kim told us how the school was started. The founder of the school Rev. Billy Kim was a "house boy" for the American GI's during the Korean War. Sergeant Carl Powers, an elementary school teacher, took Billy to the United States and gave hijm an opportunity for a Christian Education. Mr. Yeager and small band of Christian leaders formed Christian Service Inc. to send Billy and his wife Trudy to Korea as the organization's missionaries. Rev. Billy Kim and Trudy dedicated themselves to ministry in Korea from 1959. Billy achieved worldwide fame after he interpreted for Billy Graham. He served as the president of Baptist World Alliance during 2000-2005. On May 1994 the school officially opened with 700 students in its first building. Since then the school has been able to build another building with the help of the local church and now has over 1200 students!!! WOW huh!
After leaving Pastor Kim's we had to hurry back to Seoul to meet with our International Parents for a traditional Korean
Buddha
Inside of the main palace in Insdong dinner. The parents were all so nice and wonderful. Sitting next to me was a mother who I could not understand at all but she showed me what to do with all of the dishes that were coming out. I tried a lot of things that I normally would not have tried. I ate raw fish, smelled the eel that came out but could not force myself to try it. There was seaweed soup, GIANT shrimp with the eyes still attached! I think one even winked at me, pumpkin soup, minno's (little tiny dried fish)... I think you're getting the idea. :o) I tried to eat what I could but at the end of the night I really had wished that I hadn't done that... I got sick! Really sick! :o( But the whole experience was wonderful and we took lots of pictures with the parents to take home to their children. It was really a nice day.
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