The last few weeks have been characterized by conversations, studying (midterms), and thinking.

listening to and gaining a better understanding of intercultural differences and conflicts, examining 'Christian' culture and hypocrisy - so many of us wear masks. thinking about community, is it based around a common self-righteousness or common brokenness?
Learning to combat depression by not to carrying my own burdens alone or other's for that matter. It is depressing if we focus on the problems alone and our inability to do anything about them instead of first giving them up to God, Phil 4:5-7 and sharing them with others. It's surprising how we all share so many of the same struggles but dont know until we talk. seeing how community and relationships are key, that's how we're wired. being reminded of basic truths: we need love, God's love, and in turn to share that love with those hurting around us. this is beautiful, fulfilling, and disturbs the natural empty ways of doing life ourselves.
Christianity is not for the pristine, stainless, self-righteous, but addresses the dirt, tears and problems of reality. it's for sick people (mark 2:17). It's an upsidedown kingdom - when we're weak we're strong, through Christ (2 cor 12:9),
Scandalous Grace. Genuine Joy. Hope and Love that lasts, transformation from the inside-out.

Black Day

Korea is great about creating random holidays.

For example, April 14th was Black Day.
To better understand what Black day is you have to back up a few months.
Feb 14 (which we celebrate as Valentines Day) is called Red Day here.
On that day, it's actually the girls who give gifts and food to guys.
Then on March 14, the guys return the favor on White Day.
As you could guess, Black Day is sort of a consolation to those (single) people who didn't get anything.

Noticing a pattern? It just so happens that the 14th of every month is "couple related"
so on Jan 14, couples make scrapbook albums together, May 14 is rose day, etc.

In case you were wondering, Black Day is called "black" because you eat noodles covered with a Black sauce...the ultimate despair food...

Another creative, random holiday is Peppero Day, which pays homage to a famous Korean candy - long, skinny, chocolate coated pretzel sticks. It's no coincidence that it also happens to fall on November eleventh (11-11).
Apparently, on that day, there are packs of peppero sticks hanging from trees everywhere. Bummer that I miss both this day and Feb 14 - no free candy for Luke...

A Time For Tourism

Umbrellas
Originally uploaded by locoluko.

This weekend was a blast.
There was a team of MBA students from Azusa Pacific coming through on an Asian tour. They stopped by my school and I got to hang out with them for the weekend and go with them on their tour of the area. This was a blessing in many ways. One, because since I'm not here with an official 'program' I really haven't gone anywhere on the weekends. And two, it was great to be able to make jokes and laugh with people who understood your culture.

Saturday, we traveled to the ancient city of Gyoung Ju (used to be the largest city in the world about 1500 years ago with 2 million people), got to see temples, the world's largest granite buddah, ancient tombs (over 200 several stories tall hills and preserved against gravediggers because they were ingeniously surrounded spherically by 20ft of rocks) and our day was completed with a trip to the bathhouse/spa.

Let me tell you a little more about that last part. Quite an experience (because us westerners aren't used to the whole being naked in public bath houses thing - men and women in separate rooms of course). The bathhouse/sauna place we went consisted of a number of temperature-regulated pools and sauna rooms. The idea was to go from one extreme temperature pool to the next (ranging from 20'C to 50'C) Interspersed between were trips to different sauna rooms with moist herbal scents. The concept is that by going to the various extreme temperature pools, your pores open up and all the gunk and dead skin cells come out. At the end (like after an hour) you scrub everything off and shower. It's amazing how much dead skin you have. Afterwards we all felt relaxed and smooth.