Spring Planting

Well, I'm back in Iowa for the summer amidst the corn fields and bean fields. Seeing these fields is making me think about the rice paddies in Korea, which reminds me that I haven't shared how they plant the rice.

First, they start by preparing the fields. This, as you might imagine, it includes plowing. The only difference between plowing fields in Korea and in Iowa is the size of the machine that they use. All farm machinery and equipment is smaller in Korea.

Once all the fields are plowed, it is time to flood the fields. While it is common knowledge that rice is grown in standing water, it may not be common knowledge that the rice is not planted until after the fields have already been flooded. Even after the fields have been flooded, the farmers still do more plowing to get the soil ready before they actually plant the rice.

Now it is finally time to plant the rice. However, they don't plant seeds. They plant seedlings. The rice plants have already started to grow before they are planted. The rice plants start growing inside a greenhouse or elsewhere off site before they are transplanted to the fields. They then use a special machine which takes the blocks of rice plants, separates them, and then plants them individually in the fields. The process is quite fascinating to watch.

And basically, that's it. Planting the rice in the water helps with pests and weeds. Over the next several months the plants will continue to grow. When I get back to Korea in August, the rice will be tall enough so that you will longer be able to see the water in the rice paddies, even though it is still there.

Spring

Whew! It has been a very busy spring. I'm sorry I haven't posted a blog update since spring break, but with my many responsibilities and the end of the school year, I simply haven't had time. Let's see if I can go back and remember everything that has happened since April.

I took on a new position at Mission Baptist Church. I became the person in charge of Kids Quest. Kids Quest is a program for kindergarten through fifth graders during the main worship service. Before that time, I been helping is a small group leader, but the person who was leading needed to step into different responsibilities. I felt God calling me to step up and take over the ministry and be the one in charge. As a result, I had to prepare a lesson each week based on the main sermon topic, and I had to prepare games and activities and coordinate volunteers. It was definitely a lot of work. The program is still going on this summer, but in a little different format since I will not be in Korea.

Throughout April and into May, I continued to work on preparing for the school's spring musical. One of the classes I was teaching this semester was drama, so I was therefore the director of the musical. I worked alongside the music teacher (naturally) on My Fair Lady. Most of the cast consisted of the drama and choir classes; however, some other students helped us out as well. In the end, we had a total of 30 students helping us, which is three quarters of the ninth through 12th graders. That's a lot of kids!

At the end of April, we started after school rehearsals once soccer season was over. Previously, we had only been able to practice during our class time because students were at soccer practice after school. But once soccer season was over, we were able to start practicing for two hours after school three times a week. That's when my schedule really got crazy. Between school, the musical, and Kids Quest, I had no time for anything else. Not to mention that this is all happening in May, which any teacher can tell you is the busiest month of the year.

Eventually, the date of the play came. Because we do not have any facilities of our own, we had to rent a theater in Pyeongtaek. Because we were renting a theater, we were not able to get in there until the day of the play. Yikes! That means we were not able to finalize sets, finalize prop placement, finalize some blocking (where the characters stand on stage and how they move), finalize lights and sound, or entrances and exits until the day of the play. Because of our limited practice time, it was also the first time that we were going to be able to run through the musical from start to finish. This was especially a big deal because we had to figure out how we were moving things around on stage and how the timing of set changes was all going to work. Let's just say it was crazy, insane, very stressful day. Oh, did I also mention exhausting? I pushed the kids really hard that day. I had been pushing them really hard for a month with all our extra practices. I had been pushing myself really hard for month, and I definitely pushed myself on that day. Let's just say I didn't sit down very much that day; I was always running around making sure everything was taking care.

But they did it! My Fair Lady was a smashing success! The kids simply did a fantastic job. All of their hard work paid off. I am very proud of all that they accomplished with the production this year.

I don't have the video of the musical to share. It ended up being almost 3 hours long, and so we may not be able to put it online this year. But, I should have the video on DVD that I will be bringing back with me this summer. If you really want to see it, just let me know when you can borrow it. In the meantime, here are a few pictures from the play.















Once the play was over, it was just normal end of the school year stuff. You know, graduation, finals, cleaning up classroom, stuff like that. But school is over now for the summer and I finally get a chance to relax and take a bit of a break. To that end, I am heading to Busan tomorrow with my roommates to spend a few days sightseeing and hanging out at the beach. We get back on Wednesday, which will give me a couple days to pack up before I head back to the States on Friday.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, the rice has been planted. But more about that another blog post.