OSU-PNU 2006

these are some shots taken at today's fellowship group, which met at edwin's apartment this week. last sunday we met in the middle school near the church, which is the usual venue for the group. however, when we met there last sunday, it was just so hot that edwin, one of the co-leaders (pictured in the yellow t-shirt and jeans in the photo above) asked me if i thought we should have the group at his place today. i responded with an emphatic yes! in fact, if we had the group at the middle school today, i was thinking not to go just because of how hot it was last week. actually, despite the heat, meeting at the middle school last week was interesting. upon entering the school, we had to remove our shoes and carry them to the 5th floor, which is where all the groups meet. each group takes one of the classrooms and we sit at the students' desks. it gave me a feel for what a korean middle school is like and reminded me somewhat of my middle school days. after we spread the word about the change in venue, we piled in people's cars and taxis and headed over to edwin's place. edwin was born in korea when he was four and then went to the states with his parents when they immigrated at this time. now he's back in korea working as a project manager for nike, working on men's running footwear and gear. today he showed me the newest technology for running that his team is currently working on. it's a kind of joint project with apple ipods, where two devices that track the distance, speed, etc. of a runner can be inserted into the end of an ipod nano and the other underneath the pad of one of the runner's shoes. the nano also has power songs that help get the runner going and then the influence this has on the runner's performance is displayed on the ipod nano screen. it's pretty amazing. edwin lives in a really nice apartment complex near haeundae beach. his apartment is on the 29th floor, and he has a great view of the ocean. the a/c was on when we got there, so it was much better for our meeting than last week. we talked about the passage from john 15 on the fruit and the vine and had a pretty interesting discussion. jill (pictured above right), who has a bachelor's and master's degree in theology from a university in scotland, which is where she's from, had some interesting thoughts on the passage, which she freely shared. this is one of my favorite passages because of the number of times "abide in me" is mentioned and the prepositional usage (not "by" or "around" but "in"). i guess only a language instructor would see this. ;) prior to starting our discussion, we ordered nang myun (spicy cold noodles, which is a dish eaten in summer because it's cold, although i don't really get why it's also spicy. doesn't that defeat the purpose of it being cold?!?) that was delivered about the time we were finishing up. it was really nice not to have to leave the air-conditioned apartment for lunch. afterwards, edwin asked if we wanted ice cream and went to baskin-robbins to get four different kinds. michael, the other co-leader of the group, from nigeria, was planning to go to the orphanage to play with the kids today and asked if anyone was interested in going. i considered it, but it has just been so hot and the orphanage doesn't have a/c, so i decided not to go today. it turns out there were others in the group who also weren't interested in going today because of the heat. last week we thought about taking the kids to the beach, but when we were there last week, it looked like the social workers at the orphanage take them to the beach quite often. so because of this and the heat, we decided not to take them.