Post-Christmas and Pre-New Year's

So, today is smack dab in the middle of the two major December Holidays, Christmas, and New Years. In the past, these days have typically been spent in an overall state of relaxation, where I can enjoy myself spending as much time as I want catching up with old friends and chilling out with family. However, this year I am spending these few days no differently than I had been spending them last week, or the week before, or the week before that -- working. Oh the joys!

But enough groaning! :)

I don't actually feel as miserable as you might imagine I would be after you've read the above paragraph. The past month since my last update has been an overall good time for me. :D I spent a lot of my time during the past few weeks shopping for everyone's Christmas presents. I must say that this is the first time that I really put a lot of thought and effort into choosing the gifts I gave people! I'm so proud of myself! hehe Total, including all of the time on the buses and walking and such, I probably spent at least 20 hours searching for the right gifts. :) And it definitely payed off in my opinion~ I am proud to say that everyone really enjoyed the gifts that I gave them, or were at least pleasantly surprised by them. :) To sum this all up: Attempt to practice the Love Language of Gifts -- Huge success!

On December 20th, our church had "Bring a Friend Day" and had a special service for the occasion. I was really happy to have Kevin and Ira come out! I hope that they were blessed by the fellowship and I'm praying that maybe they'll come back again some time. :) The special events after the sermon consisted of the "Everything Skit" (which you can see here) and the Cardboard Testimonies (which you can see here). I nearly cried at the end of the Everything Skit. :*) I know that a lot of people were blessed by the event, and I know that many of the things that happened that day have yet to be revealed!

Next on the timeline is last weekend. Thankfully I had Christmas Day off, so I had a nice three day weekend filled with some good times. :)

Thursday night I spent with Gina, Ira, Sara, and Kevin. We had a mini Secret Santa between the five of us, which actually turned out pretty well. :) I got a Banc Sweater, pencil holder, and a pair of socks from my Secret Santa Gina. (Which, I actually need to go get some time soon, since I left it over at the Jeons' apartment...) Kevin's present for me is my favorite, my new mac keyboard! Its awesomeness is due to the fact that it has the 한글, or Korean characters, on it, so it makes typing in Korean a lot easier for me! I'm so excited to put it to good use in the near future! 아싸~!

I spent all of Friday at a couple church events! This is also when I gave out all of my presents. :)

At around noon we went to an orphanage a couple of the women at church are working at and had what we called the Secret Angels event. We each chose an orphan to buy a gift for and on Friday we gave them a present. Unfortunately for me, the girl I had bought my gift for was not at the orphanage on Friday, so I wasn't able to give my gift to her directly.. A few of the church members performed the Everything Skit for the kids and Pastor Myunghwa gave a short message. Again, I know that many of the girls were blessed at that event. :)

note: Pardon my over use of the smiley! I just can't help it! Reading it seems so boring without them. But I guess that's just my personal preference..

Following that event we went to the AIM (Associated International Ministries) Christmas service. The service is a joint service that is held for all of the English-speaking churches out in Seoul, so there were a good amount of familiar faces there. :) We got there about halfway though the message unfortunately, because we spent a little too much time at the orphanage. Afterwards was a time of joint fellowship, where we ended up loitering for a little too long.. But that is only to be expected. :P

We had dinner at Thai Garden in Itaewon, which, as Thai food goes, was not the best, but was definitely satisfactory. :)

We topped off the evening with a gift exchange, which we had to split off into two groups. From what I heard our group fared a little better with the loot. :) I walked away with this nice organizer. :D

Thank you Jen 누나~! So, all in all, Christmas was awesome!

Finally, on Sunday we had our Leadership Banquet! The banquet was such an awesome idea. :) You might think that it's only something a young church like ours might do, but even if that's true, I think that it is an event that every church needs to have yearly. The evening's purpose was to give honor where honor is due, and I know that all of our leaders were encouraged and blessed by it. Next year I'll be up there for sure~ ;)

Sorry for the long entry! I realize I didn't update very often this month, but I hope to be able to update a little more frequently next month. :) I hope that this delay hasn't stopped any of you from checking my blog! I will update again soon!!

Note to self: Repost blog posts from tumblr account here later.

Brrr...

It is darn cold.

I think it's really amusing that my small group leader at church claims that I am basically him from three years ago. And the funniest part is that usually his comment about that goes something like,

Brady: "Well, I think, if you're like this... which, since you are a younger version of me, is probably the case..."

Me: "Yeah, actually, that pretty much describes me." *laugh*

Brady: "Ok well, from now on I think I'm just going to keep assuming that is the case." *laugh*

It's actually pretty divine that Brady and I were put in the same area of Seoul. Brady has been able to share a lot of wisdom with me, and since we're alike in so many different ways, he's been through a few of my situations and his thoughts are always very appropriate for those situations! I really appreciate Brady a lot. :)

Also, in some exciting news, Kevin, Ira, and Gina (my friends from my building) are coming with me to church this Sunday for Bring a Friend Day!

That is all for now. :) I'm taking out two of the college boys for lunch today, so hopefully that will all go well!

Hmm.. :/

So yesterday I got in trouble at work for being late to class. And unfortunately my gut reaction is to get defensive and make excuses about how it's really not my fault or how it's so unfair, but I regret that now.. I should have just owned up to my mistake, and I should now be trying to fix that problem. Even now I feel like I want to rant about how I'm justified in being late for class, and I could give you at least 5 excuses, but in the end, they're just that: excuses. :/

Whoa, things are totally starting to get revealed and clarified in my head right now. Crazy. Thank you God. :)

Alright! It's time to start... working harder!...? I can't believe that that phrase came out of my mouth.. o O Well, figuratively speaking of course. 'Cause, you know, I'm not really using my mouth right now.

Don't really have anything at the moment?

So today I told myself I would update because I haven't updated in a week, but I'm kinda not in the mood to make a full blog post.. So here are a few thoughts instead.

I'm not going to end up going on that trip I was planning to go on next weekend. I really wasn't at peace about going. It was a combination of a lot of things, and it added up to becoming something I wasn't really 100% comfortable doing. Sorry for the ambiguity, I might have to elaborate later, but this is all for now.

I'm going to do my best to get Christmas presents for people this year! This is something I want to make an effort to change about myself this year! I am really, really bad at getting gifts... I might have to ask my brother for advice or something. Gifts is the weakest of my Love Languages, but for David, I'm pretty sure Gifts is one of the top two on his list. :P

I'd like to publicly congratulate my favorite ex-roommate Sam on being the first to discover, on his own, the play on words in the title of my blog! :) I chose the title (which I have also used as a screen name in some places) for, well, 3 reasons.

1. It's a slightly uncommon phrase, but not so uncommon that people don't know what it means. It's something that might potentially come up in conversation. Example: "Do you know how genetics really effects us?" asked the student, "Because it's really beyond me."
2. As many of you know, my screen name is BeyondAShadow, and it can be taken to be something like, "It's me, Beyond!"
3. And the final and most meaningful reason is the one Sam picked up on, and that is the fact that "It's beyond me" is my confession of the many ways in which I, personally, fall short, but thankfully, God does not. And, in fact, he carries me to places that are "beyond me" were I to do things purely on my own effort. :)

So yeah, now you are all informed. :) I still owe you all the meaning of BeyondAShadow though. It's coming at some point!

This turned out to be a longer entry than I planned...

Sheila called me out for not posting any pictures. I will try my best to post some! But as many of you know, I'm really bad at posting pictures, so no promises...

I'm starting to wish I hadn't published this blog so publicly.. Hahaha I also didn't expect so many people to be checking it! It's not that I don't want people to read my blog, because I do want people reading it! But I used to use my old LiveJournal and Xanga as places where I could just let all of my thoughts and frustrations out. Now that this blog is so public, and considering the sensitive nature of my usual venting, I'm probably not going to use this blog for that purpose haha. It might actually be better this way though. :)

Our favorite coffee shop is playing some extremely obscure Christmas music... Some of it is very strange...

I've been meaning to post up some quotes from that C.S. Lewis book that I'm reading. I will do so in the near future!

I need help with WordPress. Is there anyone who can help me?

It is quite cold.

A little bit wiser

This weekend was really tiring! And strangely enough it wasn't even because I was partying all weekend. (Which I kinda was..)

On Thursday night I had BBQ with my friends from my building, and afterwards we had a great time at this Noraebang (Kareoke in Korean - literally "song room") that we go to. And on Friday I went out with my Korean coworkers for some more BBQ hehe. :D We just had dinner that day though. But it was an interesting night because one of my friends left his car keys at home, so he couldn't get home, and he ended up staying over in my room that night.

But the really tiring part was Saturday, our Thanksgiving Banquet at church. Due to the fact that I recently joined the Service Team at my church, I actually ended up carving the turkeys and ham for most of the evening, which was actually really fun! :) I think it was really refreshing to, to be serving others during the weekend of my birthday. It was definitely a very humbling experience, and I'm glad that I had that opportunity. :) I actually ended up also carving the 2 leftover turkeys we had yesterday (Sunday/my actual birthday) as well. But I think that this has been good practice for me!

I'm actually planning on meeting up with some other people from church this week who want to take me out, so I'm really looking forward to that as well! It's the birthday party that never stops out here for me. :D Thank you everyone once again!

I will post more later. I'm running a little short on time at the moment. :) Goodbye!

23 years!

I just wanted to put this line I just created, because if I don't I'm going to forget it and regret it:

As I've gotten older I realize that, for my birthday it isn't your presents that I want, but your presence. :) So thank you everyone who has celebrated my birthday with me this year! I really love and appreciate your relationships with me far beyond any physical gifts that you could bring to me.

I know. It's super cheesy. :P

Think, think, think... Oh bother...

Eating out is SO cheap in Korea! I just finished doing my budgeting for October, and I only spent about 400,000 won on food! Seriously, whenever I go back to the States, I'm going to miss such cheap food. :(

Uber Fail of the Day: Er.. Well this was actually yesterday.. But the power adapter for my Macbook Pro broke, so I went to Myeong-Dong to get it replaced. However, when I got there, I realized, as the technician was pointing it out to me, that the adapter I had was actually a Macbook adapter, and not a Macbook Pro adapter. So somewhere between me buying my laptop and coming to Korea, my adapter got switched with someone else's, and I ended up with a 60W Macbook adapter. And this adapter isn't covered under my AppleCare.. Soooo.. I had to buy a new one.. For 98,000.. :/ FAIL. It's a good thing I saved so much money!

It looks like the Korean classes I was looking into are going to start in December! Yay! Fluency in Korean, here I come!

If you can spot the reference in the title of this entry, you are awesome. :D

I still need to get that Wordpress stuff going on. Keep me accountable you guys!

I bought myself a new camera lens! It's a 50mm Prime lens, with f/1.4 aperture. I'm going to have fun with this little guy. ;)

This Random Thoughts section that I've created is fun! I don't have to try to worry about keeping my entries very coherent, and I can just talk about everything that has been on my mind!

I had quite the full day today

So, by the grace of God, I woke up at 7:45 this morning. "Why in the world would you do such a thing??" you might ask. You may even go on to say something like, "It was a Saturday for crying out loud! Plus you're the one who sleeps at 3AM most evenings!" Well fear not, you are very very normal. In fact, these were the thoughts that were going through my head as I was going to bed and as I was waking up this morning.

Well all joking aside, I left the house at about 8:15 this morning to go with one of my co-workers, Kevin, and his mother to the Korean Palaces in Gwanghwamun. (I think. If that is incorrect I will come back and edit it.) They were pretty cool. :) I'll be posting pictures up on Facebook some time soon. Though don't hold me to that, because I have a bad track record with uploading pictures. :P I think the most interesting things at the palace were these weird animal statues... You never could really say what kind of an animal a statue was, or if it was an real animal at all. For example, there was one statue that had a pseudo-lion head and a turtle shell... It was rather strange. We goofed around a lot at the palaces too. It was pretty fun!

After the palaces we went to Hoeheyon and Myeong-Dong to try to shop a little. We didn't end up buying anything though. At around 5:00 or so Kevin left to go home, and I stayed in Meyong-Dong a little bit longer since I was planning on going to a prayer meeting for my church at 6:30. I decided to used this time to try to find some stuff off of my shopping list, but I quickly realized that Saturday evenings in Myeong-Dong are much too crowded for my taste. x_x So I only ended up spending about 20 minutes shopping and just went to the prayer meeting early instead.

Since I was there early, I got a chance to talk to some new people as well as some I already knew. I actually ended up seeing John Lee from LWCC there too! It was pretty random. :P I found out that he's been going out to Onnuri, which I was glad to hear!

The prayer meeting was a HUGE blessing for me though. I hadn't worshipped like that in a long time. I hadn't prayed like that in a long time either! I'm really looking forward to service tomorrow! :) I'm actually going to be joining the Service Team for the first time this Sunday too, so it looks like I'm going to be getting up early yet again tomorrow! Hopefully I will not oversleep my alarm!!

Today was a good good day. :) The only downside of today was that I was standing/walking for basically 9-10 hours total... Maybe more... My feet are killing me...

Oh and also, I somehow managed to break my fingernail, pretty far down on my finger too... I just need to make sure it doesn't get worse I guess? Brady suggested I put a fake fingernail on there... -___-

Give thanks to the Lord! For he is GOOD!!

P.S. If the formatting of my blog is hard to read at all, do let me know and I will do my best to alleviate any blog-reading-related-eye-strain. :)

More Thoughts

This coffee shop is also awesome because he plays "The Final Countdown" !!!! "It's not a trick Michael. It's my ILLUSION!"

I wish I could be back in LA right about now. But not for homesick-ness. I wish I could be in 2 places at once. :/

I bought some Korean CDs at a store today. One more step closer to not being a music pirate! :)

I need more winter gear. But unfortunately, going shopping for that gear requires me to go out into the freezing cold, without said gear. It's like a Catch 22. Or something.

I think I need to do something about my posture when I'm doing stuff like eating or using the computer. My back is starting to get sore a lot quicker... Or maybe I'm just noticing it more.

My kids thought I was lying when I told them I was 22 yesterday. One of them thinks I'm like 40! They just have no sense of age... Oh to be young again... -.-

I had something else to say, but I got sidetracked.

It's Monday Again!

It is SOOO COLD. I'm going to have to start turning on the heater in my apartment... Otherwise I might freeze to death...

So I'm still wavering on the whole switching over to Wordpress thing hahaha. I've been preoccupied with a bunch of different things so I haven't been fiddling around with Wordpress at all. And so at the moment it's much more convenient to just use Blogspot.

I feel like I need to be a little bit cleaner around my apartment... But at the same time, I don't have a proper desk or a proper cabinet or even a proper closet, so everything is just disheveled and all over the place... I need to get some furniture. But at the same time, I don't even know if having proper furniture would fix anything haha. Somehow I don't think it would be much better at all, just based on my living habits. I don't know how I'm going to do it whenever I have my own house... haha

Thoughts of the Day

I need to enter my budget info on a more frequent basis once again. I'm getting stressed because I realize I forgot to write down a whole bunch of different purchases.

G-Dragon's new music video is a little freaky... I like his "cute image" much more than his "mean image"...

Gina wants me to throw out a shout out to her. So this is it.

I am hanging around a bunch of sick people, I am so going to get sick...

Interesting Fact #1: My birthday on Thanksgiving?

So I've always wondered whether or not my birthday, November 29th, would ever fall on the day of Thanksgiving, the 4th Thursday of November. I figured it might be possible, because I know it has to be possible for my birthday to fall on a Thursday, and I know the 29th is late enough in the month, but as far as I can remember my birthday has never been on Thanksgiving. So today I was interested/bored enough to do some research on it, and I found this:

November 1990
  S  M Tu  W Th  F  S

              1  2  3

  4  5  6  7  8  9 10

 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

 25 26 27 28 29 30

(taken from http://www.hf.rim.or.jp/~kaji/cal/)

So my the first time my birthday was on a Thursday was in 1990, and since then it's been on Thursday in 2001 and 2007.  And, as you can see, when the 29th falls on a Thursday, it becomes the 5th Saturday of the month.  So it is clear that my birthday will never be on Thanksgiving! However, that's not even the coolest part!  

I wanted to see what the latest date Thanksgiving could possibly fall on, and rather than trying to figure it out (which I realize now is really easy to do...) I did some more research on the dates Thanksgiving will fall on, and I found a site that said Thanksgiving will be on the 28th in 2013. So basically, my birthday is the first day at the end of November that Thanksgiving will never fall on!  God must have planned it this way so that I wouldn't have to have my birthday clash with Thanksgiving. ^__^ I say this because I was supposed to be born earlier, but I stayed in the womb a little longer and came out on the 29th.  Now I know that, if I had been born just a day sooner, my birthday would have been on Thanksgiving eventually!  Kinda cool huh??

Anyway, now that the nerd alert has ended (like 30 minutes later) I have to be going to work!

Blahhhhhg

Ok SO.

Today was extremely frustrating, because I realized this morning that I didn't actually want to start my blog on Blogspot... I actually wanted to start the blog on Wordpress... -____- And I think it's becoming a big enough issue in my mind that if I don't switch over to Wordpress, it's going to bug me for a very long time... It's already been bugging me all morning... At this precise moment I think I'm 75% decided that I'm going to switch over to Wordpress. If I'm going to change at all, it's better to do it in the early stages right?? x_x

In other news, I'm in a coffee shop shop out here that I am really starting to like a lot. :) It's run by this man who has a full beard, that's a little scraggly, and which, for some reason, is like 4 shades more auburn than his hair. He has a CD deck where you can pop in any of a number of CDs he has, which for the most part are burned haha, and he even has a record player set up! The only record he seems to have on hand is a John Denver Greatest Hits record, though, which I'm sure my dad would just love. It also seems like our host is a really big coffee connoisseur too. He's decorated his walls with the empty sacks of various coffee beans and a variety of different coffee makers, french presses and teapots. I really think a lot of you coffee junkies would love this place. :)

Ok so I'm going to try out this Wordpress thing and see if I can get it functioning the way I want it to, and if so I will be switching over. So brace yourselves for the move!

And so I finally set up a blog!

Hello everyone! It's Matt (...or Matty, Matthew, John, John Matthew, or whatever else you might know me by!) and I'm out here in Korea! I've been here for about 2 and a half months now, and it's definitely been quite an experience.

I have quite a list of things that I can potentially blog about, like things about the Korean drinking culture, or about how awesome church has been, or about how teaching is very draining when you are resisting the urge to strangle them, but I will probably have to get to those things at a later point. :) (And the kids as a whole really aren't bad at all, there are just a few of them that just drive me up the wall...)

I'm currently on a break from work for about 45 minutes, and I told myself that I would finally start this blog today, so here I am! Today is Pepero Day (for those of you who aren't in the know!) and I bought 30000 Won worth of Pepero to give out to my students and coworkers. :) That's 48 boxes, which I had to spread through about 80 students @_@... But I think that regardless of how many they each were able to eat, they appreciated it! I think these are some of the more fun parts about teaching. ^_^

*I wonder when my next class starts... hahaha...*

But I guess for those of you who I haven't spoken to since I arrived here, I'm here safe and sound and nothing tremendously dramatic has occurred! Now that I'm here I am starting to really think that maybe I should stay longer than my 1 year. o.O Shocking, I know! I never thought that I would want to stay longer prior to getting here and seeing what Korea is actually like... I think my church has a BIG role in me thinking about staying though. I'll get into it more later, but it's basically a church for Americans, which helps a lot because I can speak English very comfortably. It's a really solid community too, so I'm looking forward to growing with them! I also hope to get something out of it that I'll be able to take back to the States and back to Living Way specifically. :)

I really miss you all~! I have been praying for many of you here and there! Don't forget about me yet~!!

Anyway, I will be off for now! Keep this bookmarked because I'm going to be trying to update it as frequently as Matt-Ko-ly possible! Catch ya later~