Liz and I went downtown to hang out for New Year's Eve, and we had a great time. We ended up walking around Seoul by the river since we got there a few hours early. Well, I guess about 6 hours early :) But it was fun to go shopping and have coffee and dinner and such. We were cold, so we stopped into a place to buy hand-warmers, and the man there was really friendly. I think he was bored, so he gave us each some hot tea and we talked for a long time. He was telling us that the handwarmers would last 16 hours, which we thought was just a language misunderstanding on our part, but we bought them anyways, and it was true!! I started mine at 10pm, and they were still warm in the morning after I woke up!!
We went to Jonggak where there is a huge pavilion and bell that used to be rung to tell people the time, but is now rung only for special occasions. After seeing tons of police, but not too many people outside yet, we decided to look around the area, and found a bookstore. Actually, I only know of 3 English bookstore chains in Korea, and this was a new one! It had an absolutely HUGE English selection!!
--sidenote--After talking with my students the day before about not having access to easier Bible versions, I started looking online for some easy, yet sound, Bible versions for very, very beginning English speakers. Turns out, the only one that I saw that looked like it would work is not widely in print anymore. Bummer...
Well, at the bookstore, browsing through the Christian section, I noticed this easy English Bible!! It was pretty expensive, so I was a little disappointed, but Liz pointed out a softcover. I held my breath, checked the back for the price, and it was $3!!! I'm pretty sure someone must have misprinted the price. But I couldn't let something like that get passed up!! So we went to the register, I spoke in Korean a bit, was really smiley, and she didn't say anything about the price! What a great find, and two days later it went to a great home (the Korean student who had told me about wanting to know God more through reading the Bible). To me, that was one of the highlights of the year. What a privilege to give someone access to God's Word in a way that they can understand.
Downtown later that night, there were tons and tons of people. I had forgotten my memory card for the camera in my computer...so no pictures from me from the night. But I'll post a few of Liz's pictures. I took some of them on her camera :)
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