Time to Spare?…Time to Blog…

So with the special edition “Debt Free” blog last time, I didn’t get a chance to tell you about all the other things going on in our life for the time being.

First, yes the many rumors are true; we did get a scooter…two in fact. The first one is a little piece of junk Daelim (Honda) 50cc Tact. It is a nice little light runaround, but I had to have some repairs done on it to make it “road worthy.” For a short, small shopping trip it is great…for anything else, at least for this hefty bro, it is a little too small. That led us to look around for another one. I found a 100cc (102.3cc to be exact) Honda Beat (aka. Lead, SCR100) model that is designed to carry two people. Still a little underpowered, but it gets the job done.

Now you might ask why a scooter. Well, it really is a great way to get around. It is a simple machine that also operates using only a twist of the wrist and a clench of the hand. A motorcycle would be more fun, but to have to deal with the many, many, many, many stops and starts here, it is simply more problem than it is worth. As for being underpowered well I have some solutions for that! Probably not for awhile yet though…and will probably have to be used.

Ok, no motorcycle, but why not a car? Let me tell you! With a scooter, you don’t wait at the traffic lights in back…with the other vehicles. You can—and I think sometimes you are expected to—go all the way to the front of the pack and charge ahead of the cars right before the light turns green. It is also a great way to explore on a budget. It costs about 7,000won (around $5) to fill the tank and that will last for about 250km on that 1.5 gallon fill up.

Here are some pics of the scooters

Second, along with these highly economical means of transportation, we also finished up our level 1 of Korean. It has opened us up so much more to the culture and language surrounding us. This does not mean that we are proficient at all, but I can understand and speak enough now to not seem like a total newbie. Still we get the “I-am-smiling-because-I-can-only-partially-understand-what-in-the-world-you-are-talking-about” looks from the Koreans…still a long way to go.

While we enjoyed our classes, I happy that we are done with the summer classes. While we were only in class 6 hours a week, the amount of time that goes into study for that time was huge! I could easily spend 10-15 hours outside of class just in independent study.

Third, with the end of the one thing, begins the next. We will be starting school within the next couple of weeks and it is about time. =) While we have enjoyed the “time off”, it will be nice to get back into the classroom with the students and fellow teachers. I can honestly say this is probably the first time in my life that I can say that I am excited about going back to work!

Charity is starting to get ready for her new position as a 4th grade teacher. I think certain aspects of her new job make her nervous, but I also think the prospect of working with the younger kids make her very excited.

Tomorrow I will be filling in for one of the teachers at our church at Moongyeong Middle school for a couple days at their Summer English Camp. I am looking forward to it!

Well, as always…

More to come…

WE ARE DEBT FREE!!!!

 

I know that this should be a “all things Korea(n)” blog, but I can’t help making this announcement.

 

Last week on Wed. I submitted the last payment of about $3,500 to Sallie Mae thereby fulfilling that last of Charity’s school bill only a year and two weeks from being married.  To say that Charity and I were ecstatic would quite the understatement! 

 

However, in the midst of my elation, I was struck with the fact that Charity and I have had a painless move into debt free land was really a testament to our circumstances, families and planning.  As a testament to our God and to His goodness to us this post is dedicated to this journey.

 

First we’ll start with Daniel. 

So I could begin my story with my family very early on.  My parents took the time to give me a good education at home and push me to accept the challenge of college.  From K5 to 12th grade and a little beyond, my parent taught me at home.  This may seem a little strange to talk about my earlier education but my being able to go to college hinged on the support of so many people.  Now my parents were willing to not only encourage me to go, but financially supported me in my endeavors. 

 

Our family has a long history with BJU and as a third generation student (still thanks to correspondence!) I had quite the example in those that had gone before me. 

 

When I graduated from high school, I spent the next 18 month working and saving for college.  I had been saving before the end of high school, but then I devoted myself to saving for college.  Even with a good job and living at home rent free (again thanks to my parents for putting their money where their mouth is and proving what they believed) I was only able to save about a year’s worth of college.

 

When my money ran out, my dad was their to catch me financially and kept me out of debt.  I know the sacrifice that was involved in that, I don’t know that I can totally imagine the amount of work involved in it.  It meant that he was working his regular 40 hours a week and then working on the “gutter truck” for the rest of the week.  I am not sure that he even recognizes the 5 day work week.  In the following two summers I worked my heart out to pay for college but sum total, I doubt I paid more than half of my school bill if that. 

 

Upon graduation, I stood on that stage in front of all those people and I owed that school absolutely no money.  Yet my parents took it upon themselves to get a loan and they paid it off.  I reaped the benefits of their sacrifice. 

 

But, to say that it stopped there would also be an understatement.  After meeting Charity at school and realizing that I was hopelessly in love with this sweet girl, I also realized that I needed to get busy about taking care of her and getting ready for our eventual wedding.  Once again, I was back home and again living rent free. 

 

I would be remiss if I didn’t say that I did get a really nice job.  Free health and dental along with a fair amount of other benefits and a suitable paycheck provided me with great savings potential.  However, it was when the company sent me to Toronto, Canada that I could really start saving.  Between the per diem they gave me and the taking care of all the expenses there that I could basically save all my money from my regular paychecks and had saved something like $6K by the time I finally came back home.

 

For another full year, I saved and starting using that savings for certain…necessities.  After paying for a car, a diamond ring and some other items, I still had a substantial savings.

 

I would need it too.  Because the girl I was marrying would come out of school in May of 2008 with around $23,000 worth of school debt.  I don’t want to steal all of Charity’s thunder in her section, but I will say that she worked hard to get it down to about $22,000 by the time we were married on July 5th, 2008.

 

We went back home to Kansas City to start setting up our lives there.  Till we found a place to live, Mr. Rehn kindly let us stay at his beautiful house in Blue Springs.  Again, with the stipulation that I would keep the property up and work around the house, I wouldn’t pay any rent. 

 

By the way, if you are reading this and cannot see the hand of a gracious God, then I have to wonder if your eyes are open!

 

We then went looking for houses.  Two things bothered me though.  The first was my watching our little savings dwindle slowly but surely towards nil.  You see, I wasn’t making an exorbitant amount of money, but it didn’t seem like it was going to be enough to get over the school bill financial hump. 

 

God had a plan though, because I never would have thought of doing it, but the opportunity to come here to Korea to teach came up and we started considering it.  Two weeks after that, we had the applications filled out and the acceptance to come. 

 

Right before we left for Korea, I put the last of the savings we had on one of the school bills on a credit card thereby paying it off.  We left the USA with about $15K still to go.

 

The Lord truly blessed here in Korea though.  Between school, summer school, tutoring, low cost of living and a bit of denying ourselves, we put the last of our debt baggage on the “Goodbye Forever” express and at the point of writing this are completely in the “black”. 

 

So, if you were paying close attention, you will see that we went from almost $23K to $0 on the debt meter in about a year.  My encouragement to anyone else is that there is a way to do it and you can be completely debt free.  It may take a little time and it may not be the most pleasant life for awhile, but it can be done. 

 

More than all of that though, it is important that God get the glory for this.  Some people could look at it and say that it is a bunch of “favorable circumstances” but I will tell you that this was providentially set up before I was.

WE ARE DEBT FREE!!!

 

Now for Charity’s part:

Now for my turn to explain how I managed to accumulate so much debt.  Honestly though, its was very little debt compared to what I could have stacked up. 

 

From the time I was of working age (I think that was age 14 – yeah for babysitting jobs!), I knew that I would have to pay my own way through school (when you are one of ten, this is kind of a given).  I had older siblings that managed to convince me that the best thing to do would be to save every penny I made in high school for college, and that is basically what I did. 

 

Two of my sisters sat out a year after high school graduation to work to save for college, just as Daniel did, but I decided to take a leap of faith and try to make it through at least a year of college on my high school savings.   Miraculously I made it through the first semester without getting a loan with the help of a 25 hour work schedule.  The second semester was when I had to get my first loan.  Every semester after that took a miracle to get back to school, but somehow I made it back every semester until the first semester of my junior year.

 

I took that semester to take some correspondence classes, work full time and take a class at a community college. I was determined to graduate on time despite missing a semester of college. 

 

Once again miraculously I made it back to school and graduated on time!  So many times i have wondered how this was possible because we are talking around $60K to go to school, and I graduated with $23Kish debt, so that is around $47K that was paid off by working summers and Christmas break (it just doesn’t make sense in my mind, so I have to just label it a miracle).  I did have a help along the way with some anonymous gifts put toward my school bill, as well as 2 grant/scholarships.  Also, part of my school debt was sitting on a 0% APR credit card my last semester that my Dad was paying the monthly payments on until I graduated.  My mom also saved up her “tutoring money” and helped me pay for my school books.  Still, when you add up all of this, I am still amazed at how much was paid off by my senior year. 

 

I’m even more amazed at how quickly we were able to pay the balance off as Daniel mentioned.  All I can say is that miracles do happen, and prayer changes things!

 

Well that is all for now.  As always…

 

More to come…

I Could Keep Apologizing…

…for my long absences from these postings, but I think I will simply post and be done with it!

As I was thinking of writing this post, I was struck with the concept of how much Charity and I have changed in the last 6 months.

They say that so much changes in your first year of marriage. Let’s see how true that is. I am writing the first rough draft of this post as we head to 속조 (Soekcho being the best translation), a little city on the eastern coast of Korea. The specter of Seoul shrouded in the mid-morning fog mutes and blurs the sharpness of the building lines as we slowly leave it behind.

I sit next to my traveling companion and best friend. She sits quietly, sweetly listening to her iPod and passively soaking in yet another hundred new sights a minute. My biggest blessing is in human female form.

What’s more I sit in a wonderful seat. The seats on this bus are ample, comfortable and—compared to those in the US—worth three times the price we paid of 20,000 won (about $17). I will say that the seats are quite necessary as the roads are nothing to speak of…

How have things changed, you may ask. Thanks for your question. First—and most obviously—I am winding my way through mountains 7,500 miles from the Lower 48. I am constantly surrounded by a spoken and written language which I only understand the most basic, rudimentary aspects of…forget speaking fluently!

Second, I am in a new job which is both challenging and wonderful. However, teaching is completely different from the Financial Services industry I was in only about 6 months ago.

Third, I have been eating food that I would have never thought to even try. What is more, some foods that I didn’t enjoy at home, I now find myself yearning and craving. We were invited to Chinese food by one of the students last week. As strange dish after dish was placed before us, I hesitated several times. Amazingly though, the food, although foreign to my taste-buds, was a delicious and wonderful experience.

I guess fourth would be the addition of a dog to our duo. She barks in Korean so I really have no idea what she is saying. Also we have to put 김치(Kimchi) on her dog food or she won’t eat it… In all seriousness, Mia has become Charity’s favorite new distraction. I have never seen a person go from “dogs are gross” to “ISN’T SHE THE CUTEST THING EVER!!!." *Gross!*

All this and more has changed since we have been here. But I won’t lie, there are times when I thought “Are we crazy?” and “What are we doing here"?” I also would be ready and willing to admit that our lives have become both harder and easier in different ways. There are moments when I desperately want to be home among those I know and love. Times when I think of SSBC back home and long for that local assembly. Then there are times on holidays that I really wish I were home.

On a separate note, Charity and I have been plugging away at the Korean Language classes (한국어 for those who can read it). Both of us wish we could speak as well as we are starting to understand and write. To give you an idea of some of out complications, let me bring a small dawn of light on some of our struggles. The most confusing aspect to date has been the number system. In order from 0-10 is 공, 하나, 둘, 셋, 넷, 다섯, 여섯, 일곱, 여덟, 아홉, 열 in the native Korean system. The problem is there is a use of the Chinese system as follows: 공, 일, 이, 삼, 사, 오, 욕, 칠, 구, 십. Now don’t worry about the pronunciation, the simple fact that the numbers have different symbols will tell you that they sound differently. The native Korean is used to count things like meals and other small things. The Chinese numbers are used to count money amounts and phone numbers to name a few uses.

Here is where it gets confusing! To say 3:33 (a time) you have to say 세시(시 meaning “Hours”) 삼십삼분 (분 meaning minutes). So for those that have taken the time to read this far, you can see that there is a use of one number system for the hours and another for minutes. Let me just say: “AAAAAAAaaaaahhhhhhh!”

Well, there is more to say, but it will have to wait…

More to come…

저는 단 이에요…

…But you already knew that didn’t you? 

 

I know that it has been a long time since I dropped my meager ripple in the information super-puddle, but I am back, if only for a mist-like moment.

 

Lets do a little math.  During the school year there are 8 hours of on site work.  Most of the time is devoted to teaching or preparation for teaching.  My role is very heavily laden with in between class questions, grading and teaching.  Interestingly enough, I also seemed to be taking a lot of my work home in the form of grading.  By my calculations I spend 8 hours at work per day plus perhaps another 30 minutes a night for a total of 42.5 hours of work a week. 

 

Fast forward to the last two weeks.  I spend 4-6 hours a day at school with perhaps an hour or two per week for preparation.  So lets say 26 hours—about half that of the normal school week—and then add to that 6 hours of class plus study time and that still puts me about 10 hours a week less time than during the normal school year. 

 

Mathematically, I should have more free time, but somehow I have been feeling busier than ever before.

 

By the way, the title of this post is “I am Dan.” “저는” means I.  “단” is literally Dan as it is easier than saying Daw-nee-ael.  The nearest approximation of “이에요” has a basic meaning of “is” or “am.”  So the literal translation is actually “I Dan am.” S DO V.

I think the sad part of the above is the length of time it took me to memorize how to say that as well to write it correctly.  I am a loooong way from using this language correctly!

 

Well, there is little else at this point to say other than we would love to hear from you!

 

More to come…

A New Feature!!!

If you look to the top right on the blog page or the left hand side on my Facebook page, you can simply click on this box:


and start typing IMs to me when you can see I am connected.

Thought it would be another good way to stay in touch!