The Roberts in Korea

Band KAIAC

Becca plays alto saxophone in the middle school band.  She has been sitting in the first chair position for most of this year.  Earlier in the year she tried out for the Korean-American Interscholastic Activities Conference (KAIAC) Honor Band and....she made it! 

So, last Monday she boarded a bus with 13 other middle schoolers and went to Seoul Foreign School to participate in the Band KAIAC Festival.  She didn't go alone-her dad, the vice principal, went along as a chaperone.  Along with the middle schoolers there were over twenty high-school students involved in the Band KAIAC Festival.

The band students spent the day practicing the Festival music under the direction of the guest conductor and at 3:30 p.m. the day was culminated with a concert by the four KAIAC bands.  It was a great concert and a wonderful event for Becca to be involved in.

It was a long day as the bus left TCIS at 6:00 a.m. and didn't arrive back home until 9:00 p.m. at night.  The event was a real privilege for Becca to be involved in and well worth the time expended.  We are proud of Becca.

Doctor Fish

The Men’s Retreat this past weekend was held in a large hotel/convention center in Mokcheon, South Korea.  Located near the hotel was a large aquatic center that featured, water slides, swimming pools, wave pools, hot tubs and……............ Doctor Fish.

In the center of the complex there was an area that featured two tubs of doctor fish.  For a small fee people could sit on the edge of the tubs and let the doctor fish nibble at their feet.  Sounds freaky doesn’t it?  It was.

Doctor fish are little freshwater fish that feed off of the dead skin cells of people.  They only eat the dead skin and they leave the clean healthy skin.  Doctor fish are used to help people that deal with psoriasis and other skin diseases and they are popular at health spas because they leave otherwise rough skin looking clean and smooth.

A bunch of the guys from the retreat converged on the aquatic center and took the plunge into the Doctor Fish pool.  It was a weird experience.  It just didn’t feel right to “let” a fish nibble on my toes.  I wanted to jerk away, but didn’t.  At times there were scores of fish nibbling away at my feet at one time.  It didn’t hurt, it felt like the prickles that you feel when your foot is waking up after having fallen asleep.

The Doctor Fish did their job.  All of the dead skin and calluses were gone after the fish got through.  It was an interesting experience.

Men's Retreat

This past weekend Ryan attended the TCIS Men's Retreat.  Actually, Ryan co-directed the retreat and had the privilege to speak in two of the three services and lead music and worship in all three services.

The theme of the weekend was, "We are the Clay."  God is the potter and we are the clay--what kind of clay are we?  It was a great time to consider-are we too hard, too soft or just right for God to form us into useful and beautiful vessels for Him?

The retreat was rather low key--the way a retreat is supposed to be.  We all left on Saturday morning for Mokcheon-a city that is about an hour North of Daejeon.  The retreat was held at a hotel/conference center.  We rented rooms in the hotel and used one of their medium sized rooms for a meeting place.  Next to the hotel is a type of an amusement park that featured a great indoor aquatic center, some cool carnival rides and a snow hill.

After our first session and lunch on Saturday many of the guys hit the slopes of the snow sledding hill.  The snow hill was covered with man-made snow and lots of people.  It was a steep hill so the men's retreat participants engaged in a bit of racing.  It was a lot of fun.

After sledding lots of the guys went to the aquatic center.  It was a great place filled with pools, rivers, water slides, and.....Dr. Fish.  Lots of the guys went to the Doctor (fish) and came home with smooth feet.  Stay tuned for an upcoming blog post on Dr. Fish.

Saturday evening, after dinner and the second service, many of the guys gathered in the lobby of the hotel to watch a big soccer game on TV between Korea and Japan.  It was fun to watch the Korean guys really get into the game.  Soccer is serious business in this part of the world.

Sunday's activities included: breakfast, a worship service, lunch and then everybody loaded the bus and headed for home.  It was a wonderful retreat and a great memory of South Korea.

Blog Book

We have turned our blog into a book!  A couple of months ago we noticed an advertisement on our blog provider about being able to download a blog into a book so we looked into it. The program is blurb.com

It is amazing.  We downloaded our first year of Korea into a book.  The book program that we used retained all of the pictures, blog posts and comments from our blog.  We adjusted the page layouts and picture sizes a bit--we chose the page colors and designs and then put together the cover and 170 pages later... we have a full size book of our adventures here in South Korea from August 1, 2006 to July 31, 2007. 

It is a keeper.  Sure beats scrapbooking!

Whew!

These have been and still are some busy days here in South Korea--busy days, but good days.  Just as we all finished the numerous "Becca" birthday parties we found ourselves in the midst of many more "life" activities. 

First, we were involved in the previously blogged about "30 Hour Famine."  That was a fun time but it involved lots of activity, very little food and even less sleep.  We all crashed for quite a few hours after the Famine event.

Becca and Sarah have been busy with homework each evening and on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons after school they are playing/practicing on the Middle School volleyball teams.  Both Becca and Sarah are on the same team.  Yay!  (That will make it easy to go and watch them compete in the upcoming jamboree/tournaments in Seoul.)

Dina is keeping busy at school, working on teaching units and she is actually taking an on-line Reading class in an effort to do some learning and to keep her Idaho teaching credential current. 

Work for Ryan is keeping him hopping and he is currently finishing up a class on Wesleyan Theology that is taking up any "extra" time that he might have.  This weekend Ryan is headed to Mokcheon (about an hour away from Daejeon) to co-lead the TCIS Men's Retreat.  The event will involve many men from TCIS, three worship services, sleeping on the floor "Korean Style" and....Doctor Fish.  Stay tuned, it promises to be interesting.

Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad!

This post is in honor of Robin and Leona Roberts (Dad and Mom) as today they celebrate 42 years of marriage! 

It is an inspiration to see two people so very much in love.  The friendship that you share and the fun that you have together bring joy to those around you.  Through the years, the changes, and the challenges of life, you have stood together and the Lord has been glorified through your marriage.  Your faithfulness to and love for each other serve as a blessing to all who know you and love you.  Thank you for your commitment to one another.

Today we celebrate you and your 42 years of married life together.

Happy Anniversary

30 Hour Famine

The Roberts family just spent the last two days in Seoul, South Korea participating in the "30 Hour Famine" event sponsored by World Vision.  The "30 Hour Famine" is an international youth activity focused on fighting world hunger. 

Did you know that:

• More than 852 million people in the world are malnourished and 153 million of them are under the age of 5?
• Each DAY over 29,000 kids die from preventable diseases related to malnutrition?

                      (source:http://www.30hourfamine.org/portal/pages/about/world_hunger.html)

Over the last couple of weeks Becca and Sarah have been raising money by talking to people about the needs of the world around them and explaining the goal of the 30 Hour Famine activity.  After raising money they personally started on a journey of raising their own awareness of the needs of the world around them by embarking upon a 30 hour fast.  The goals of this time of fasting were to draw closer to God and to "feel" in a just small way, the hunger that many of the children in the world experience everyday.

The Famine event was held at Seoul Foreign School in Seoul, South Korea.  Thirty-five TCIS Middle School students boarded the bus at 1:00 p.m. on Friday and joined with 100+ Seoul Foreign Middle Schoolers at the Famine event 3 hours later.

The afternoon and evening activities included:  times of corporate praise and worship, devotional activities, Bible study, prayer time, study of impoverished nations around the world, games and activities, silly skits, a "We're So Rich" Nooma video by Rob Bell and testimonies from high school students that have been involved in the Famine activity in previous years.

After a short night of sleep the "30 Hour Famine" group kicked off the morning with a time of singing and praising the Lord and a great message by Mr. Mike, the TCIS Student Life Minister, about how life is not to be all about "Me" but rather it is to be all about "God" and "Others."  The Famine ended with a time of all of the students praying for the world and serving one another juice and muffins.

It was a super time and a great event.  For more info on the "30 Hour Famine" click HERE.

Becca's LAST Birthday Party of the Year

Today was the actual date of Becca's birthday and today we celebrated her 14th birthday for the final time (please see previous blog postings for details of Becca's PARTIES over the past two weeks).  This morning she woke up to a McDonald's breakfast and one of her birthday gifts was her very own volleyball.

In the afternoon Becca went up town with her friends (and her friend's parents) and did some shopping.  Ryan, Dina and Sarah met Becca up town and we all went and got family sticker photos taken--It was a fun time.

After sticker photos we met the Zickefoose family at the downtown Outback Restaurant and we celebrated Becca with a big birthday dinner.  The company was great, the meal was delicious and it was fun to hear the Outback employees sing a birthday song for Becca.  After dinner we went to the Zickefoose's apartment for some delicious chocolate lava cake and ice cream.  Whew!...we are partied out.

Happy Birthday Becca!

Skiing at Muju

Last Tuesday we went skiing!  It is pretty sad when a gal from Montana and guy from Idaho go skiing for the first time in 20 years of being married in South Korea--but that is what we did and we took Becca and Sarah with us.  It was a blast.

On Tuesday morning we got up early, met George, Korte and Alexandra Zickefoose and jumped on the 6:45 a.m. bus headed to the Muju Ski Resort here in South Korea.  Take a look at this LINK.  After an hour and a half bus ride (Ryan fell asleep) we arrived at the ski resort.  We all donned our rented boots, skis and poles and headed for the bunny hill.  (Ryan, Becca and Sarah are beginners--Dina is a pro).  Dina gave us a few lessons and then we all hit the slopes (some of us literally).

According to Dina, we all picked up skiing rather quickly--must be the Idaho/Montana blood.  Well before noon we left the bunny hill and hopped onto the BIG chair lift (actually there were a lot of BIG chair lifts--surprisingly this was a rather large ski area.)

The day was filled with skiing--we visited lots of different areas of the resort and Becca and Sarah continually improved in their skiing ability throughout the day.  We made a family decision on that day that we HAVE to do that again.  Skiing is fun--come ski with us next winter.

Singing With Friends

Last Monday night we went to the No Rae Bang and did some singing with some friends.  The Zickefooses, the Moimois and the Roberts all (14 of us) crowded into a No Rae Bang room, cranked up the music and sang oldies and favorites from the 70s, 80s, 90s and 00s for an hour and a half.  We ended the musical extravaganza with a rousing group rendition of "Celebration" by Kool and the Gang.

It was a fun time to hang out with our friends in a crazy way.  We have gone to the No Rae Bang before with the Moimoi family but this was a first with the Zickefooses.  Not only is George a great drummer but that guy can sing!

After our time was up, we left the No Rae Bang and with our voices hoarse and our ears ringing, everybody came over to our apartment for dessert and a little "celebration" of Becca's birthday (yes, another party).  It was a blast.