Interview Day!

Wow, today was nuts. I got interviewed by a major news station! What a crazy first month it's been here. I'm just so thankful to God for bringing me here and jump starting my ministry to the world. I can't and won't take credit for any of this. He is the one in control, and I'm ready to work wherever he ends up sending me. (Not gonna lie I did pray to get a taste of the famous life last night. Maybe a few K-dramas, and a Kpop girlfriend or two. Nothing big. I realize this is a bit selfish, but God knows that world needs some Godly influences. Moving on...lol)

Being filmed for an interview is incredibly awkward. At least for me it was. Especially with the language barrier. Luckily I had a few people around who could translate, but it was still like "ask the students why they were gone so long on their trip". Oh ok, sounds legit. Act like this. Act like that. What an interesting world being filmed for a living must be. I think it's definitely something I could get comfortable with and allow my personality to come out in front of the camera more.

The filming took about an hour. We started in my dorm room with the students, then they brought them out and did the part with me studying Korean, and my blog. (Shout out to Laina/Asuna for reading everyday). They had me start doing homework from a part of the book we hadn't studied yet to get film of me writing in Korean, so it was definitely rushed and probably all wrong. That's gonna be interesting to explain when we get to that page during class. "Uhhh Carl? Why is this page already done? And why is it all completely wrong?" "Well 선생님 (Teacher) you see, the news guys were pressuring me, and I didn't know what to do and, well...sorry?" Haha. Then everyone is gonna wanna see the news clip and we will get off topic, and not be learning Korean! See? I'm always thinking of everyone else.

After that they wanted to go to the gym so they filmed me putting my shoes on and walking down the hall. There were a lot of parts that they filmed but didn't make the cut. I suppose that's pretty typical. The gym was probably the most awkward, because it was like "ok go up to each of the students and say stuff". Cool let me just get out my improv degree and get a quick refresher on it. It's cool, what they did looks good so I can't complain. As much as it sounds like I am lol, I had fun. There were some pretty funny parts in the gym that didn't make the cut. For example, one of the students is an actual weight lifter. They had him on the bench press machine, (No not the actual free weight bench) with next to no weight on it. They had him act like he was struggling, and had me yell 하나또 (Hana Ddo) one more at him and clap like I was cheering him on. There was another student they gave 5 lb dumbbells to and had me coach him on doing curls.

After that we walked next door to a study room to have me explaining the tube rocket to the students. That part actually looked really cool on the video. Then it was time for the actual interview. Surprisingly this only took about 5 minutes. The journalist spoke English pretty well so it was easy to understand his questions. He thanked me many times for the interview and said I was a very good interviewee. Who knows if he was just being nice, but I'd like to think based on the clips that I spoke pretty well. Who'd have thought that all those years ago when my dad started driving a short bus (twinkie bus for all the mean kids out there) that it was preparation for this part of my life? God has a plan and it is good.

In fact as I'm writing this I am getting friend requests on Facebook from random Koreans. One happens to be a special needs teacher from Suwon (near Seoul) and would like me to come visit their school. I may be staying here with a job next year after all. Who knows? God does, and I'll follow where he leads me. I really just can't get over how awesome and exciting this all is, and has been. On our Skype call the other night my dad told me "the most exciting place to be is living within God's will, anything can happen" and boy is he right.

Wow, I just got a message from another person who added me tonight. They had no friends and no pictures so I was very skeptical about the account. Usually when that happens it's just a spam account. However, it looks like this person made a Facebook account specifically to find me and friend me tonight. They messaged me and said they had seen me on the news, and that they were a person with disabilities themselves. They have a friend who also lives in the dorms here, and they have heard good things about me. They said they would pray for me and they thanked me, and hoped that I would find love, friendship, and companionship here in Korea.

What an encouraging day. I'm glad I'm writing this blog so I can remember that there is good in people's hearts when the inevitable downturns happen. I have a few pictures from some of the RA's and students sitting around waiting for the news to air my story. They ended up running the story around 8:35pm which I would say is a pretty prime time spot. I was surprised.

Waiting intently!

Almost time for the story!

Bonus Pic of Vyking in action.

For those of you not in the know, Vyking is actually my rap name. Yes, I am a rapper. No I'm not good, but I'll take the chance plug my crew 'The Flojobs'.

That's about it for today! Stop by tomorrow to see what other crazy stuff ends up happening to me!

Korean Word/Phrase of the Day: 똑똑해요 (Ddok Ddok Hae Yo) this is the present tense conjugation of "smart" have fun!

TL:DR I'm a Korean celebrity.