becka lippy

So I realize that many of my photos are from this one class, but really, they are too cute NOT to post. Here is a fun video of them Friday all dressed up in their Halloween costumes.

My little princess Ella The whole class excited to get candy for Halloween Here I am being scary.. and yes, I am a vampire, but like in Twilight, I am a GOOD vampire. :)

It is Halloween this weekend so the kids are coming to school ready to have fun (which loosely translates as ready to eat candy!) I took the opportunity to capture some of the sweetness I get to be with all day, every day. My oldest class. These girls are at the age where school is almost uncool. Evidently dressing up isn't uncool yet. Check out the glasses on Eesun (the second on the right). Here is the damage done to my board by my students when I'm gone for my dinner break. I always come back to the class for a board full of goodies. Alex and Harry- two of my favorites. I melt when Alex smiles at me, which he totally uses to his advantage! One of my more advanced classes. These three girls are WAY too much fun, and such good students! Of course, all three came dressed as witches. Sweet kids! These two girls are stuck in a class of four rowdy boys who smell and throw stuff at each other. But the girls just sit in their corner and draw hearts all over their pages. Here they ar

So I know my blog posts have been few and far between recently- sorry! I am going to try to make up for it with a cool few posts. First, I just have to say that the past four months have been that hardest months of my life. I won't go into details here but it is safe to say that I have spent the last few months in a pit. I have never been that deep in a valley before and my one joy and consolation from this season was that the Lord was ever near. THere wasn't a moment that I didn't feel His presence, holding me close. I couldn't walk. I couldn't move. There seemed no end to the valley, but He always stayed with me. In fact, there were moments when all I could do is cry out for Him to sit with me. It was all the strength I had. I was reading some of James today and reflecting on how God tells us to rejoice in our sufferings, that it is for our good. I can confidently say that the Lord has been immensly good to me in this past season. He is faithful and I am grateful

(I saw this on someone's profile and thought it was one of the funniest things I've seen since leaving the land of all humor- Westminster Theological Seminary. I hope you enjoy... and boys, don't be afraid to try some of these out, let me know if they work!) 10. Find a prostitute and marry her. (Hosea 1:1-3) 9. Purchase a piece of property, and get a woman as part of the deal. (Ruth 4:5-10) 8. Find an attractive prisoner of war, bring her home, shave her head, trim her nails, and give her new clothes. Then she’s yours. (Deuteronomy 21:11-13) 7. Go to a party and hide. When the women come out to dance, grab one and carry her off to be your wife. (Judges 21:19-25) 6. Cut 200 foreskins off of your future father-in-law’s enemies and get his daughter for a wife. (I Samuel 18:27) 5. Become the emperor of a huge nation and hold a beauty contest. (Esther 2:3-4) 4. Find a man with seven daughters, and impress him by watering his flock. (Exodus 2:16-21) 3. When you see someone you li

I will post again soon. promise. :)

This will be a quick update. As it is, I have a bunch of school work to grade, lesson plans to write, and hopefully a good number of hours to sleep. I am doing ok. I'm still tired and congested, but I have no fever and have been back at work since Monday. Work is going well. I am getting the hang of teaching all the various classes, although I have just enough energy to teach and nothing more. I am doing ok. More to come later.

So I am really sick. Either this is my normal asthma attack followed by 103.8 degree fever, or I have swine flu. I went to a doctor today, explained what was going on and begged her to give me something to lower the temperature. I spent all last night and this morning scared that I was going to black out from such a high temp. And no matter if I took Tylenol and covered myself with cold wet rags, I couldn't get my temp to stay under 103. So I went to the doctor and after she gave me a prescription, she recommended that I go to the hospital to get tested for swine flu. She said it would be $150, so I thought, well at least I would know. I went to the hospital, nearly dying along the way, I was in so much pain and i couldnt breathe and my head was on fire. At the hospital they said it would take 2 days to get the results and it actually cost $600. So I decided to skip that, go home, and just pretend like I do have swine flu. A week of quarrentine for me. Or I guess how ever long it t

Good news! As I speculated in my previous post, my time hanging out with my friends here wasn't that bad. In fact, it was almost... wait for it... good! I ended up having Sunyoung and Nicky come over after church and we were joined by my neighbor Gavin, who is from Atlanta. I was a little nervous about the whole affair on multiple levels. WOuld I be ok with so many people around me for so long? Would my guests who had never met each other, like each other? Would I have enough food to feed all four of us? I only have two bowls so how would all four of us eat anyways? It all turned out okay though. Nicky had to leave early so I only had to feed three people. Sunyoung and Gavin had bowls and I ate out of a tupperware dish. And everyone seemed to get along. After eating my rockin' speghetti, we headed out for coffee (Gavin's treat). Four hours later, we fianlly split up. It was good though. I like all of them. Sunyoung is ever sweet and encouraging and we love teaching each oth

Hey ya'all, (that's for Tosha) For those of you who have asked about my address or what you can send my way, any peanutbutter candy like Reeses or Butterfinger, anything fun in English to hang in my classroom, any Chai tea mix, anything really, is greatly appreciated. I don't need anything right now honestly, I'll let you know if I do. I think I would most appreciate just a card and some love! Send love to: S.E.A. [Becka Lipkowitz] 5F Heejung B/D, 49-11 Banpo-4dong, Seocho-gu, Seoul, 137-802, Korea mucho gra-cias!

The much promised video of a tour of my pad. It is smaller (believe it or not) than it looks. :) nice and cozy!

After the depressing last post, I feel the need to write a little uplifting post. It's not much but it's something. After wandering around Hongdae for a few hours, I made it back over to my part of town. One of the things I love most in life right now is grocery shopping. I think I have always enjoyed it, but now given my slightly anti-social attitude in life, grocery shopping is the highlight of my day. SInce I only have a half fridge, I have to buy small quantities and shop over other day or so. I had heard there was a supermarket about a mile or two up the hill from my apartment. After weeks of shopping at the little market around the corner, the thought of a supermarket was too much temptation to turn down. I found fairly easily and got some yummy food to make for my friend and myself tomorrow. As I was walking home, I ran into one of my students! His name is Sulley, he's probably 9 or 10 years old, and he is a sweet kid. I giggled with glee when he waved to me and star

I have noticed a pattern. Stay busy, and be okay. Have time to think and reflect, and choke back the tears. Not really a healthy pattern, but I guess its something. I decided to check out an area of Seoul called Hongdae today. It's where the university is and it's known for being a cool hip area. It's also the only place in Seoul where they sell nose rings. I have yet to see a Korean with a nose ring, so they aren't exactly sold everywhere. It's precious when I wear my nose ring and the kids go crazy asking me about it. So I headed out nice and early to make it across town (about a 30 minute subway ride). When I got there I wandered around for a while before I realized I was hungry. THe problem was, I didn't want any of the food I saw available. Korean food is made to be eaten in groups of at least two. There are a few dishes like bibimbop that you can eat by yourself, but in general, Koreans don't eat alone. In fact, many Korean restaurants don't even

Today I felt the weight of my depravity. I had a sad dream last night. Not a bad one, per se, but a sad one. When I woke up, I tried with all my might to return there. I wanted to go back to the tears in my dream. I wasn’t done crying I guess. But I couldn’t fall back asleep so I got up and made my way over to Paris Baguette, the coffee house around the corner that has the cheapest americanos and yummy breakfast pastries. I got some work done, blogged, and talked to a few people via internet. But over me hung this dark cloud, residue from my sad dream. I told one of my friends on gchat about it and found myself tearing up in the café. I guess it’s going to be one of those days. I made my way over to school, trying to block out the pain at the bottom of my heart. Classes were not so good today. I realized throughout the day that when I am not okay, my pool of grace for the kids is all dried up and I have no patience with anything. I guess it was a bad day for the kids to come to class

Seoul is extremely safe. Seriously, the only time I ever felt unsafe at all was in the Itewon area which is full of foreigners. Where I live is mainly Koreans and SO SO SO safe. Seoul is so safe that no only will you not get robbed, but if you accidently drop your wallet on the subway, people will run after you to return it. It happened to my friend a few weeks ago. The photo above is of a subway seat where someone left a purse. I noticed it when I got on the train and sat opposite of it. I wanted to do something about it, somehow get it back to the owner, but I had no idea how to. So after fruitlessly trying to make eye contact with some of the other passengers to point out the purse, I gave up and just took a picture. I'm sure it got back to the owner eventually. Oh Seoul, you are way too easy.

In case anyone doubted that my obsession was just as strong as ever! Yep, Twilight in Korean! Actually, it's still in English but with Korean subtitles. Close enough.

Last night I got my resident alien card! I thought I'd capture the moment by showing off my identity from the various places I have lived. I have to admit, I'm not thrilled with the photo on my Korean card, I didn't realize that the passport photos that I submitted to the government would be so permanently attached to my life here. Oh well. At least I didn't have to wait in a 3 hour line like Chile.

I made a kid cry today. It was the first time in my four years of teaching that I have made anyone cry. The worst part is the kid is a 13 year old boy. Yeah, not exactly the demographic I pegged to be the first to cry. Now before you go thinking I was truly mean to the kid, here’s how it went down…. It’s a class of 6 young teens. We were going around the classroom reading an article. When it got to this young fellow’s turn, he had his head down on the table and wouldn’t respond to me. I asked if he was sick. He said no. He was tired. Ok, well, sorry, but you can’t sleep in class. Please read. After a few minutes of prodding, he finally began to read, no whisper the part of the article assigned to him. Ugh. This attitude kept up all throughout class. Then, a few minutes before class was over, his cell phone rang. Yeah. I looked sternly at him and told him to turn it off. Not only did he not turn it off, but he answered it! Right there in class! NOT OK. I told him that he wasn’t allowed

It was at the party Saturday night that I met Richard. He was standing in front of Nickie and me in line for food. He introduced himself and his friend Love (no joke, this guy’s name is “Love Moon” maybe his parents were hippies?). We talked a little but I was pretty wary of guys and felt like he was too interested in talking to us. I escaped as soon as I could. Later he tried talking to us again. There were almost 200 people at this party and somehow we kept running into him. I said something to Nickie about it, but she thought he was just interested in us as friends. I decided to trust her intuition on this one since they are both Korean and I’m not. She would know better than I would, right? Well, maybe I should have stuck to my gut on this one. Who knows? Maybe I over read things, but I saw Richard again today at church. In fact, I saw him three times at church. The first was just a quick passing. The second, he came and sat with Nickie and me and started talking to us. The third,

I wish I had my girls here. I would love to laugh with them over the ridiculous things that have happened in the last few days. It started on Friday when I found myself walking around the city, slightly lost, and not caring. I realized that I am quite apathetic toward my life right now, and that includes my feelings about Korea. It’s not that I dislike Korea. I don’t. But neither do I like the country. I just don’t care. In fact, I don’t care about anything right now. I spent Friday examining my attitude toward life and wondering if it was my own version of culture shock. I was pretty sure it wasn’t. The feelings were far too closely resembling the various emotions I have faced over the last four months. The truth is, I just am not ok. I felt like a little blue cartoon animal on a Zoloft commercial. Just stumbling around on the stage of life, not caring about anything in the world. I realized at some point in the day that I am depressed. And then I panicked. What am I supposed to do? I

Believe it or not, I am referring to myself here. Yes, I am a scary teacher. Let me explain… (warning, this is a loooonnnnnggggg post) Yesterday was my first day of alone teaching. I taught Tuesday and Wednesday but I had Steve in the class with me. I was nervous about two things: time and grading. The classes are all 30 minutes each except the last section of classes which are 45 minutes each. Tuesday and Wednesday in almost every class, I ran late. In some of the classes, I got through the majority of the material in the first 10 minutes and then scrambled to put together some activity that usually then ran late. Oops. The parents want the kids to have their assignments graded and returned the day they are due. This means that the 30 minutes of class, as a teacher I have to not only collect all the homework, teach the lesson, and assign the following homework, but I have to grade each kids homework somehow in class. It’s probably the hardest part of teaching at my school. I’m not sur