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funky_munky21
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Name: d'oh!
Birthday: 7/2/1980
Gender: Male
Interests: outdoors, b&w photography, jah muzik, venice beach, long boarding, www.myspace.com/doh_21, Facebook me!
Expertise: climbing on trees!, breaking things
Occupation: Education/training
Industry: Nonprofit
Message: message me
Member Since:
8/29/2005
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| Top 5 'best of 2008' 5. Paid off my credit card debt 4. Visited Jeju Island -Korea's Hawaii 3. Finished my work contract 2. Volunteer for PLUR! 1. 2008 is over! Can't wait to see what's in store for 2009. Top 5 'worst of 2008' 5. Lived in a basement a.k.a. 'stinky dungeon' for a couple of months with creepy crawlers 4. Worked at an English academy which the owner treated her employees like crap 3. Got in a fight and a couple of stitches on my head 2. Started using my credit card again 1. My dream 'coffeehouse' business is on hold Here's a video I made of the group I started in Korea called, Volunteer for PLUR (peace, love, unity, and respect)! http://kr.youtube.com/watch?v=mv91x_CuK8s | | |
| so i just quit my job in order to start my dream job which is to open a cafe. all i need is the start up money. any1 interested? anyways, i have 2 fond memories while i was teaching kinders and elementary students that i want to share. 1. Student: "teacher, it's michelle's birthday today!" Me : "Happy birthday Michelle!, Everyone, let's sing Michelle a Happy Birthday!" Everyone: "Happy....." Me: "Michelle, what do you want for your birthday?" Michelle: I want a boyfriend!  (smiles) (mind you, she just turned 6) Me: (stunned) a boyfriend? who? Michelle: Ryan!  (smiles again) Me: Why Ryan? Michelle: He's cute! 2. In one of my classes before 5 min. class ends, I have the students respond on a piece of paper whatever question i pose. and one of the questions i asked was, 'if you had one super power, what will it be?' a student wrote: if i had 1 super power, i'll have strong eyes to see so that i wouldn't bump into things. (he has bad vision) another student responded: if i had super powers, i'll have powers to make friends and also give friends to people that don't have any. | | |
| life sucks when ur not doing what you want to be doing. and what else stinks is when people treat you like dirt. God help us. | | |
| so i'm back on xanga or maybe not. hehe. 
so i saw someone the other day at the gym wearing a nike shirt that says, "eat your enemy"  why not create a shirt that says, "love your enemy" ? | | |
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i don't know if it's just me but sometimes, i want to jump out from the 4th floor window at work . not that i want to commit suicide or anything, but i just want to get lifted off ground and imagine myself flying like peter pan. i've tried bungee jumping but it's not the same and maybe i'll try sky diving. so sick and tired of gravity weighing me down. if people could fly, then, we wouldn't have to walk or need any shoes to wear. we wouldn't need crutches or wheel chairs. that would be awesomeness. some one once said that i was an angel only if that was true so that i could fly but also to help people. now back to reality.
on other news...
to see the world change, you gotta be the change... -danny oh
 June 11, 2008
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| Conor
Meagher (left) and Marie Park Foss (right), volunteers for the PLUR
(Peace, Love, Unity, Respect) program, wash up after a meal they helped
serve last Friday to homeless people. Photos by Moon Gwang-lip |
Rachael
Fox, a 26-year-old English teacher, got a phone call from a friend
three months ago, who said that Fox may be interested in Volunteer for
PLUR (Peace, Love, Unity, Respect), an online-based expat volunteer
group in Korea.
Fox immediately checked out its Web site
(www.idealist.org/en/org/169631-40) and discovered the group is doing
the same volunteer work she used to do at home in Canada ? feeding the
homeless.
She has attended every volunteer event available since, Fox said.
“I
like doing it,” she said, after finishing distributing meal trays to
hundreds of homeless people at the Resurrection Center near the
Sookmyung Women’s University subway station in Seoul last Friday.
“I have time to do it. I like coming here and meeting new people,” she said. “It’s rewarding.”
She
was one of the seven PLUR volunteers to help out at the center that
evening. The center, run by the Anglican Church of Korea, has been
providing free dinners for the homeless daily since it was founded in
1998.
Daniel Oh, a 28-year-old Korean American who organized the
PLUR volunteer program last October, learned about the center several
months ago and began to bring his friends.
For Conor Meagher, it was his second time to participate in the Feed the Homeless in Seoul project.
The 28-year-old English teacher from Kansas said it was much easier than the first time.
“When
I first came here, I [was afraid] these people were not going to like
me, but they were so thankful and so courteous,” he said. “That’s why I
came back.”
Meagher said the activity has a fun factor. Some
of the homeless try to befriend the foreign volunteers, speaking to
them in English, and he also practices speaking Korean.
But
most of the time he is focused on simply helping others, which is
something Meagher tries to incorporate into his lifestyle.
“Some people go drink, some people go out to party. I do, too, but I also want to do other things,” he said.
The
meal that day was provided at a cafeteria in the basement of the
center. It went on for one hour as usual. Some of the foreign
volunteers helped cook in the kitchen. Some served food, while others
washed dishes or cleaned up afterwards.
Marie Park Foss, whose
Korean name is Park Soo-mi, did the washing. A newcomer to the group,
Foss is an adoptee who had returned here, her country of birth, as a
Swede.
Foss said she was left on a street in Daegu by her biological mother when she was just a month old.
She
was cared for by a foster mother in Gyeonggi Province for seven months
with the help of an orphanage before being adopted by a Swedish family.
Despite some resentment she may feel toward Korea, she said she is pleased with her volunteer work at the center.
“I am still a Korean,” Foss said. “I live here.”
According to Oh, the Volunteer for PLUR program, whose membership is around 140 people, does other projects as well.
At other volunteer events, the members play with children at an orphanage and work at a senior citizens’ home, Oh said.
They also helped in the clean up efforts on the west coast after the huge oil spill in Taean several months ago.
New
volunteers come to join PLUR through word of mouth or after they read
notices that Oh posts at the Web site and on Facebook, he said.
The effort to feed the homeless in Seoul is one of the projects that Oh feels most attached to, he says.
“I grew up in Los Angeles, California, where homelessness is very rampant,” he said.
“I would see homeless people digging through the dumpsters for food. It was sad to see people digging in the trash for food.”
With most PLUR members speaking little Korean, people might wonder if the language barrier could impair their activity.
Lee Soo-beom, the manager at the center, said it has not been a big problem.
“They
help us a lot,” Lee said. “We can communicate with each other by
looking each other in the eye. We are working hand-in-glove.”
One
of the homeless men who came to the center that day, who was on
crutches, refused to give his name, saying only that he is 41 years old.
He said the food is only part of what those foreigners are doing for them.
“As
you see, I walk on crutches,” he said. “Every time I come here, these
people hold a meal tray for me and try to make me as comfortable as
possible.
“I have seen many volunteers feeding us, but I have
never seen people like these regarding me as a human being, not just a
homeless person. I am grateful.”
By Moon Gwang-lip Staff Reporter [joe@joongang.co.kr]
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