Site Coordinators

These are our wonderful site coordinators. Well, Haejung is technically our site coordinator, but Simon isn't the type to miss out on anything fun. 

Simon and Haejung Park

The Parks were both born and raised in Korea and moved to the United States where they became citizens. After rearing two sons and a career in academia, they were called into the mission field. They served in Congo, Nepal, and are now back in South Korea. In addition to coordinating and taking care of us, Haejung works with Hannam University's chaplain's office and Simon does a lot of consulting and traveling for PC(USA).

on Chuseok with our host gifts...war eagle!

They live about a hundred yards away in a house that is also part of the missionary compound and are a combination of a host family and our bosses. In addition to scouting out places for us to work and helping us deal with the language barrier, they take us to the doctor if we are sick and invite us over for lunch and slurpees [banana and coffee smoothies…yum], just to name a few things...

 

they have also helped us figure out where the hot water went...twice

Partly because respecting elders is such a big deal in Korean culture and to help articulate our relationship, we call them Haejung 이모 and Uncle Simon. In Korean there are more [and more specific] names for family members than in English. The word for maternal aunt is 이모 [pronounced 'emo']. Because 
이모[s] are typically very close to their nieces and nephews and because Haejung 이모 flows well, we have a Haejung 이모 and an Uncle Simon. They're great!

and I think they're pretty cute too!