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This was my family's house that I lived in from when I was 8 until I graduated from high school and went to college. My parents bought 5 acres of land and built the house about 15 minutes away from the city (Springfield, Missouri). My wife and I lived here with my parents when we came back from Korea in 2008 and it was my daughter's first home too until we moved out in 2010. My mom sold the house at the end of 2010.

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The University of Kansas (August 2002 - May 2006)

I went to Lawrence, Kansas and the beautiful KU campus for my undergraduate degree. I originally planned to double-major in Spanish and Social Work, but ended up only majoring in Social Work. In college, was when I was first exposed to a lot of diversity of people from different places and cultures. I worked with international students and led conversation groups. There was a time when most of my friends were all international students.

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When I was in college, I was active in a group called Campus Christians and lived in this yellow house right down the hill from camus my sophomore and junior years in different rooms. I have a lot of fond memories of hanging out there and doing at times crazy things. For example, my freshman year, after talking at the dining room table for a few minutes, got in a car and took a 27-hour round-trip roadtrip to Canada and back with three other guys.

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Antigua, Guatemala (Summer 2005)

Although I only spent 6 weeks in Guatemala in the summer of 2005, it is memorable because it was my first trip outside of the United States. I went to study Spanish and quickly found out that my Spanish was not nearly as great as I thought.

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I visited Tikal, an ancient Mayan City.

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I went to a friend's village named Santa Eulalia, about two hours from the border with Mexico where a majority of the people did not speak Spanish. They speak Q'anjob'al, a Mayan language there. I got deathly sick and my friend and his family were very worried about me and ran all the way around the village to find the village doctor to get medicine for me. I eventually recovered.

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253 Sapyeong-daero, Seocho District, Seoul, South Korea

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산선 교회 (Sansung Church) in Seoul is where I found a lot of friends while I lived in Korea from 2006-2008. This is where I met my wife and we taught high school Sunday school together. This is where I was almost every Sunday for most of the day.

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Jihyun (my wife) and I took professional wedding pictures in Korea in late 2008, which was basically a day long photo shoot that started with hair and makeup and multiple outfit changes throughout the shoot. We won a type of contest and some of our pictures and our story were published on the website for a wedding planning company in Korea.

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Valparaiso University, Chapel Drive, Valparaiso, IN

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Valparaiso University

August 2013-August 2014

I took my first time job at Valparaiso University in northern Indiana about an hour away from downtown Chicago. This is a picture of my daughter Yena, who would have been about 4 at the time. This was my first experience living this far north in the US and let's just say we did not enjoy the winter.

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West Lafayette Public Library, West Columbia Street, West Lafayette, IN

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Yena and I at the West Lafayette Public Library probably in the fall/winter of 2014 when she would have been about 5. This is one of my favorite pictures of us looking/reading books together.

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May 2019: I had the opportunity to go to Colombia to present at the TESOL Colombia Conference and represent Purdue by visiting five universities in three cities.

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In Colombia, I stayed about a week with my friend Hernan and his family for about a week. One day we went to his parents' house for lunch where they lived with his sister.

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During my trip to Colombia, I had the opportunity to reconnect to some Colombian professors that I had taught a summer public speaking course too as part of a program that allowed them to come to Purdue.

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During my trip to Colombia, drinking and buying delicious coffee was part of the trip. This was a traditional coffee vendor on the street overlooking a beautiful view of the mountains surrounding Manizales.

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Young Hall, South Grant Street, West Lafayette, IN

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Purdue University

This is a picture of my office in Young Hall on the 8th floor. I have been in this current office since August 2023. It is important for me to have an office that feels personal to me in terms of having plants, pictures, books and other things that make it seem like it is an extension of myself. My office is a space that I enjoy being at and working in.

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July 2023

My family and I traveled to Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai area of Thailand for a week on a kind of missionary trip. My wife had gone to Thailand for 10 years in a row from 1998-2008 to Thailand and has a good relationship with the missionary and his family. We went to bless others and this picture is at an orphanage in the Chiang Rai area.

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Purdue University, Purdue Mall, West Lafayette, IN

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We have lived in Lafayette/West Lafayette since August 2014 when I started working at Purdue. This is a picture of my wife Jihyun, my daughter Yena, Hernan and Paola (two special friends from Colombia) whose son Alejandro attends Purdue University. This picture was taken in October 2024 after my daughter's cross country meet in Lafayette.