June 14, 2013

Surpise!

Korean is so much less terrible, and I understand how to make sentences so much better now. It helps that our new teacher, Brother Campbell can respond to the questions I ask with more than, "Well, it just is," of Brother Sung. I can make compound sentences now, which is awesome, and I finally feel like I know what I'm doing. So much vocab. So, so much vocab.

The Bunkbed of Insomnia was defeated 6/7 times this week. That one day was terrible, and I ended up having a pretty epic meltdown in front of poor Sister Martisich, our Sister Trainer Leader. In my defense, I lost to the Bunkbend of Insomnia pretty bad. Her story was pretty interesting. She's 27, and her fiancee just left to Taiwan at 25. A lot of faith there, and she always has perfect makeup. Always. This confuses me deeply because we only have half an hour to do anything, and she always looks perfect, all the time. It's baffling. I'm confused as to why Koreans switch between Chinese and Korean numbers depending on the thing being counted. Seriously. Hours are Chinese, minutes are Korean. What was the point of that? We finally learned how to do compound sentences, but only ones with "linking" verbs, so we still don't really understand complex SOV order without two seperate and very distinct clauses. It's been better this week, thank heavens. I've finally started to grasp the language, and I broke down and used really, really stupid ways to remember vocab. Alas. We do what we can. Sister Segovia and I managed to teach four different lessons in two days, each a half hour. It was brutal, but it was working. I can now, assuming the question is asked slowly and I recognize some vocab, answer properly without any kind of notes or script. It was a pretty proud moment. Sometimes, I just write what I want to say in English, and Korean just comes out. God is definitely helpling.

I miss the feral cats we had on campus. We don't have any cats here. We did see some mice in bushes heading toward one of the Elder's Residence Halls. I can't claim to be too suprised. I named the mouse Sherlock. There was another one named John. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I've been living off some terrible food here, and our schedule is really weird, but we're finally figuring things out. We still haven't actually learned how to pray yet, so we're still working on that one...and I need someone to formally explain testimony form to me, eventually, but we'll get there. My Korean is improving by leaps and bounds, so that's something to be happy about.

Culture wise, I have learned that Korean toothpaste is terrible, you're punished if you lose games by group mocking (not kidding, fyi. they point and laugh!), and that I'll be burning in the summer, and freezing in the winter. The accents in Korea are totally different, with Busan having the most tonalities, but we'll figure that out when we get there. But, as a positive, there are very cheap, very pretty dresses. Everything costs about half of what it does here, as a rough estimate, though we can get pretty decent tailored dresses for about $5. There are also something called Summer Suits which look exactly like normal suits, but a lot thinner so you don't die of heat stroke.  We've also spent a lot of time getting to know Brother Campbell. He was on the West Coast of Korea. He lived a bunch of different places, because he's an army brat, and his favorite color is green. Mind you, he said all of this in Korean, so it took a little bit of time for him to figure out how to mime "green." Brother Sung's girlfriend is coming back from Korea today, actually, so he won't be as tired from skyping with her at all hours of the night anymore.

My most hysterical story comes from Relief Society. This is all true, no exaggeration. We were told how we had to wear makeup, and what shades were available in the MTC Bookstore. Legitimately. We were lectured on the importance of wearing makeup here. Buuuut, no shirts with anykind of definition, at all. Buuuut, you always need to look pretty, all the time. Even when you just get up in the morning. Always wear your lipstick, blush, and mascara. Preferably eyeliner, but you know, they can't dictate everything we do. And then we practiced sitting down for thirty minutes. Yeah. Good times. As far as my district goes, we have one very loud boy who I am trying to learn to love, Elder P., who's my favorite, because he's so darn dry all the time, Sisters P. and J. (who happen to be our roommates) and then Elders K. and H., who are so adorably freshmanish it's funny. Elder F. handles stress like a boy. As in, very poorly. He really misses his "special friend" who hasn't written at all yet. L. and S. are just super quiet, all the time. P. and I are the proclaimed classroom teachers when Brother Sung or Brother Campbell aren't there. It's pretty awesome. Sleep officially makes everything better, and I'm finally getting about 7 hours a night. Sleep is so important. So, so important. Sleep. Sleep for me.