we just learned that a significant portion of what we learned was wrong. *sigh* Also, numbers officially suck. I don't know why they have two number systems. I also don't know why they have so freakin' many counters. Pens, Pencils, and Erasers have one counter character. Long skinny things have another. People, hours, minutes, books, rings, you name it, it has its own counters. Bane of my existence. That, and speaking in front of Brother Sung. Everytime I teach him, I can just hear him thinking, I taught you better than that. It doesn't help that Sister Segovia and I have sworn off scripts, so we're adlibbing with an outline.
Oh, yes. The package came, and it was pretty awesome. So much fun stuff, so little time to use it . I totally started colorcoding verbs now. We've learned that TALL (the language software they use on us here) sucks hard at real Korean words. It's frustrating, because we can't manage to figure out how to use the dictionary yet. Baffling. It's pretty terrible, but we're doing bettery by just scrapping TALL entirely, and using flashcards. We've been working with our investigators (teachers) and I honestly can say I much prefer Brother Campbell. We've talked about this considerably in the girls dorms, and I think that he's a giant teddy bear (he's 6'6" and pretty buff) and everyone else finds him really intimidating. I, however, find Brother Sung, who is like, 5'4" to be more intimidating. He just stares at you, during lessons, and it's just super weird. I can just see his eyes saying, "I taught you better than this." Every time I come out from teaching him, I feel like I've managed to get my point across, but somehow failed while doing it in Korean. Like, yesterday, I forgot all of the numbers I learned. All of them. It was baffling. We've been teaching pretty spiritual lessons so far, and I've managed to figure out a lot of Korean on my own, but I still feel like I know nothing in Korean. We're getting to the point where we're sorta understanding questions, but we can't say anything back. It's frustrating, but in an entirely new way. I mean, honestly. The investigator will mention something about the Restoration, but I can't explain about it without breaking out a dictionary, and wasting twenty minutes. We've also been managing to ask them to write their questions down, so we can translate them later. Brother Sung used three gerunds at me. Three. Gerunds. One sentence. I don't even know how that works in English, let alone Korean. So weird. The Bunkbed of Insomnia and I have had a rough week, but I just bought another huuuuuuge bottle of melatonin that should hopefully last my stay here, even if I take five pills a night to get to sleep. And if I'm going to have more nights like this week, I most certainly will need five pills to fall asleep. Our district is amazing. Elder Diede is an amazing artist. He did a blind contouring of me yesterday, and it looked like me. Elder Pickard is still my favorite, though. He's so dry, and so skinny. He's maybe 130 lbs, tops. He's the equivalent of a petite girl. He's also 5'10" but he slouches, a lot. A few days ago, Elder Harris said that he loved Elder Pickard. Elder Harris used the wrong verb, so he meant romantic love. Brother Sung just about died, while Elder Pickard pointed out that it was "waygay" which is also the Korean word for repentance. Truly, it was a thing of beauty. It was all in the timing.
Also, terrible mistakes missionaries have made in Korean. Soooo, one group was trying to teach about the Restoration, and they were trying to say that Jesus Christ was central, but ended up saying Jesus Christ was a sexy plan. Good times. The "investigator" who looked a lot like Brother Sung couldn't reign himself in for a good ten minutes. He just laughed, and laughed, and laughed.
In our dorm (room? apartment? residence hall? place where I don't sleep?) we have this massive pile of candy we just all eat. This pile is important, because the food here hasn't gotten a whole lot better. Whoever suggested you send me poptarts is my hero. My. Hero. I look forward to your dear elder, and more news of the Kindle. Is Game of Thrones worth reading? Because I'm taking the Kindle back in a year and a half. We talked with Brother Sung yesterday, and Korean electronics are the way to go. If you ever need anything, I've got you covered. I'd have to ship it home, but there are a lot of fancy smart phones for very little. You know you want to....
Also, true story. Koreans greet each other differently depending on the situation. Not like, say, good evening/good morning. No, more like, if you're in a specific type of setting of eating food, you have to ask if they've eaten. And you always say yes, even if you haven't. Also, when they serve soup, everyone gets a spoon, and you share a giant bowl. It doesn't sound all that appealing. There are a lot of Korean foods that don't sound that appealing. Like just barely killed sea squirt. And live baby octopus. Why? Why would you want to eat anything like that?
We had another hour long meeting on the vitures of wearing blush and lipgloss. It was weird. It was really weird. They kept telling us things were only for the broadcast, but they kept implying that things weren't allowed anyway. "If you read the dress and grooming code, you'd know that high-low skirts aren't smiled upon." Umm, no, the dress code makes no mention of any of those things. Also, it only says that your knees should be covered when sitting and standing, but the MTC has added walking, which just seems a smidge unfair. Also, no maxi skirts/dresses, but only if they go to the floor. They just don't really like the ones that hit right about the ankle, either. But whatever. The MTC is but a small portion of the mission.
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