The MTC has been totally crazy, and I've only been here for two days, and I'm starting my third. We've had a crash course in Korean like nothing else, honestly. We've been trying to learn the alphabet, but all the line vowels sound the same, it's just like they're variations of o's, and we teach for the first time today. I'm just hoping to be able to form a few sentences, and hopefully say the word God a few times. I can't admit to being well rested, or even feeling particularly prepared, but what can you do? My district has 12 people, 8 elders and 4 sisters, and my room has six sisters. This means that lights out doesn't seem to be regarded very well, but I'm sure the exhaustion will catch up with the rest of them, too. I seem to be waking up when the people do, because I can hear their alarm. The walls aren't particularly thick by any means. I'm tired, but I'm doing pretty well. I was a little sniffly the first and second days, but I haven't had a meltdown yet, which I'm calling a silent victory. Again, I can't stress how little Korean I speak right now, and I read very little, but I'm trying, and trusting God to make up the rest. My companion is Sister Segovia. She's from Idaho, Boise area, she likes sci-fi novels and singing. She also played classical piano, but stopped once she got to BYU. She's also 20, and she's a humanities major, but emphasizes comparative literature, which is apparently something you can do.
So far I've learned that being a companion is hard, everything here requires a lot of faith, and when I feel the spirit strongly, I just want to hug everyone. It's really weird. The cafeteria is not my favorite part--I guess I'm more of a picky eater than I thought.I'm always down for more candy--the vending machines look scary here, and you have to drag your companion to them, which makes me feel guilty. Sister Segovia and I are still finding our stride--things like figuring out what we're going to do for gym time, and evening out our schedules. My p-days are Fridays, so I'll hear from you then. Everyone keeps telling me that if you can make it to Sunday, you're going to be okay. That just made the first few days harder for me, but it'll get better. It has to, because there is no way I can feel less prepared than I do now. I'm just glad that we're going to be able to go to the temple before we go teach our first investigator, who's name I cannot remember. I figure it can't make our lesson any worse, because we haven't really figured out what we want to teach. Our Korean is so rudimentary, and we remember so little of the alphabet, it doesn't seem plausible to either make our own sentences, or read many of them from our Korean preach my gospel/dictionary.
And most importantly, here's the list of things I left behind/didn't think about packing/didn't think I needed: normal socks, a blanket of some sort (we only have the terrible dorm blankets here, and they aren't particularly warm at night), melatonin, because I legitimately only get six or so hours of sleep here because everyone isn't in bed with lights out by 10:30, and I left two boxes of contacts on the bookshelf in the command center. My debit card does work, and I believe I spent 6ish dollars on it on a Korean hymn book Brother Sung, our teacher, said we needed. I've sent you two letters via normal mail, and I'm now regretting how I brought no stamps with me. That was clearly a mistake.
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