23 September 2013

Our Chuseok Conference in Yeongdeungpo (Korean Thanksgiving)

Hi everyone!

This week was really fun/ crazy/we didn’t do anything....

Last monday they let us email to keep things normal, but then the rest of the day was normal working day...

Tuesday we had the 12 week training program follow-up meeting for all trainers and their greenies.... I got my package and my new camera when we were at the mission home!!! thanks, mom!!

Thursday we had our chuseok conference in yeongdeungpo....a big stake center....Chuseok is the Korean Thanksgiving holiday. They travel to meet family...everyone leaves town and spends a few days making food and eating and having a good time.... We were at the conference all day because you can’t really do any missionary work......Started at 10 with testimony meeting and some training from president... We watched a mission slide show and ate lunch. They did a cooking demo on how to make some korean food....In the afternoon, they had us all travel together to a park nearby. We all changed into pday clothes and took the subway to get there. It was crazy having this massive swarm of white foreigner missionaries all taking the subway together. People always stare at me as just one foreigner, but there was like 100 of us!!! it was fun!! At the park we just hung out for a while....we didn’t have much time before they wanted us back at the church.  When we got back they fed us dinner and then we had a talent show. There were a couple really funny skits; a korean elder did some crazy nunchucks....a couple of others did some tae-kwon-do--(i learned that tae-kwon-do is the korean martial art...kungfu is chinese and karate is japanese.---)    and we have an elder who is training in gymnastics for the next olympics...so he set up some rings on the basketball  hoop and did some tricks for us....
It was fun just kicking back for awhile...hanging out with the other missionaries....i was really surprised tho..it didn’t finish til like 10 and we didn’t get home til after 11....i was surprised president didn’t send us home earlier!

But then friday we had a ‘cleaning pday’.....me and sis lee got to spend 3 hours scrubbing years of junk out of our kitchen. i swear it’s never been cleaned before. and then we tackled our study room....there were at least 2000lbs worth of ensign and liahona magazines in there...its taken me 5 days to sort through all of them and get the room back to normal. i guess i got dad’s trait...i can throw stuff away. There have been elders in our apt for years before now and they never threw anything away so our whole apt is just full of junk, all the cupboards and desks and cabinets.... we have ensign magazines from 2001.....  yikes.     but it feels so good to get it all cleaned out...haha but watch, now i’ll get transferred next week!!  no....hopefully not.

Thats right! transfer calls this saturday. me and sister lee will probly stay since we’re training. i can’t believe she’s already been here six weeks, its gone by sooo fast!!!  my first 6 weeks were the longest of my life!

Everything is going good though.....

Here’s a good story....(okay..its not gonna sound cool, but it’s just korea...) We were out around 8 going to visit a Less active....september nights have just been perfect, beautiful cool weather....so we’re walking through this area of townhouses and we pass 3 grandmas sitting on the street corner outside one of the building ...we say hi and they just LOVE me since i’m foreign and they have us pull up a crate and sit down with them and we just sit and talk...shooting the breeze..... another of their grandma friends come and we get up to give her our crate and she shares some food she had with her...so now we have 4 new friends.  ----they’re all deadstraight catholic grandmas but they all have grandchildren we can work on getting out to english class....We walked that way again last night so we could see them and sat enjoying the evening air with them again. they told us to come back tomorrow so they can feed us some traditional korean food....one of them also has a husky. his name is Maru. he’s a grandpa and likes hanging out with us too.


FAMILY

Hey so mom’s having a good time in Arizona eh?! thanks a lot for the camera!! i thought it was weird at first cuz i’m so used to my little simple one, but i really like the new one and i think its a super good camera.... Also..i have to say, the picture books were awesome!!!! i decided you  really don’t need to send me anything ever again...just send envelopes of pictures so show what you’ve all been up to. but seriously...i’ve decided now that i’m on the receiving end of missionary letters, just printing a picture of something cool you did and sending that with a caption is way funner than a long handwritten letter (both are great, but the pic is funner longer...:))     summer looked awesome....love seeing all those tow-head grandkids.  and holy cow jax is growing....he’s gonna be taller than tanner if he lays off the blonde oreos and doughnuts. :)

Dad- thats cool you got to be with the missionaries so much....are you all implementing crazy changes using facebook and social media more?  one of sister lee’s missionary friends is using facebook now, but us here in korea will be at the end of the line for all these changes.... and yes...i LOVE KIMCHI now.... i don’t know exactly when it changed. at first, i had to eat just a tad at a time...but now i’m full korean now. I eat all of it and its all soo good.  me and sis lee eat kimchi every morning....

Tev—   hey thanks for the letter! its good to hear from you!!  jill’s been really good about sending pictures, but its fun to hear your description of ellie!  haha i do think she looks a lot like me when i was young...hopefully she doesn’t end up as ornery though! hahaa

Trav— haha congrats on the jumpcreek find. i’ve heard so much about that dang rock face. we’ll have to go find it again when i get home. i want to see a pic of jax’ poison ivy. they always warn us so much about poison ivy but i’ve never actually seen someone get it....sorry jax...

Hey i heard there was a shooting or something on a military base in DC?  does tanman know anything more about it and has it affected him at all??

k well...this ones a doosie....don’t complain about the letter being too long haha.


PICTURES

1. This is a hundred and something white missionaries all taking the subway together at the same time. The koreans have never seen such a sight.



2. Hanging out in the park



3. Escalator down into the subway....



4. Sister Bassett and Sister Fudge!!  Sister B is from my MTC district and sister fudge was the group behind us in the MTC....they are now companions. crazzzy!


5. The Sanbon  twins.....me and Elder Anderson

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