Anyunghaseo!
My first weekish of the MTC has gone pretty well. Korean is still hard, but I've gotten to the point where I can at least pick out the nouns and verbs I know when my teachers are speaking in Korean. I don't know 100% what they're saying, but I can usually guess at it.
Thank you for your letters! I got them last night, and it was fun to read them all! I would write letters back, but that takes up a lot of time (you don't have a whole lot of free time here!), and to be honest, I've never sent a letter before and I'm a little scared I'll mess it up. :)
Daniel, Lisa, summer vacation sounds nice. You two are lucky! But let me tell you, you get waaaaay more done in the day when you wake up at 6:00 am. Remember that!
I have two teachers at the MTC, Bro. Sung and Bro. Campell. They both served in Korea (of course!), though Bro. Sung lived there quite a bit and grew up speaking Korean. Bro. Sung my Korean teacher, and he started to use English to teach around five days ago, and that helps a ton. He's a great teacher; he's interesting and funny, and I look forward to his class every day (He's very Asian though! When he introduced himself, he told us that he was born in the year of the dragon. A few people laughed, and Bro. Sung was really confused why people thought that that was funny. I guess it might be standard to say in Korea?). Bro. Campell was our first "investigator," and he started teaching last night. He's our teacher for Gospel topics and how to be an effective missionary - things like our purpose, how to study and plan, etc. He spoke mostly in Korean, which really frustrated me at first. I felt like I wouldn't be able to learn if the lesson was all in Korean, but I later realized that him not speaking English meant that I really had to try to understand what he was saying. It might not be a very efficient way to teach, but it's good training for being able to hear and understand Korean.
About my district: we have 12 people, 8 elders and 4 sisters. I think 7 are going to Busan, and 5 to Seoul. I'm not sure if I mentioned this last time, but I was a little worried about becoming friends with the other eldars (we're not supposed to say "guys" at the MTC...), especially because 6 of them share a room, and Eldar Stapley and I are in another room with people from another district. But we played four-square as a district, and kind of slacked off and talked during out study time, and I feel like we're much closer together as a district, which is good. I'm friendly with if not friends with an Elder Dede and an Elder Pickard. It's not like I hate the other people or anything, but I haven't talked to them as much, and I think I'm closer in personality to Elder Dede and Pickard than the other people.
Since Lisa wrote about choir in her letter, I'll write a bit about that. Sorry to say, my choir career you had hoped for me is likely not happening. My whole district wanted to go to choir (except me, thought some of the elders were going because the choir is performing in the Mariott Center, and they wanted a chance to get out of the MTC for a bit), so I was forced to tag along. Once we got there my district realized that they wanted people that knew how to sing. Luckily, after rehersal, Elder Dede said that he didn't want to go sing in the devotional, so we teamed up as temporary companions and just watched instead of particpating, which I was more than happy to do. Apparently, the choir gets to perform at some big training session or something, and I think the Twelve Apostles will be there. But I still don't want to join. (and the important members of the Church don't want to hear me sing (;n;)
Oh, and I met Elder Carter, who is one of mom's friend's friend's son (...?). He mentioned that our moms know each other, which I didn't know. It's a small world! After church I met with a couple of the other half-Japanese missionaries and we talked a little. We all said that our moms worried about us going to Korea, so I guess it's a shared concern for Japanese parents.
Mom wants me to talk about food I guess, so here goes: it's not that good. It's cafeteria food, so it's pretty much all processed/frozen foods. It kind of kills my appetite to be honest.... Like even if I can fit more food in my stomach, I don't feel like eating any more after one plate (I don't ever stuff myself like I did back home!). I am excited to each delicous food in Korea though; it'll be so different from what I get here.
My daily scedule goes something like this: Wake up at 6:00. Shower, brush teeth, shave, dress. Go to study session at 7:00. Breakfast at 7:45. Some combination of personal study, gym time, computer-based language study, and extra study time until lunch at 12:40 (the time slots for eveything changes depending on the day of the week). Class for 3 hours after that, then personal language study for an hour. Planning session with companion for around half and hour. Dinnner at 5:40, class again for 3 hours (I think the afternoon class will usually be Korean, and Gospel/missionary lessons in the evening). I'm done at 9:30, change, brush teeth, write in journal, review goals. We're supposed to have lights out at 10:30, and I usually fall asleep at around 11:00, 11:30 if my roomates start snoring.
P-days are a little more relaxed, but we have to do service at 6:00 (a.m.!) before we start our day. Within the time given, we go to the temple, do laundry, do any shopping at the bookstore we need to do, write letters/emails, and catch up on studying and lesson planning. I thought that P-days were a time where I could take a lovely, lovely nap, but they're as busy as regular days! Oh, and P-day ends at 6:00pm, so it's classes after that.
Oh and for Daniel: One of the elders in my district asked Bro. Sung if he knew how to play Starcraft. He answered, "Of course, it's like... learning to tie your shoe. Everybody knows how to play Starcraft."
Well, there's still more I want to say (we've learned a lot about weird Korean culture stuff that I wanted to write about), but we only get an hour for emails. I guess it used to be half an hour, which is crazy short. Please keep asking questions! Since I'm the first missionary in our family, I get to be the person to tell everyone else what it's like :D. Oh, and if I didn't answer someone's questions, send it again. I'll probably forget.
Well, I guess I'm a missionary, so I should include a little spiritual thought here. It's amazing how effective prayer is. I don't know if it's because I'm at the MTC or if I was normally too distracted to notice, but I feel like I get little inspirations very often. I was worried that my Korean study on my own wasn't very effective, so I prayed that I would be able to figure out how to work it out. The next day, I studied a chapter in PMG about effective language study, and whenever I had an idea, I would write it down in my planner. By the end of the day, I put all my ideas together, and I had a study plan! Studying grammar and vocabulary are obvious parts of it, but I got the impression that I should read out loud something I was unfamiliar with every day. I think this will help me with recognizing sounds and words, and reading is something we don't practice in class, so it'll be helpful to practice this. I haven't had a chance to actually USE my plan yet, but I'm excited to see how it will go.
Thanks for your prayers, letters and support!
- Luke-Jangno
Notes:
District: in the MTC, a group of people who have class together.
PMG: An abbreviation for "Preach My Gospel," which is a missionary handbook / textbook / guidebook.
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