Hello!
Kind of a slow week this week as well. I think Brother 영군수 dropped himself. He hasn't answered the phone or responded to any texts since last week. He might just be on vacation or something, but we don't know. We'll probably contact him a couple of more times, and then have to give up on him. That really, REALLY hurts our teaching pool...
Oh, but we had someone new come to English class, and we set things up with her and the sister missionaries so we can meet outside of English class. She says she doesn't have a religion, but hopefully she'll be interested in learning more. We've got a few other contacts that are kind of potential potential investigators, so we'll have to work on getting in touch with them as well.
This week, we spent a lot of time going to and coming from Jeju City. They had a baptism, and so Elder 허 and helped with special musical number (they made me sing :( It turned out oooookayish), so we went up there like 3 times more than normal so we could practice.
Thank you for the questions Dad! I'll try and answer a few of them:
I don't really know if there's a huge difference between people in 서귀포 and 영도. There's definitely less of them, haha. I've heard from people that 서귀포 is a bit stronger religiously (I don't know the history of 서귀포, but I think someone said something about history...?), and anyways, people don't care as much about religion. I can't really see a HUGE difference between 영도 and 서귀포, so I don't know how true that is. 서귀포 somehow feels a little different though; it kind of feels more like everyone that's outside is trying to get somewhere. Less people kind of just chilling, so it feels harder to talk to people (not that's it's easy to start with...!)
I heard a lot of scary stories about the 제주도 accent (our district president said that it's different enough from Korean to be considered a separate language), but it's actually not really a problem. Old, old people use it, but anyone younger than like 60 uses normal Korean, so I think it's been a problem only once. I was calling people, and an old lady picked up, and had no idea what she was saying. My companion says that he doesn't understand it either though, so I don't feel bad about that.
Oh, and I guess with modernization and all that, the accent is kind of dying off. Like 30 years ago, everyone on the island spoke differently, but nowadays, most everyone speaks the standard Korean. They had the World Cup in 서귀포 a few years back, and the government tried hard to clean up the language, so that other Koreans could understand them, and I guess that really hurt the 제주 accent.
It's kind of weird in that it's not really an accent. Like, in English, if you think of an accent, that means you pronounce the same words differently. But on 제주도, the grammar forms they use are different. It's difficult to describe, since English doesn't have grammar forms like Korean does, but basically, it's not that the words are said differently, it's that the words themselves are different. But I don't need to know the "accent" to function in 서귀포, thank goodness.
So to answer your question, yes I can notice it, but it's something the people choose to use or not when they speak (unlike, say, a New York accent which is always there). Does that make sense?
서귀포 is almost exclusively touristic (?). The only really big industries (is that what you call it?) here are tourism and farming clementines. Really, I haven't seen a whole lot of fishing going on (there was a lot more in 영도), or really, anything else. So 서귀포 is a fairly quiet little place. :/
Hm, one thing that I noticed about Elder 허 is that he thinks big. He has big dreams, I guess. I think he sees possibilities and potential in people much more than I do. When we're planning, he sometimes goes really far - like, "If we can help this guy come back to church, then we can meet with his brother, and then, and then...". Stuff like that. It's a good thing, for sure. We've made a lot of plans for people that I hadn't considered, or people I kind of just forgot. I need to learn to think like that too - he's made me realize that we have a lot more people to work with than I thought.
Elder 허 is from 수원, which is south of Seoul I guess. Not really sure, haha.
We speak Korean like 98% of the time. I feel like his English is pretty good, but he doesn't really speak it. And I have no idea how good my Korean is, since I don't have anything to compare myself with. I like to think it's at least normal! :D
Um, as far as names goes, I'm not sure what the rules are - I don't know what proper. I tend to call people by there full names, because Koreans have a lot of common names. Out of like the 6 men in our branch, I think maybe half of them are "김"'s, so I use their full names so it's not confusing. In normal Korean, people tend not to use names - you use titles instead. So in church, most people call me "Elder" not "Elder Luke." Likewise, they usually call each other "Brother" and "Sister" without their actual names attached. The reason why I type out the full name is because that's what I'm used to - just parts of names takes a lot longer for me to recognize and understand.
Well, that's about all I have time for. Sorry there's not a lot of actual content about what I'm doing. This week was kind of crazy, and so this email is probably all over the place. Hopefully, I'll be able to write a little bit better next week...!
Love you all!
- Elder Luke
Notes:
영군수: Yeong Gunsu, a man Andrew first mentioned on February 24, and talked about again on March 10. Previously he spelled his family name as Yang (양).
서귀포: Seogwipo, his current area.
영도: Yeongdo, his previous area.
World Cup in 서귀포: This was in 2002. The Seogwipo Stadium is about three miles straight west from where Andrew lives.
제주도: Jeju-do, the island he's on now.
Elder 허: Elder Heo, his companion.
수원: Suwon, Elder Heo's home town. A city about 20 miles south of Seoul, which happens to be one of the two places I've been in Korea.
김: Kim, the surname of half the men in the Seogwipo branch.
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