MTC Week 2! (June 14, 2013)

Anyunghaseo!

How's the family reunion going? I bet it's fun to see everyone again and get to hang out in South Carolina - Lucky!

So Dad asked how my language study/classes in general works, so I'll explain. Dad wrote a lot about studying out of books, but we really don't have like a main textbook that we study from. On the first day, we were given this huge bag of books that had a PMG in Korean, a book for basic Korean grammar, a book for advanced Korean grammar, a book for basic Korean phrases, an English-Korean/Korean-English dictionary, and a small book of missionary phrases (like how to say prayers, how to invite people to baptism, sentances to explain each PMG lesson, things like that), a Korean bible and Korean Book of Mormon/D&C/Pearl of Great Price, along with several booklets about various gospel topics. I mostly use the missionary phrase book. It comes with a E-K/K-E dictionary of the words that we'll mostly likely be using, and it's much smaller and easier to use than the big dictionary.

I guess we could study out of the grammar books if we really wanted, but for the most part, the teacher will give us the grammar forms that he thinks is going to help us out the most. I was wrong about Bro. Sung being the Korean teacher, and Bro. Campbell being the gospel teacher though - they both do a little of everything. Class periods are 3 hours long, and so we usually split it into 3 1-hour sections. One hour goes to teaching our investigators (our teachers), and two people have 30 min to give their lesson. The rest of the class spends that time preparing lessons for later, or studying vocab for the lesson the teacher will give.

As a side note, teaching investigators is hard when you don't know a lot of Korean words! Our first investigator, Chegandok, was really nice, and I think he spoiled us. He was always willing to accept commitments, and seemed very agreeable with what we said. One of our other investigators, Bakcholoo, asks a lot of questions that makes it hard to teach. He asked us why there are so many different churches if there's only one Christ. That's not an easy answer to explain simply in English, let alone Korean! Luckily, I learned how to say "next lesson," so once we decided that we couldn't easily answer his question, we were able to move on. He asked another question that we understood but couldn't reply to, so he just told us to ignore it and move on. D: I think it's good practice though. We don't do much of making sentences on the fly, so it's good to make me think. It was fun though. He asked me the difference between baptism by immersion and sprinkling, so I go to act out baptism with sentences like "is water," and "is person." Bro. Su- I mean Backcholoo was smiling the whole time, so I think he had fun too, even if it was hard for him to understand and communicate with us.

So anyways, about class. The teachers mostly just teach about grammar forms. The students are expected to learn vocabulary on their other study times, so we really don't cover that. We pick up words that the teach says a lot though, like "why," "how," "good," "this way," "does not exist," "you guys," "question," and basically any other word that makes it so we can actually communicate and understand what the teacher is saying. Dad asked if the books are newer or not, but to be honest, I haven't really looked at them, so I have no idea. We also learn about other missionary-related stuff. Bro. Sung gave a pretend lesson about the Plan of Salvation yesterday so that we could see and hear that we can teach lessons simply with the grammar that we already have. We've also had lessons about how to study your language and writing up a study schedule, our purpose as missionaries, setting goals, things like that. But I think we're both teacher's first class; Bro. Sung's only taught Koreans so far, and Bro. Campbell is less than a year off of his mission (I think), so I don't know if what we're studying is exactly what the others are too.

In his letter, Dad gave me some advice to not get discouraged once the newness of the MTC wears off, which is funny because I wrote about sort of the same thing in my journal the other day. I don't think anyone in my district is really discouraged (There are some people that are behind others though. I think the teachers understand that and try to call on them more often to say sentances and answer questions. I don't know if that helps them or makes them more discouraged when they don't understand in front of the whole class though... but people are nice and try to help the others out though. Whenever we help someone else out, Bro. Sung says that there are spirits with the gift of tongues guiding the other person). Anyways, I'm starting to notice that people are getting a bit restless in class, especially the elders who played a lot of sports in college and high school. It's just hard spend like 10-11 hours a day sitting in a desk, listening or studying. The last like 20 minutes before a meal or before we're done for the day is probably our most unproductive. One elder who's companion is particularly having trouble focusing came up with the "dano walk," where they just walk around the MTC campus while studying vocabulary and grammar that they have on note cards. I've done that once, and while it's probably not as effective as sitting down and studying, it helps a lot to break up the study time.

Oh, just to mention, I've seen a handful of people I know here on campus. I've seen Kendall like 4 times (I guess he already has left by now!), a couple of people from my BYU classes that I was friends with, some people from high school, and a looooot of people that I recognize from classes at BYU, but I don't know their name and have never talked with them.

Now, little bit about Korea: my teacher said that in Busan and the southern parts of Korea, there's a kind of southern drawl. He says where it's really thick, it can be a little difficult to understand, especially for missionaries. I asked if Koreans find the accent charming or annoying, and he answered that people think that when men have the drawl, it's charming, but they prefer women to have the "pure" Korean from Seoul.

Korea is super humid and hot in the summer. Since everyone wears suits to work (Apparently, Koreans are a little bit prideful and wear nice clothes everyone. If they go shopping for groceries, they dress up at least a little. My teacher said that you'll never see people shopping in their pajamas like you do in the USA. He explains that another reason for this is that Koreans say that you're the only one who doesn't have to look at you - if you dress sloppily, then everyone else has to suffer because of it. Dressing nice shows respect to everyone who looks at you. I thought that was interesting.), Koreans invented/wear "summer suits." Basically, these are suits made out of really thin fabric; you can't tell when someone is wearing one, but when my teacher took off his jacket and held it up to the light, you could see through the material. The same goes for the pants too, so I may be buying another or several suits in Korea. He said non-fitted suits are probably around $70, and a really, really nice, fitted suit goes around $200, so things are cheap there.

Mom asked what I needed, so if you could sent me a winter hat, the flashlight, some deoderant, and the thing you put in the backs of binders, that would be great (I'm not sure what they're called, but it's a piece of plastic that goes after the last papers in a binder. I know we have some at home; it's black, as long as the binder is tall, is three-hole punched, curved, and it basically just makes it so the papers don't bend when you close the binder. I hope you can figure out what I'm talking about!). And about deoderant: Bro. Sung said that Koreans don't really really sweat, and when they do, it doesn't really smell that bad. So their deoderant is more of a cologne, not an antipersperant. He said to stock up now, because they're hard to find in Korea and usually a bit expensive.

As far a pictures go, we have a specific time on Sundays to take pictures at the temple. I'll bring my camera up then, and I can get a picture of me with my district. I'll try and get a picture of other things that you guys might be interested in. My companion's having trouble uploading pictures to the computers though, and I don't know if I will too, but I'll try (the computers).

I've been working on trying to be more positive here at the MTC. I know you guys have heard me complain about things way too much at home (the more I think about that, the worse I feel. Sorry! ;o;). Working and studying all day here makes me realize how much easiser life is at home! I think being positive and trying to see the bright side to everything makes life easier here. Instead of thinking about something insensitive someone said to me, I'm trying to just forget that and think about the good things they've done, like maybe when they've shared their testimony in class. Since I'm spending almost all day with these same 12 people, it's important that I do my best to get along with them. Class is long, but thinking about that doesn't make it any shorter. Let me tell you - cleaning bathroom at 6:10 in the morning is a lot better when you don't dwell on the negatives too much. :D

I might write about my district and each person in it specifically next week. I know I haven't written much about my companion either (for example, he's having problems with getting his visa, and the way companionships work, pretty much all of his problems also become my problem...).

Anyways, thanks for the letters and all your support!

Anyunheekesayo until next week!

- Luke jangno



Notes:

dano: Korean word for "vocabulary word."

Anyunheekesayo: standard Korean "goodbye" phrase.