2013.01.28 snail mail

Dear Home,

One more crazy week.  I kind of blew through everything in the email, but not in much depth.  Sorry about that.  Missionaries seriously don't have much time.  And there were people waiting for the computers.

Good news, the work is awesome.  I've been learning a lot, I've been finding ways to streamline using time, and we're seeing a lot of people start to build an interest in the Gospel.  As a foreigner, it's a very unique experience.  How do you build good relationships in a foreign language, when there's a lot of culture you don't understand well.  Things you learn with time.

Anyway, I write that every letter.  Must be boring.  Learned some fun things about Korean though. You know "the grass is always greener"?  They have an expression like that, "His rice cake is bigger than my rice cake."  =D  Also, there are some things that just don't seem to have a translation.  Like "could".  You can say 

"the ability existed," but it sounds weird.  Even to me it sounds weird.  They just don't say could much.  There's also no verb for "to dry".  There's "to be dry," but no "to dry."   Apparently you can't dry something.  You have to "towel" it or something.  So fun.  ^^  No "depends" either.  Funny ittle things like drive me crazy.

But at the same time, the opposite is true, too.  Like 

to compare.

But more than compare.  That would be

This one is judging differences between things, which is better.  Fun words like that.  But I'm terrible at remembering all the ones I learn about, so that's all I'll say for this week.

Expressions are fun though.  In Korean, they don't learn many English expressions.  And in Korean there really aren't many, so they're fun to teach.  (writing on the go again)

Anyway, I love it here.  Our river froze up again and Sunday we had a little snow.  I just love how clear it got after that first big stretch of rain.  When I first got here, there was a lot of haze on the horizon.  At first I thought it was the humidity.  But a big part of it is pollution.  Lots of dense cities here.

But after the rain, I finally got to see what this area is like.  Lots of mountains/hills around here, beautiful landscape just outside the city.  Maybe I'll get to check it out sometime.  I miss nature.

But as always, there's never much time, especially here.  

missionaries actually have to shop here.  And not living in our area, appointments take a lot more travel time.  Between food and travel expenses, it's been fun rebudgeting things.

Not too bad, but I'll never understand why people like to order food so much.  There are lots of cheap places in the city for when we're far from home, but why order something that costs close to $9 a person just to eat it at home? So many cheaper ways to do things.  But in a country where almost every companionship is Zion, there's a lot of give and take.  Sure makes budgeting erratic, though.  =D enough of that for now.

Life is good.  This week I'll have a split with a greenie, got here two weeks ago.  So I'll probably have to take lead when we go to Zone Conference and unsplit.  Traveling isn't too bad, but it'll be fun.

I'm really looking forward to Zone Conference, it should be fun.  ~ and P-day is over.  Sorry guys.  We had an appointment -- had to cut P-day shorter.

Love you!