Almost the last week of the transfer!

This was a good week! We got to teach a lot and I'm just about done with my initial for pass-off which was the biggest struggle!  I went on a split this week with Elder Cowles and that was really fun!  He taught me how to 가가호호 (which is basically knocking doors) in a big apartment building. And we found a cool little Buddhist building thing as we were walking around too!  

I pulled out my Texas flag from my suitcase the other day and it is now displayed above my bed (or it was till it fell off the wall...).  

It's been a pretty awesome week!  I talked to a guy and girl (the girl joined our conversation our of curiosity and to help translate for both of us) on the back of a bus. I explained about and gave him a Book of Mormon and got his number.  I called him last night  to see when we could meet with him and that was a trip.  Korean over the phone, is entirely different from Korean in person!  I had absolutely no clue of a single word that he was saying.  But my companion helped out and hopefully we'll get to meet up with him this week.  He was a cool guy :)  

My missionary 'mom' (the oldest sister in you first district) goes home this week which is crazy!  She started her mission back when I was a junior in high school!!  Elder Cowles leaves this week for his next and last area, and coincidentally enough, his next companion is going to be Elder Murdoch, my MTC companion!  Hahaha.  
 

I forgot to mention that we went bowling last week!  I averaged around a 100 :P But Elder 박인오 had the coolest bowling style ever!  Too bad the only video I got of him bowling he got a gutter ball ;)

 
I don't have much time to write, but I love all of you! Have a great week!

One Month in the Country!

Wow, I've been in the country for over a month now! I can hardly even believe that!  The big holiday, 추석, was fun!  All the stores were closed for the most part, the buses ran less often and had practically no one on them, and there were no cars out practically anywhere!  That is until the next day (make that the next 2) when the streets were flooded with cars trying to go back home.  I heard that that's just because I'm in 광주 (Gwangju) which is a pretty big city. Apparently when you're out in smaller little cities, everything is completely deserted basically the whole time!

 

Me and Elder Cowles looking fly

 This week I had my first meal at Lotteria with one of our investigators.  My companion hates Lotteria food (except for the ice cream), but I didn't have a bit of a problem with it!  Also in regards to food, we (all the missionaries in my district) ate at a buffet with Robert Holley (who is a famous tv star to Koreans) And so basically all of the people we saw that knew we were with him must have thought that we were all American tv stars too. Hahaha

 

This week we went up to Daejeon for TNT, which is where all the greenies and their trainers have a meeting just to see how everything is going and what not.  That was really great to get to see all of my 동기 (MTC group) again and how they're doing.  We've all made leaps and bounds in Korean, and all had some pretty good stories to share.

 

This week we also had our 'Robert Holley English Speech Contest' which was a way for us to find investigators and be a good activity for them.  That was fun.  We heard 40 or so short little English speeched on dreams, or hobbies, or friends, and the like.  Some people were incredible at english, some were super funny, and some were so cute while they spoke.  I guess I probably look the same while I'm trying to rack my brains to speak Korean!

 

Elder Skinner (our AZL)

Elder 박 sitting on my bed

 

 It was a really busy week with travel and big events and what not, so there aren't too many crazy stories! ....Except for trying to do calculus in Korean. That was a struggle....

 

The price of a car in Korea (They look so dang expensive with all those zeros!)

 

 

Love all of ya!

The Past 2 Weeks!

Sorry that I didn't get around to posting a blog entry last week other than those pictures!  I'll try to sum up the past two weeks as best I can!

 

 

This week Elder Wagner and I scored a desk for our house; now he doesn't have to use two filing cabinets pushed together for his desk anymore!  We made a 광고 (an advertisement) for how we teach free English.  We post those around our area all the time and people call and we can get new people to teach in that way.  We walked down by a big soccer stadium in the southern part of our area and that was cool! It's got a huge Lotte Outlet store right next to it.  Elder Wagner and I didn't know the store was there and first saw it from behind.  And the back entrance is on the top of a hill, and it looks like a dinky little shop.  But it was Lotte Outlets, so we were confused.  We went in, and quickly discovered how huge it is!

 

 

We had our interviews with President Shin that we have every two transfers.  I'm one of those groups that just had an interview with president just a few weeks before this one.  We got a new fan for the house, so now we aren't 'sharing' one with the other companionship (Elder Cowles and Elder 박) So that's something good! Because of the interviews, the APs stayed at our house for the night, and that was really fun!

 

Elder Wagner and I met with one of his recent converts and helped him with some o
f his essays for school that he has to write in Korean.  We discovered that even though Elder Wagner and I both speak English, we have different writing styles.  We finally just had to decide that both of our ways of writing was grammatically correct and completely fine, even if that's not how we would have written it.  Who thought speaking English could get so dramatic?? ;)

 

We went to a young single adults game night thing (all of us 10 missionaries) because we had some investigators going.  At one point, some of the girls (not the sister missionaries!) danced to K-pop songs on the stage - cause dance competitions are normal in Korea and a lot of people do it as a hobby I guess.  Hearing that music was so weird, cause it had like bass in it.  Hahaha, but yeah!

 

I went to the clothes store and bought multiple ties for super cheap! Korea!  And according to the missionaries that I was with, they were like twice as much as ties you can find at other places (like 6000 원 [Won] instead of 3000 원) 

 

We discovered that in 광주 (Gwangju - my city) that every night in one part of town they have like a show that's like Disneyland's 'World of Color.'  Of course it wasn't as impressive as at Disneyland at all, but it was still pretty impressive!

 

 

This week I went on a split with our Zone Leader, Elder Allan.  That was fun!  We met with his investigators and he introduced me to two of his favorite drinks: 밀키스(Milkis) and 코코팜 (Coco Palm).  One of his investigators was a Korean guy who lived in England for a little while and speaks really good English. And he had the best English accent ever!  Ahh, it was like talking to a guy from England!  Afterwards we went and had Whoppers at Burger King with him (they were only 3000원 each!).  But before we decided to go, he said my favorite thing a Korean has said to me here.  He asked: What do you fancy 우즈? (my name is in Korean. They say it like 'Ooh-juh') and it was in his sick accent and everything! It was awesome!  The next day I had a little split with Elder Skinner, the assistant ZL and that was cool too!  I had some good soup with him!

 

 We went to a 외국인 party on Saturday (me, Wagner, Skinner, and Allan) and met some cool people from all over.  I talked to an Egyptian guy named Emad who was really cool!  We talked some about the church and he told me some of the stuff he believed (he's Muslim) and stuff like that. We talked in English, and I realized just how hard teaching in English is!  Because I don't have practice teaching simply in English, I went crazy with excitement, jumping from this topic, to this one and kind of confused him. If I could do it over again I would have taught much more simply.  Korean really restricts me to teaching simply in a good way, but for those times I do teach in English I have to contain myself.  But we're going to keep meeting him cause he's totally excited to do that.  He called me Mr. Woods.  It was so cool!

 

 

 

Today is 추석 a big Korean holiday.  It's like their equivalent of Thanksgiving in the US, but it's like Christmas in regards to just how big it is.  People all travel around and most stores are all closed.  We're going to go to a members house (us missionaries) and play games there so that's going to be fun I think!  I'll tell more exciting stuff about what happened next week if it's noteworthy!

 

Well I love you all!  Stay safe!

Pictures!

A big outlet store!

A truck with a TV display on the side!

"King Grapes" -- bigger than the coin!

The subway character thing!