First Pday at the MTC!

Hello everybody!

It's my third day in the MTC, my first p-day, and just another day of awesome!

The MTC is a wonderful place! Everybody's friendly, the Spirit is around ALL the time, we're all learning so fast, the only downside thus far is how cold it is outside. That, and how much time we spend in class... and how you're tired ALL the time. But you know what? I'm not complaining in the least bit.

We're teaching our first, *ahem, investigator today... In Hangookmar (Korean). ACK. It's only day three and we're already being asked to teach a lesson in our language?! WHAT?! We're freaking out, but really, we're doing okay. I mean, my companion and I are scripting out lesson line-for-line, so at least the two of us are fine. BY THE WAY, our teacher spoke almost nothing but Hangookmar to us in all of our classes. We had NO CLUE what he was going on about for a while, but we already understand him (thanks to his many hand-motions and miming and drawing, etc... But we get it! And we're learning! Yay!)

My companion is DeMille jeongnoh-nim, from SLC Utah. He's pretty awesome. His grandma is Korean so he has a bit of head start as far as the language goes (which is really helpful for all of us in the district). My District is awesome! There's 11 of us, 8 elders and a sister tri-panionship (just for you, Shaylynn). There's a fourth sister that was apparently supposed to come in from New Zealand, but that's more of a rumor at this point. I haven't met everybody yet, but the other two elders in my apartment are pretty cool. One of them, Meeks jeongnoh-nim, is a guitarist like myself. Like, same style of play and everything! As in crazy-fingerstyle! He knows people like Sungha and Andy Mckee! Meeting each other made both our days just because of that. Other than that, I've met pretty much all of the other elders, though I haven't had much of a chance to get to know all of them yet. The sisters, are great, too. One of them, Hoffman chamae-nim lived in Korea for a little bit, and so she has a head-start, too. I guess I guess I have a head-start with the language because of the Rosetta Stone (which is actually being really helpful these first few days), but it's hard to compete with real-life interacting with natives experience. Oh well, we're already starting to be at the same level. DeMille Jeongnoh-nim is better at speaking than I am, and he knows so many phrases than I can keep up with, but I think I got him beat with spelling (like that's going to be helpful for teaching :P ).

But yeah, other than that; the flights went well, although the 45-minute commute from the airport to the MTC ended up being more like two-and-a-half hours because the snow came down in buckets that very day. We tipped that driver well, because he was awesome about it. I ran into Rodgers chamae-nim a couple of times on Wednesday, which was a pleasant surprise for the both of us.

Our branch presidency is really awesome, too. President Yost, who doesn't speak a word of Hangookmar, is really nice. I like him a lot already. There's also Perrington hyongjae-nim, from New Zealand, and his wife (not from there). Snow hyongjae-nim and his wife. President Lee from Taejon, South Korea, and his wife from North Korea (cool, huh?). President Lee pretty much is over the actual Koreans. There are five of them in our branch, and they're awesome. I love them already.

But anyways, I don't want there to be a too-long wall of text for you guys to go through. I'm going to leave it there for now.

Sarang haeyo!

Bye for now!

Shaver Jeongnoh.