Korea Week 10 (I have now been in Korea longer than I was at the MTC!)

So this week has been pretty great!

I think that the biggest problem for me as a missionary, is that we're so busy and time flies so fast that by the time email day comes I don't remember much of anything that happened in the week. The lists of things to talk about that I write don't seem to help tons, either.

Last week, I neglected to write about, I attended a Korean wedding. It was really cool. The procession of it was fast, fun and slightly different than what I think North Amercan weddings are like (I've only been to two other weddings... and I was a wee' boy when they happened). The food was great though! and the moms of the couple were both wearing traditional-style Korean dresses, which was pretty neat to see.

Here's a goofy pic with my district that we took last pday!

This week, we got to go to a Korean funeral! Quite the transition, huh? I'm not even sure if it was a funeral. We showed up to this place, we went up to the family of the deceased person (whom we know and love) and there was a picture of the mom (as it turns out it was the mom / mother-in-law of these two) and we did this crazy bow thing to the picture. We bowed so low that our foreheads touched the ground, and then we did it again, and then we did a 90-degree standing bow. Then we turned to the family and did the deep-to-the-ground-bow to them (I would like it to be noted that I felt like I almost faceplanted myself when I was doing these), and then a 90-degree bow. Then they fed us (Koreans ALWAYS feed you). This place that this was taking place at served traditional Korean funeral food. There was Kimchi and rice (big surprise) and there were assorted other side dishes as there always is at a Korean meal. These were weird, though. Some of the notable ones were little whole fishes serves with green beans and sauce, which nobody made me eat, and there were these strips of weird-looking meat.... which I WAS made to eat. I ate one, before anyone told me what it was, and it tasted good, but it felt sooo weird in my mouth. The texture was strange. I learned later that I was eating the not-completely-ground meat of a pig's head, and that the thing making it feel weird was the pig skin (like, the whole layer of skin) that was lining it.

Can you guess what I did?

I bravely ate another piece to show the Koreans that I am willing to experience their culture. I kind of ruined my appetite by doing it, though... and I couldn't get myself to eat another one (never mind the rest of the plate of them, like they were encouraging me to do). So I ate the rest of my rice and some kimchi and called it good. I hope that that doesn't happen again anytime soon. *knocking on wood*

Aside from that; General Conference was GREAT! We got an investigator to come out to Sunday session! We were so happy!

We picked up a new investigator, too! He's a Tae Kwon Do master, and he told us that if we taught him English that he would teach us Tae Kwon Do. He wants to lean English so that he can do Missionary work in Thailand, so we asked him if, since we're missionaries, we could talk about the gospel instead? He agreed! Woohoo! He's super fun, too. We really like him.

I think that that's the report for this week, though. My regards from the super-nice PC 방 in Korea!

I love you all!

Elder Shaver

P.S. Here's a cool painting of chinese characters saying 'Prince of England' because people keep saying I look like him, so an old guy we visited painted this for me.