Happy New Year! Again!

{Jan. 24, 2012}

Hey everyone,

Sorry I'm a little later than normal, and a little earlier than when I
said I would be on. We found out we had to email during study before
district meeting. But thanks for the quick update. Sounds like
everyone is busy. I can't believe Danielle and Jesse are actually
moving to Texas. That's weird. But exciting. To answer Jesse's
questions about the Chinese New Year, it's called 설날(Seol Nal) in
Korean. I'm not sure what it's called in Chinese and Japanese, but I'm
pretty sure they celebrate it too. It's a three day holiday where
families all get together and pay respects to their ancestors and
grandparents and parents. The kids do a special little bow to them and
tell them to receive lots of new year blessings, and then the
parents/grandparents give them money. It's a good holiday if your a
kid. There is a traditional meal. It's called 떡국 (ddeok guk). It's
like a soup full of rice patties and little stips of beef with egg and
a little sea weed. When you eat it, that's when you turn one year
older. I ate it 3 times in the past 4 meals. Holy cow. It was like a
bottomless bowl staring at me, taunting me. It's actually pretty good,
but it's hard to eat so much of it. Koreans also dress up in their
traditional clothing, which is awesome! All the Korean sisters wore it
at our mission conference yesterday. I want some, but it's pretty
expensive. Anyway. That's a traditional Korean Chinese New Year for
you. Not quit the same as getting together to play Wackee Six and have
Hawaiian Haystakes, but it's good. Happy Birthday to Kadin and Kylie!
You guys are finally teenagers. Holy smokes. "The babies" are growing
up. Well at least Kylie is. Haha. Kadin still has some work to do.
Haha. And grandpa and grandma are on their mission now. That's fun. Do
they have to drive all the way there? Does the church not pay for
them? I bet they're pretty excited.

Well this week has been pretty good. One thing I forgot to mention
last week is that I bought myself a new Korean suit. It's legit. There
was a random sale going on at a store in our area and it was the last
day so we quickly decided to go in and get some. So that was cool. We
picked up a new investigator last week. Also very cool. I guess he had
an interesting past with his family and it's something that only
Koreans can understand. There's even a word for it in Korean, but it
doesn't translate over to English. Boy, I just love things like that.
Luckily though, I have a Korean companion so he at least knows what's
going on. I had my first District meeting last week as a district
leader. That was kind of fun. I didn't know my mission president wrote
you guys. That's cool. Did he say anything else? I talked to Elder
Stanley at our conference yesterday and he said in his district
there's only one other American. The rest are all Korean. Haha.
Hopefully they can understand his trainings, because they're probably
really good. And funny.

Speaking of funny. I have a quote/story from my companion. So everyday
we read from the white handbook and we were on the part that says
companions should sleep in the same room, but not the same bed. Then
later that day, we saw two guys riding on one bike and my companion
asked me if that's weird in America, and I said yeah that's weird
pretty much everywhere. Then he paused for a moment and said, they
probably sleep in the same bed. I thought it was hilarious. Way to go
companion for applying the white handbook to our daily activities!
Another funny thing he says is "Le'ts go Dorius! Tackle!" He thinks
I'm a Pokemon. He also tells me to use my thunderbolt occasionally.
It's awesome.

It finally snowed this morning. We've actually been really lucky with
the weather so far this winter. It's been relatively warm. Until this
last weekend when the temperature plummitted (I can't remember how to
spell that word) and it got super cold. It finally feels like a
"Korean winter" again. I was hoping I could sneak through this winter
without it being too cold or snowy, but I didn't quite make it.
Hopefully it's not a long winter. Here's another cool thing. Today is
my one year mark in Korea. I think. There was so much time travel
going on when we got here I can't really remember what day it was, but
I think it was today. Woot. Well I better go. Sorry I wrote a novel.
Hopefully it doesn't take too much time out of your busy schedule.
Talk to you later.

Love, Elder Dorius