In Which RoseE Gets The Silent Treatment

RoseE writes:

"Dear Mum and Dad,

. . . At least all of your surrounding surgeries are relatively necessary. I'm just beginning to discover how many people I know . . . including Sister Pak Sung Hee . . . have had plastic surgery on their eyelids. On their eyelids! People get this surgery as casually as they get haircuts, chopping their eyelids up so they'll fold above the eyeball and not under the lashline when their eyes are open. Apparently having a crease in your eyelid is the most attractive feature you can have . . . because that's how foreigners' eyes look. Korea has a very complicated love/hate relationship going on with the rest of the world.

So, this week. Ups and downs again, even higher and lower than last week. The lowest down was that Sister Yoon decided to give me the silent treatment for a day and a half, from Thursday at the whale museum (which was fairly fun otherwise) to Friday morning, when she finally conceded to my begging and let me pry out of her what was wrong. She's having a stressful first transfer, as does everybody, but she doesn't really know how to cope with it or deal with a companion. These were things that I learned in the pressure-cooker of the MTC, but she didn't have that experience. This is her pressure-cooker and I'm her learn-through-trial-and-error companion. Friday was the worst day of my mission so far. Left everything else in the dust.

But Monday I got to go on splits with Sister Ogelvie!! And it wasn't even 'cuz I abused my Chamei dep priviledges . . . Sis Pak Sung Hee wanted to split with Sis. Yoon, and I just let her go for it. So I got to serve with one of my best mission friends (certainly the only mission friend still alive) for the first time, for a whole day. It was way exciting. We got to kind of process with each other how we feel about suddenly being 'old' missionaries, about everything we've learned and all the ways we've changed and the challenges we still have left to face. It was deeply theraputic. And English became a toy instead of a burden . . . the two of us trying to remember at 6:45 a.m. the respective meanings of 'exhibition,' 'expidition,' and 'exposition.' This is not as easy as you would maybe think.

And we taught sister Song Yeong Ok again, who is progressing just fine. We shared the Word of Wisdom and invited her to cut down on her one-coffee-a-day habit . . . both her daughter and her live-in less-active son are supporting her in starting to live this commandment. The son, I think, is doing it mostly to be annoying, but it's good that he remembers the Word of Wisdom. This could be cool.

This week we went tearing up to Hogae ward AGAIN to catch our investigators . . .and they didn't show. And one is not answering our calls. And all the while Elder Bocchino and Bangeojin branch are wailing for us to come down to see them. Gaaah! When does the other team get here? Three weeks. Can we hold down the fort here in Ulsan for another three weeks?

It's also been mostly sunshine-free this week. I'm astonished at the effect the weather can have on my mood. Sunshine, and I'm as chipper as a sister missionary is expected to be. Clouds, and I want to curl up in a ball and wait for it to all be over.

And I've somehow managed to not excercise one single morning this week. Not sure how that happened. I think that might be part of the problem, too.

Don't worry about Teancum's gray hairs. His hair's almost gray-colored anyway.* And I get them all the time now--I think they're cool. It's just one of those weird genetic things, I think, when you go gray. Ask Cat, but that's what I remember from Ekberg's** biology. (Yeah, yeah, I'm not Em***, I don't remember much from that class.)

Um . . . I think that's it, news-of-the-week-wise. Another week done. Heading through Lent, and Easter's in sight. Maybe there will be sunshine. Maybe there won't be. But we hang on nevertheless.

And if I made a list of food things, would Dad go down to the Korean market some Saturday and see if he can find them, so I know what I should smuggle home through customs? Sis. Ogelvie is also interested in getting some info about the availability of imported Korean food products in the Salt Lake/Utah Valley area.

I love you! Stay out of trouble! Church is true, life's pretty good, peanut butter is a blessing and you can make really delicious and easy rice crispie treats out of it with the puffed rice you buy on the street.

RoseE"


*It has changed in the last year to dark brown, or perhaps RoseE's memory is faulty, because those gray hairs show up very well!

** notoriously difficult high school biology teacher

*** Emily. RoseE's best friend. (You know who you are.)