In Which RoseE Is Kissed By A Drunk and Gets A Prank Phone Call

RoseE writes:

"Dear Mum and Dad,

So we discovered this morning that Monday P-Day means the library, the youth center, and all the other amazingly useful places for e-mailing are now closed to us again. So we're back to Digital Plaza,

The Electronics Store, with dancing girls

the electronics store, trying not to get kicked out. Ah, cham.

Anyway, this has been kind of a drag-on week, 'cuz Sister Culver's been wiped out with this cold and so we've been trying to get her as much sleep as possible, to just kill it and be done. This morning she managed to get her own self out of bed, so that's a good sign. Hoping things will pick up hereafter. But highlights of the week include:

We found the doncas restoraunt run by the most awesome Jeong Hyeah Shim, and ate doncas there while chatting with her and her brother and sister. Sis Jeong (aka The Cake Lady) is about the most awsesome person I know. We love her whole family. After English class this week she took us out for jajjangmyeon (except it had octopus in it . . . I didn't know you could get jajjang with octopus. It was SO GOOD) and we bullied her into letting us pay 'cuz she's fed us like three times now. We are excited to start teaching her, but right now isn't good 'cuz she's trying to cram through her cake-baking course and is studying every waking minute except the minutes that she's taking us out to eat. So we're encouraging her through that, and in the meantime are trying to get ward activities happening again so she can come out and meet some ward folks.

Sister Jeong Hyeah Shim aka the Cake Lady

We went to the Daegongwon Rose Festival . . . big feature of this is concerts, too late at night for us to go to them, but we did get to go see the rose gardens for free, which was nice.

RoseE at the Rose Festival

We also hit the Daehwa River Water Festival, which was MUCH bigger and featured a lot of things I'm glad I got too see before I left Korea, like Korean traditional wrestling matches and the dragon boat race finals. (Hyundai won.) And just walking around in the sunshine talking to people is so very pleasant. I love Daehwa River.

Dragon Boat Races

World Cup: Korea vs. Greece. I didn't get to watch it, but BOY HOWDY did I hear it. We're in our apartment, quietly minding our own business after a hard day's work, and all of a sudden this ROAR resounds from outside, like every person in Ulsan just started screaming at the top of their lungs. Korea scored. We've also been kindly informed by everybody that America tied with Britain, so they're not doing too badly, really, for Americans.

Getting kissed by a drunk guy. An American from North Dakota. He'd been up all night and well into the following day watching US vs UK, and we met him on the street, where he kept us in conversation for a very, very long time, and finished it up by kissing both of us on the hand and cheek. I hope he doesn't remember this later. Elder Bocchino, when he heard of this (and also learned that the drunk guy in question was married; he'd told us so) labeled us both 'homewreckers.' I need that on a t-shirt.

OH, speaking of t-shirts, at the river festival we saw the Mother of All Korean T-Shirts, the Untoppable Wonder. It was being worn by a mom, out with her young family to see the festival. Printed on the t-shirt, in big black letters, was a neat list of every radically offensive epithet you can think of, one for each cultural or social group, just lined up neat as you please. She obviously had NO idea what it said. We almost worked up the nerve to ask her for a picture, but chickened out. Dang it.

Missionary work in general has not been much fun -- a lot of dead-ends and very, very awkward lessons. So no fun peppy news on that front, really, though Song Yeong Ok and Yoon Mi Hyeah are still coming to church, as did a lot of less-active families this week 'cuz it was branch conference. I spent too long gossiping with Sister Jennings. I always do.

Since last e-mailing, I had my last Zone Meeting. Ah, good old Shilla zone. Good folks all, from Shinjeong to Pohang. Zone meeting is presided over by the Zone leaders -- neither Prez nor the APs nor anybody high-ranking or official comes, so it sometimes decends into chaos. Highlights are 'Shilla time', the talent show portion, and the after-meeting game of werewolf while waiting for pizza to arrive. Good times have been had at zone meetings. And then I made the elders sing for a long while, prepping for Elder Ringwood's mission tour in two weeks. Nah, it's not intimidating . . . why would you think that? Silly.

And my photos are now all safely backed up on a flash drive, but I'm just going to keep it here with me and you can see 'em when I get home, though by then you probably won't want to, mission pictures being what they are and all. I'll send a few this week, though, while you're still interested.

And Guess Who called me this week.

Unlisted number registered in my phone. I picked up.

"Hello?"

"Yes . . . Who is this?" said a throaty female voice.

"Um . . . I'm Sister Hadden missionary."

"Yes. You served with me."

"Huh? You say I served with you?"

"Yes. Served last year."

"Last year? Did I meet you in Busan?"

"No . . . you were serving with a Maori person ."

"Oh, yes, yes. Sister Matthews. Do you know her?"

"Yes . . . "

"Wait . . ." *blink blink* "MATTHEWS?!?"

*uproarious laughter from the other end of the line* (translation thanks to Helena)

Yep . . . Sister Matthews called me and scared me to blessed death, me thinking she was some crazy Korean ajumoni stalker from a previous area. There is no rule against dead missionaries calling the mission phones, but that's only because there's no way Prez can enforce rules on those already dead . . . and even so, I'm sure there'll be one soon. But while there's still not, I had a great 15-min chat with my favoritest old companion, who is wigging out that I'm four weeks from the end of my service. Yeah, I know, it's bizarre, we're all shocked . . . It was great to hear from her. Just the surprise and smile I needed after kind of a long and blah week.

Yeah, yeah . . . if THIS is a blah week, what do the exciting ones look like?

So Sis. Linford and I are not sure what's hapening to us our last week, if transfers are happening Monday the 5th. That would leave us still in-field until Thursday the 8th with no official area to be working in and nothing to be doing. Sis. Jennings suggested that we (and all 8 other missionaries dying with us) could just come down to Pusan and street contact for three days. I said How About NO. So we may end up sleeping in the living room of our apartment in Ulsan for those three days and just doing last-minute visits to people, but it would sure beat three days of street jeundo. Gaah. What a way to end your service. Please no, Prez. Have mercy.

Okay, gotta go look up an e-mail address for Sis. Linford and send y'all some pictures of stuff, so until next week!

Love ya

RoseE"

RoseE, Sis. Linford, Sis. Culver, Sis. Alcazar, Elder Moore (the smaller, fairer one), and Elder Bocchino at the Whale Museum

Branch President on a scooter.

*Sorry, blogspot does not do Korean characters. You'll have to imagine this conversation.