Part 57 - Writing from Korea

Hey hi everyone  :-) I hope you have had a wonderful week.  :-) I have had a really good week here, with lots going on.  Our Memorial last night went really well.  We had 69 foreigners from the territory show up.  No children, just adults.  And surprisingly 95% of them were men.  I guess because many of the auto factories here import cheap labour from Africa and other parts of Asia to work, and I guess for the most part they want men.  Anyways, we visited and visited and visited before and after the meeting and then keeping with Korean culture everybody took pictures of each other.  When I first started living here I thought that was a little odd but now I carry my camera with me to the hall too just in case a picture opportunity arises because I think it is kind of a nice custom.  :-) Here Brenda and I are at the Memorial.  I look like Inga the logger here.  It does not rain much in Korea but last night it poured, so by the time I got there my coat and hair were wet like rats.  Then going home the buses stopped running so I walked to a subway station but when it stopped at the main station the buses were not running and the taxis would not pick me up - possibly nervous of foreigners and also there were many other people stranded in the torrential rain.  However, a lone bus that must have been slow getting off its route came by so I jumped on with a million other people only to find I didn't have the right change.  Mind you, a really sweet Korean guy came to my rescue and put money in the box for me.  I was so grateful.  With all the walking and everything I didn't get home until 1am. Mee Hee is a super nice sister.  She is one of the very few Koreans that lives away from home.  She does so so that she can serve in the English congregation. This is Benji.  He is an elder in our hall.  He has a very cool job at Bethel.  He makes all the English sign language videos for the entire brotherhood.  Oddly enough his parents suddenly decided to emigrate to the US this week.  They packed everything and chose Atlanta.  They don't speak a lick of English so it should be quite the adventure for them. If you can't tell, this is one of the many stickers in my home right now with Korean writing on it.  I have labels on everything trying to remember my vocabulary. This is Harvey in his Village People t-shirt.  He got all trimmed up this week with a short-do for spring and summer.  It is really wierd but this week it went from minus 10 to the mid 70s, so Spring is definitely here. Of course I had to get Pearl a new outfit too.  She has become the poster child for doggy rehab.  When I was visiting my brother and sister-in-law in Palm Desert they mentioned they bought these new treats for their dogs made of sweet potato.  I thought it sounded healthy so I went and found them too.  I have never seen my dogs become more addicted to a snack in my entire life.  I knew there was a problem when Pearl woke me up in the middle of the night get her one out of the cupboard.  Now i have to tell her no several times a day.  If you double click the attached AVI file you can relive her pain with her.  If the addiction doesn't break soon I will probably have to handcuff her paws to the bed and let her thrash it out. Anyways, that's it for another week.  The only other thing to mention is that we had a very funny meeting today...but not on purpose.  As I have mentioned before sometimes the things that make the meetings lively are the mispronunciations and grammar errors of the brothers learning English.  Well today a brother was giving an excellent talk and went on to relate a true story of a brother taking care of his wife that was paralyzed from the neck down so the only ability she had for over 30 years was breathing.  However, the brother started out by saying that this sister's only ability for 30 years was "breeding".  "And that her husband didn't care about her inability to do anything else but breed for all those years".  It just struck such a funny bone with me because the brother didn't move on but kept on talking about this woman that was "breeding and breeding and breeding, but happy to do only that".  Anyhooooo, it just added an extra something to the talk. Please take good care of yourselves.  Love you all as usual. d  :-)