Week 10

I honestly don't even know where to start.

I guess I'll start by saying, this has been thee single most crazy, emotional, hard, exciting, CRAZY week of my life haha! I am in Korea. I still don't believe it. Its crazy here. Literally crazy. I don't know how else to describe it except crazy. Everyone is asian.. obviously.. so that's been weird, being the one that looks totally different than everyone else.. Everyone is so busy and is moving a million miles an hour so its hard to talk to people.. and everyone speaks this weird language that I've never heard before... Its great! Its nothing like I thought it would be. at all. I couldn't tell you what I thought it would be like.. but its just crazy. CRAZY. 

I'll start from the beginning. After the longest flight of my life, we finally landed in Korea last monday around 5 pm. We met Pres. and Sister Christensen at the airport. They are AWESOME, I love them so much! Then immediately after they got our luggage all packed up, gave us all book of mormons and put us on the subway and said go talk to people! .. Monday night is such a blur, I honestly don't remember it very much. Being on the subway was like a bad nightmare.. wandering around trying to talk to people. Every single person, I kid you not, was on their smart phone. If you tried to talk to them they would ignore you. It was horrible. Not to mention I don't know how to speak korean.. and it didn't help that I was jet lagged to the max and dead tired haha but I was like 'nope. can't do this. i'm going home.' .. Well luckily they didn't make us do too much after that.. we had dinner and did a few other things. We stayed the first few nights in these dorms they have at the temple. The second my head hit the pillow I was out. I woke up the next day feeling much better, with a new resolve to embrace Korea!! I've tried to have this mindset ever since.. and it has helped me be happy here, as crazy as it is haha. I'm still in culture shock a bit, but I'm trying to embrace it all.

My trainer is Sister Lawrence! She is from St. George Utah. She's 26 years old.. she is going to law school at byu, and this is her last transfer. She goes home in February.. so when she leaves I'll get a new trainer. She is awesome.. she speaks the language, she knows how to get everywhere, she knows everything. She's basically my mom its great. I hope she doesn't kick my butt too hard haha.. Anyways, she is great. We live in an apartment (that is SUPER nice, I'm so lucky) with 2 other sisters, Sister White and Sister Thomas. They are also so great.

My first area... SHINCHON! 신천 (<- yeah that's right.)

I live 5 minutes away from the temple! its in our area! Our church is right next to the temple.. so pretty much I have the ideal area. I love it so much. Our ward is amazing. Everyone is so nice and they love the missionaries so much. They love practicing English on us :) This is what I get a lot "Oh! Sister Hormes! Sherlock Hormes! Great name!" haha also they're always telling me how good my Korean is. Even though I hardly say anything.. pretty much yes and no and thank you and nice to meet you haha. So if I ever need a confidence boost I just talk to a Korean and they tell me I'm amazing. I love it. I love Koreans. (even the mean ones who won't talk to me dangit.)

Yesterday at church I had to get up and introduce myself.. I got up and said (in korean) something like "Hello everyone! Im sister Holmes, I'm from utah. Nice to meet you! I don't speak Korean very well, but I know the gospel is true! I know christ is my savior and I know that through joseph smith God restored the true church. I love this ward! Amen!" Haha even with that simple statement everyone was so impressed haha. People are so so nice. 

Saturday was the ward christmas party and that was so much fun. Koreans are hilarious haha. They are just so bold and so crazy. I can't even explain it

I'm running out of time ahhhhh.. I still have so much to say. But just know that I am doing great here! As hard as it is to adjust and everything.. I'm taking it one day at a time! 

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!! I LOVE YOU SO MUCH!

xoxoxoxo

Holmes 자매