I'm an adult now and I make my own decisions

안녕하세요 여러분!

Hello Everyone!

How I've spent my first two months as an adult so far:

-Waking up at 6:30 every day

-Studying for exactly half of my day, including sleeping time

-Eating cottage cheese at every meal because I'm an adult now and I make my own decisions

-Loving every minute of it.

My life is definitely different from most people my age, especially eating cottage cheese so often, but I love being a missionary. And on Monday, I'm boarding a plane to spend my next 22 months in Korea. We got our flight plans four days after everyone else, so we were very worried that at least one of us had a visa problem. All turned out okay though, and we now are in possession of the coveted flight plans. We leave the MTC at about 5 AM monday morning, and head to Salt Lake, where we will then fly to Seattle at about 10 am. After and hour layover, we take of to Korea at about 12 pm. After a 13 hour flight and a 15 hour time zone shift, we will arrive in Korea 28 hours later at about 4 pm on Tuesday there. Since we will be extremely discombobulated, we stay in the mission home for a few days before we head to our apartment I believe. 

I was chosen as the flight leader for our group because my last name is earliest in the alphabet, so I'm responsible for making sure everyone gets on the plane, which would be a lot easier if there wasn't 5 native Koreans in my flight group that barely speak English. So wish me luck everyone...

 Other than jumping ahead 15 hours in time, I am also jumping ahead an entire year and a half in age. The Korean age system is completely different than America's. So you are 1 years old the second you are born in Korea. And everyone moves up one year every New Year's day, so you don't wait until your actual birthday. So a baby that is born in Korea on December 31st turns 2 years old on its second day of life. So when I get to Korea on Monday, I will be 19 years old, and will turn 20 on January 1st, 2016. So that means that I will only be 19 years old for 2 months of my life, how strange is that? And when I finish my mission, I will actually become a year younger, going from 21 years old to 20 as soon as I get back to America. Korea is a different world...

As a reminder, my mailing address will change on Monday, and I will try to send it out next time in E-mail, which will be a week from Sunday in American time I believe.

We still do not have our full Korean nametags, which we are very (im)patiently waiting for. One thing that we are enjoying though are the native Koreans that are leaving with us. There are six sisters and two Elders, and they are all hilarious. I've never met a Korean that I didn't like, and they keep us laughing. They call my companion (Elder Santana) "Santa 장로님"  And my other companion (Elder Young) "Minion  장로님" from Despicable Me, I guess they think he acts like one. One of them called me "큰 장로님" which literally means "Elder Big" in Korean. 

I wanted to thank all of you for being so supportive of me and of all the missionaries in the field. Your prayers, packages and letters are very appreciated, so thank you!

I wish you all a good week, and I guess my next e-mail will be from Korea!

수구하세요!

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