My little women and me

I've decided that I'm going to feel discouraged and frustrated about my language skills every Sunday. It is such a long 3 hours when you are trying to pick out words here and there.  Even if you get the jist of the message, you still don't understand any depth.  (And normally it is more of a "Ok, so they're saying SOMETHING about the sacrament.") I have come to really appreciate this sweet ajhussi (old dude) in the ward because he reads scriptures with a lot of animation AND he enunciates in a way that makes it easy to follow along. Everyone else reads so quickly that I can pick out the first word of the verse and maybe a couple after that. Korean is a pretty easy language to read but I still read like a preschooler.  The upside? My prayers are getting better.  I don't think I could pray in a public setting but I can pray.  I find my prayers are much more heartfelt in Korean as I am putting so much thought into which word I should use.  It's kind of a cool experience.

Onto the next very real struggle in Korea.  Ugh!  They are all so dang nice here. Hospitable to a fault?  Chris is normally a good buffer as he is so good at saying "no" but he can't even go up against their kindness.  A great example? Us staying at Halmoni's house.  Our original plan was to get an Airbnb that was right around the corner. Yeah, that worked out well.  It basically is super rude and sends messages that we don't think their offering is good enough when really, our message that we're trying to send is "our family is huge and we don't want to be a pain in your rear!"  This morning we leave for a quick trip to Seoul to visit the temple and take Chris and Autumn to the airport. We planned to stay in a guesthouse right by the temple but that got switched real quick. We are now staying with Chris' very kind cousin's family. End of the story.  Our big ole family overtaking their apartment.  I feel bad just thinking about it!  Another example? Chris' aunt has this amazing samgyeopsal (pork belly) BBQ restaurant. I would eat there as often as I could BUT I know there is no way she would let us pay.  So we go when invited and stuff ourselves like its Christmas.  I got in trouble because I took the girls to an all you can eat samgyeopsal joint around the corner instead of her place...but I really just wanted to pay for our dinner! (No more facebooking about our BBQ adventures!) They have such a strong sense of obligation to family.  Really. They are just kind as can be and will do anything in the name of family.  If I needed anything and was actually able to express it in Korean, they would go ridiculously out of their way to help me.