I'm going to Korea in less than a week. A week from today, in fact, I will almost be to the Inchon international airport. Wahoo! I'll get to taste my first bite of kimchi, and will be able to be in high humidity in a country where I don't understand a lot of what I hear again. Fortunately, I'll be able to understand at least a little bit.

My Korean is going okay, I suppose you could say. I'm anxious to go to the country, though, because I've discovered I learn Korean better when I hear it and am forced to use it than by simply reading it. I can read Korean pretty well, actually. Putting sentences together is difficult. But I can do it. I'm sure my pronunciation is terrible, but that's why I'm excited to go to Korea.

It will be about a 14 hour flight. I think. Not too bad, especially when compared to train rides I've taken before. I also get to take a train. I'm very excited about that. I wonder if Korean trains are any different from Chinese...I bet they are. Korea is a very advanced country.

My address in Korea will be (I'm pretty sure):

Sister Erica Oates
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Korea Daejeon Mission Daejeon
P.O. Box 38
Daejeon, Korea, 300-600

Neat, eh? I'll post it in Korean one of these days.

Please write me! I won't be able to update next week (obviously), so if you want to hear from me, you'll have to write me. I love you all, and I'm very excited to be going to Korea, immersed in the language.

Keep up the good work! God loves you all very much, and with His help, we can do seemingly impossible things like learn Korean.

Sister Erica Oates

Hi all! I'm on the cusp of finally getting to go to Korea, which is uber exciting. The past week here has been rather hectic and completely irregular thanks to the quarantine and swine flu going around. Half of my district has been sick and hasn't come to class, which makes it difficult for us to all be on the same page as far as Korean and whatnot. Apparently in quarantine the elders watched the movie Legacy 8 times and in several languages. They got to sleep whenever they wanted...which means that things basically melted down for most missionaries. Fortunately, the elders still tried to be obedient. They're good nineteen-year-olds, that's for certain. Most in a similar situation would probably go insane. Which would be bad. I don't like seeing people go crazy. I had hoped to be patient zero with the swine flu, but unfortunately...no such luck. Drat. I'll have to start a pandemic later. (Just kidding.)

Oh. I just remembered what it was I wanted to talk about in this blog post. I call it the Parable of Shenzhen.As many of you are aware (especially if you've read my blog), I spent four months in China teaching English at an offshoot of Xiangtan University in Xiangtan, Hunan Province, China. It was pretty much awesome. I loved being immersed in a different culture (which is why I'm excited to go to Korea) and seeing the history of the other side of the world. I didn't really want to go home--the only reason I did is because my Mom and Kathy decided to pick us up in Hong Kong. I would love to still be there. Although, I am more excited to actually be able to speak the language of another people in Korea...

Anyway (I've been going off on tangents a lot lately), at the end of our stay in China, Lany arranged for us to take a train to Hong Kong to meet up with Mom and Kathy. It would've been really expensive for us to fly, and Jeff and I were okay with taking a train. It was actually pretty fun. We had beds. And lots of Beijing nougat (which I really miss, by the way) to eat. We slept most of the way. It wasn't as noisy or as smelly as the train to Beijing was, and it didn't take as long. Our train ride from Xiangtan ended at Shenzhen.

Now, I had googled Shenzhen when I'd learned we were going to be visiting there, just so I could figure things out. I'd also googled Hong Kong's subway system to figure out where we needed to get off and find a taxi (sadly, my research wasn't thorough enough). I was so excited and terribly nervous...because I couldn't find out how we were supposed to go from Shenzhen to Hong Kong anywhere online.

Jeff and I arrived in Shenzhen and then proceeded to the ticket office in order to purchase a ticket to Hong Kong. After waiting for nearly an hour in the wrong line and then an hour in the right line where they told me they could get us to go through Guangzhou (which was about three hours away) into Hong Kong, I was confused. We didn't have enough money for the tickets, and the ATM in the train station didn't actually work. So, Jeff and I lugged our heavy bags behind us and then set out on a journey around Shenzhen to find an ATM.

I had always thought that I was a really patient person before this experience. I mean, I've got five brothers after all. (Not that they made me endure anything, really.) I found out in a hurry that I'm not. As we started pulling our luggage down the street toward something that looked like a promising area for an ATM, I was panicking. Now, you might wonder why I seem to think panicking and patience are related. Well, when we're patient, we trust that God will provide a way for things to happen. I wasn't trusting God. All I could think about was that we didn't have cell phones, we couldn't get in contact with Mom because she wouldn't be checking her email, and she was probably already thinking we were dead or something. I'd given her a rough estimation as to when we would be coming, and I was certain we wouldn't make it. We couldn't speak Chinese, and our Chinese friends were all the way back in Xiangtan. We'd had to turn our cell phones in, and had no way of remembering any of the numbers.

So, yeah. I was panicking. I felt like crying. I hardly ever feel like crying, but I felt like crying. I looked at Jeff and I said, "What are we going to do? We have no way to...yada yada yada."

He looked at me calmly for a second and smiled. "Erica, it's okay. We'll be alright. Somehow we'll be able to find the train station. We can go to an internet bar and email mom and can find a hostel or something. Let's just try to find out where we need to go. Shenzhen is right next to Hong Kong. There has to be a way."

I have never felt so humble in my life. My little brother had more patience than I did. His reassurance calmed my soul considerably. I didn't start crying, and we proceeded to find an ATM.

I figured that there was probably another train station in Shenzhen we needed to get to, so we tried to communicate to a taxi driver that we wanted to go to the other train station by showing him our tickets. He didn't understand us...and gave us a ride back to the other train station, which was nice. My arm was very sore from pulling nearly 50 pounds behind me over rough terrain (there was construction going on).

Jeff stood in line this time, and the very nice lady at the train station who hadn't understood me before understood him. She wrote the address to the other train station down on a piece of paper. We hailed a taxi, and went off.

We found Hong Kong. We were smelly and sweaty and tired when we came to the Mariott (which is a lot like heaven when you've had a miserable day) and were reunited with our family.

So there you have my parable. :)

I hope you have a wonderful day! Remember that God loves you very much, and that He does answer prayers if we have patience and are humble. Life is hard, but it is possible.

Sister Oates

Greetings from the Provo Missionary Training Center! I figured that the title to this blog would get your attention. Did it? Well, hopefully. Quarantine is such a fun word, isn't it?

Saturday, there was an official case of swine flu detected at the MTC, so preventative measures have been put in place to try and keep things from spreading like wildfire. With the constant influx of new missionaries each Wednesday and the droves of those leaving each week for various parts of the country, it is imperative that they took such drastic steps to keep things from going crazy. There are about 2,000 missionaries here right now, and it's really easy for communicable diseases to go around (like the cold I inherited from Sister Judd). Any flu-like symptoms are reasons for missionaries to not go to class or to the cafeteria and isolate themselves from the rest of the missionaries. More severe symptoms, like a persistent fever, actually lead to a trip to the hospital.

Two of the elders in my zone have been placed in actual quarantine after visiting the hospital. They are kept in isolation, not allowed to come out of the building, for five days until they receive a clean bill of health. Which is a good thing.

These drastic implementations have brought out a lot of human characteristics that I find amusing. I mean, I shouldn't find them amusing...but I do. Some are paranoid about getting sick, going to extreme measures to avoid those they think are "sick". Some of the elders headed to Japan have face masks they wear to keep from getting sick, which is a good idea, but other missionaries assume they're wearing the masks because they're sick, and then it cannonballs into almost hysteria. People don't know what their symptoms mean, and I think some of those who are sick suffer mostly just from mass hysteria. Living with another person twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week can lead to that sort of assumption you'll end up sick, after all. There are those who are more reasonable--but we have been counseled to stay in our residence hall if we do have any symptoms. Which means that I was the only member of my district in class last night. Which means I joined one of the younger districts. Which is great.

Missionaries who were scheduled to depart this week are being kept here an extra week to ensure they don't develop any symptoms of Swine Flu. Missionaries coming tomorrow, unfortunately, aren't going to be able to say goodbye to their parents. They'll be dropped off at the curb and have to say goodbye there in order to keep us from being exposed from even more contaminates.

There's no need to worry, though. Those who are sick are receiving treatment, and those who aren't sick are pressing forward. The Lord truly does watch over us all. He isn't going to keep me from catching a cold just because I'm on a mission--the Lord wants to give us the opportunity to grow and progress. My patience is being tried this week, which is great. The only way to really know you have patience or to learn how to get it is to be placed in situations that don't seem to go the speed or way you want them to go.

I hope you're all doing well, and that if you have any aches, pains, chills, or a fever that you quarantine yourself (just kidding). God loves you. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is true. God truly does qualify those who are called to do the work. This life isn't just chaos--we experience what we experience for a reason. Without the things we go through, we would not be able to grow. And, when the judgement day does come, we will realize that every single thing we've gone through was necessary to our salvation. God has a plan for us. I love you all, and I can't wait to be in Korea. 20 days!

Erica