Dear Friends

Dear Friends,

I always like to begin emails, because I get to write that: ‘Dear Friends’. And when I see those words typing themselves out, it makes me feel warm and cozy inside. I do think that good friendships are one of God’s sweetest gifts to us.

Firstly, thank you again for praying for my neck. The pain is entirely gone, and I’m very happy to be able to be about daily life, with no worries. Or at least with no worries of that sort.

The weather has grown cooler. I wear a sweater out of doors, and watch as little indications of winter creep slowly over the city. Leaves will be turning color soon, and then they will die and fall. And winter will be here. I fitted foam liner into the cracks between my windows and their respective sills, this afternoon, to keep the draft out. And tomorrow I’ll do the same for my door. That will make things a bit cozier.

Two weeks ago, and while the weather was still hot, a few friends and I traveled just north of Seoul. The area we went to was beautiful, and within a few hours I was completely relaxed, as all the busyness and stress of life dissipated. We drove up a mountain and found a waterfall. It poured over into a beautiful, deep, green-blue pool, and after exploring the area for a bit, I kicked off my shoes and jumped in. Because there’s always so much on my mind, I’m not usually spontaneous or carefree around even those people who know me well, so I think that I startled my friends a bit. But I laughed at back at them, and I wasn’t long before we were all in the water. It was absolutely freezing, but so invigorating! And the mountains and the sky and the quiet naturalness of it all were so peaceful, that I felt more refreshed and relaxed when I got home late that evening than I have in a very long while.

I gave a twenty minute presentation to my class, yesterday. I chose juggling as my topic, and enjoyed prepping for it. It went very well, and my teacher liked my presentation methods well enough to hold them up to the other students as an example of how they should prepare their own in the future. I was very happy.
I’ve often wondered what place pride in a well done job ought to take. Now I think I know, but it will be difficult to explain. I sent a text to a friend, after my presentation was finished,
‘Yay. My teacher liked my presentation! I’m happy!!’
He replied, ‘Good job! Be proud!’
That make me cock my head a bit, because it hadn’t occurred to me that I might be so. I was pleased as a child that I had done a good job. I was happy about it with the same happiness I have that I’m able to write well. Or the same pleasure that comes when I receive a letter in the mail, or when the sky clears and the earth warms for the first time every spring. It’s not gratitude, exactly – unless that word once meant what it now no longer does. It’s simply exultation of heart over a good thing. When I study the work of a artist, I’m filled with admiration. When I think of my presentation, a similar feeling comes over me. Not at my own abilities. I worked hard to do a good job, but that is in no way remarkable. Anyone might have done as much... and perhaps it is exactly that which brings me pleasure. It is beautiful to me that God created in each man the capacity for excellence. When I aspire to, and manage to touch, that goal, my heart thrills. When I stop to consciously consider it, I know that I am not deluded into supposing that the work was my own. The wonder is born of seeing the image of an excellent God stamped on my soul, and that displaying itself in my work. I can take no more personal credit for such a reality, than I can for the fact that my eyes are blue. But that makes me no less pleased with the reality of what is. And, while I cannot be proud either of the drive toward success or of the ability to succeed (neither of which I have created), nor can I think myself ‘humble’ for refusing to take credit for Another’s work. I can simply watch with awe and applaud, grateful to be permitted to look on, and giddy at the thought that He has chosen my heart for His canvas.

I’ve been fighting a cold for these last few days, and that leaves me very tired. We have midterms next week, and the thought of that makes me even more tired. But since I realized what I wrote above, I’ve had a great deal more enthusiasm for my school work. I do my best, not simply because I must, but because it is one way in which I can resemble Christ.

Thank you all for your emails and prayers. Loneliness is very real over here, in a broad and all encompassing way. It is good to continue to be connected with you.

With love,
Elisabeth

God is Good, and I am Happy.

Dear Family,

I anticipate my emails being rather sporadic this year. So far they’ve been coming once a week, or so. Later they’ll probably become spaced out between months. Who knows? Tonight I write because it’s 7:30, and my mind is wide awake and longing for interaction.

This semester has begun slowly. Two four-day weeks (of which this is the second), and a three-day week to come. It’s given me some time to brush up on all the grammar and vocabulary that I forgot over the summer. I’m surprised at how much I know. Last year I measured my progress from one day to the next. Today was set next to yesterday, and tomorrow next to today, so that I often felt discouraged. This time I have two other advents in Korea to compare my present state to, and the conception of those both were distinguished by a remarkable inability to communicate. So the contrast between where I am this semester and where I was the last time I landed in Korea has been pleasantly startling. I could almost suppose that everything I studied in the nine months prior to going back to the States seeped into and saturated my mind while I was away. I’m good with that.

As a full-time student, my life has been (necessarily, to some degree) quiet inverted. Every other occupation (with, perhaps, the exception of modeling) is geared toward serving others in some way, regardless of motive. When I worked as a housekeeper, I made other people’s beds. When I was waitressing, I served other people’s food. At U.V. I processed other people’s money. The point of an occupation is that other people need something which you must work to supply. However, as a student I simply take. All morning I take from my teachers, and all afternoon I give to myself. Every daily necessity and provision is for self. I don’t cook or clean or shop for ‘our’ family; I cook and clean and shop for me. All of it turns back upon myself. Of course, this is a somewhat inevitable part of my existence here, right now, and I some of it can’t be altered. But, as such, I must fight against a self-focused attitude much more fiercely than I would if I had a normal job, or lived with other people.
One very obvious way to do that is to make a point of becoming involved in the lives of one or two people, with the specific goal of blessing them. I’ve determined that, this year, knowing people well must take priority over every other consideration. Finding friends is easy. Everyone wants to be friends with ‘the foreigner’, so every date on my calendar for the coming weeks has been filled with engagements for coffee, or for lunch, or whatever. Unfortunately, I have yet to learn how to approach a thing moderately. I tend to rush headlong toward a goal, and end up, more often than not, in way over my head. My dilemma here, is that relationship-investing is time consuming. And time is not a commodity that I had a surplus of. I want to be entirely available to God, and I know that He will hone my friendships, as they develop, and will cause certain ones to fizzle out, while others grow deeper. But meanwhile, I feel crunched.
I’m trying still to be regular about studying Korean (which is also, of course, a time-consuming priority). I’ve been getting up earlier, to give myself two hours before school to memorize vocab, which helps a great deal. And I bring my books with me on the subway and bus, so that I can study en rout, when I go wherever to meet people. By the end of a day, though, I feel so over stimulated and exhausted that it regularly takes me two or three hours to relax enough to fall asleep.
So I’ve picked up juggling, again. Literally. I taught myself how to juggle when I was about thirteen, but haven’t done anything of the sort for quite some time. I still have my balls, though, and have dusted them off (so to speak). Juggling, they say, uses a different part of the brain than most mental activities use. The mind and body have to both be entirely relaxed in order to catch and throw the balls with perfect synchronization. I lend what support I can to this theory by affirming that when I’m throwing and catching, I don’t watch either the balls or my hands. I stare through them, as though I was watching something on the other side, and let my hands do the work with out the help of my mind. The motor skills wake up, and the cognitive skills (thinking, organizing, solving) seem to go to sleep. It’s like a brain cat nap, or something. So for between ten to thirty minutes a day, wherever there’s time, I throw and catch balls. I don’t know whether that really helps me to balance my schedule better, but at least it puts me in a better frame of mind, beside providing me with a little bit of much needed physical exertion.

Meanwhile, and all the business notwithstanding, I’m enjoying being here and being alive. God seems to meet me in a new way every day, showing me things about myself and about Himself that I never knew. Each morning I come to Him, and each morning I’m brought back to a place of complete rest. Somehow He manages to completely remove the weight of the previous day’s stresses and to pave a clear road through the present, so that there is never a buildup of pressure. Every day there is new strength, new pleasure, new grace. God is good, and I am happy. I couldn’t ask more of life.

I miss you all...
Elisabeth

The Conclusion

I have just a very few minutes, but I thought that I'd let you all
know that my shower-leak saga has reached it's conclusion. Last
evening I took a long, cool shower, and my entryway stayed dry. As it
turned out, water had been seeping through a large crack between where
the tile met the cement half way up the wall, and from there into the
next room. I'm very glad to no longer have to travel half an hour each
way to wash my hair!!
Take care,
Elisabeth

P.S.

Sure enough, my drain isn't plugged! Tomorrow the fix-it man is going
to come by again to reseal the bathroom tile, which also isn't the
problem. I hope you all don't mind if I chronicle the journey of my
shower leak to it's conclusion. It amuses me to do so, and keeps me
from taking it all too seriously.
Until tomorrow...

Rainy and Cool

Life in Korea is in full swing again. My Korean, which seemed to have abandoned me my first few days back here, has resurfaced, with all of its idiocies and stuttering mistakes. But at least I don’t feel dwarfed by my inarticulacy now, as I did three days ago, and can enjoy laughing at myself along with everyone else. One Korean girl, whom I’d only met once last year, called me the day after I got back. We got together, hoping to become better acquainted, and really hit it off. Her English is about at the level of a two year old, and my Korean is (says she) is as that of a seven year old, so it was almost entirely in Korean that we communicated. We talked for two hours on subjects that would have required, for two individuals sharing a common language, perhaps thirty minutes to canvas, and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Especially after I became accustomed to the strong alfalfa taste of our shared green tea ice-cream, scooped over red bean paste. Next week we’re going to begin reading the Psalms together, in Korean and in English. I look forward to that.

Today is rainy and cool. I have my one window open, and am sitting in front of that, enjoying listening to the musical pitter-patter of rain, while bigger splashes of pregnant drops, falling from the eaves of my house, keep time. Today excepted, the weather has been stiflingly humid. And I haven’t any AC. During the day, it’s not so difficult to deal with. I can sit in the stale, hot inside air, watching the heavy, hot outside air, and imagine that somehow the window being open causes the two classes of hot air to become cooler. But at night it’s quite a different matter. At night all my windows are closed, and I lie panting in great gulps of humidity. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to sleep in such a state. But I’ve discovered that, if I hold a pack of ice to my chest and can fall asleep before it melts, then I generally stay asleep for a few hours at least.

Later this afternoon a plumber (I suppose) will come by. I haven’t been able to shower at my house, because whenever I turn the shower on, water seeps up through the floor in my entryway, flooding it. So one of my Korean friends came over two days ago to explain the situation to my landlady, who later informed me that on Monday (today) someone would come by to clear my drains. I objected, ‘the drain isn’t clogged!’ But she’s quite sure it must be, and as her Korean is ever-so-much-more proficient than mine, she had the upper hand in the discussion, and I was forced to smile and acquiesce. Whenever whoever gets here, I’ll try to explain the problem to them, and see what happens with that. Meanwhile, I’ve a friend who lives about thirty minutes away, and she has graciously invited me to make free use of her place. Friends are good to have.

School begins tomorrow. I’m trying not to think too much about all the days that will follow today. I was glancing through my level 4 book yesterday, and it looked really difficult. I remember last year, how I had barely enough time to keep up with class. And I look ahead, and dread it being the same scenario all over again: me wrapped up in my little world of books and lessons and tests. It’s a very introverted world, and when I’m in it, I tend to shut other people out, which is unhealthy. I need to be involved in other people’s lives; it is, of course, why I’m here in the first place. But I don’t know at all how to incorporate both Korean and People. They squeeze each other out, because each is time consuming, and there are only twenty four hours in a day. There’s no lack of desire, but I feel an absolute lack of ability. Please pray for me, that I will know how to use my time wisely and well.

With love,
Elisabeth