As much as can be crammed in a week, I think the people here have done a wonderful job doing so. I had a t-shirt that my sister gave me once that states, “My brain is tired.” I’ve been perpetually brain-tired since about Wednesday, so I need to hunt that shirt down and wear it proudly.

It has been such a joy to be here this past week. I’ve been living with a tension of “I’m leaving…so I’m so excited…but I’m so sad.” It was refreshing to hear that this contradiction of thought is perfectly normal.

Moreover, I met some of the people that are teaching at my school in Pyongtaek, and I’ve had the vast majority of my concerns taken care of. There is only one other newbie heading over there with me, so we’ve had the opportunity to get to know each other a little bit.

I went to the Memphis Redbirds game tonight. They are an affiliate of the St. Louis Cardinals, which made me a little bit wary of being excited about going. For those of you baseball fans, I had an opportunity to watch CENTER FIELDER Rick Ankiel (formerly the worst-greatest-pitcher-to-be-if-that-makes-sense-and-you-can-read-through-all-the-hypens) draw the collar at a stellar 0-4.

The presenters here have all spent time on the missions field doing the same thing I’m about to do, and the stories they tell are phenomenal. The advance of the gospel has been breathtaking, and their stories are hilarious to a point of drawing tears. Buckle up, as this will be a great ride.

We are sleeping and living in a high school roughly the size of the main building at Wheaton Academy. We are living in the classrooms, which is a pretty interesting thing to begin with.

Thankfully, the showers are not typical of the high school setting, where 15 guys end up in the same room, try not to look down, and get in and out of there in about .8 seconds. Instead, there are three stalls. The first has a broken showerhead, so we’re down to two shower stalls.

I walked in the first day to take a shower, and in an exhausted daze, stepped into the second stall. I pressed the button to get the shower to go, and to my absolute horror, almost fell out of the shower as freezing cold water came down on me.

SIDEBAR:

I might not have “fallen,” but instead of spending a second more in the stall, I jumped out.

SIDEBAR 2:

This posed a small problem, as one does not take showers in clothes.

END SIDEBAR 2

So I jumped back in.

END SIDEBAR

Small problem when I jumped back in—the water was about 8 billion degrees. I felt like a cartoon animal running across piping hot sand, and with each step, yelling, “hot, hot, hot,” only to dive into the coldest ocean ever (“brrrrr, cold, cold, cold”) and then run back across the same piping hot sand.

The theme of the week was “adapting to new cultures.” I learned to adapt. And the water got cooler as well, which is nice.

I’m back home July 7. I’d love to see you and say goodbye before I go.