You're in Peru, I hope

Hey everyone!

I made it safe and sound to the CCM and that flight was sooo long, and we got here super late, but the hermanas in our room woke up just to say hi to us (and sleep is so valuable here!) 

 

Okay, so first off, the food here is SOO good. It's chicken and rice with every meal except breakfast, but luckily that's more or less how I was raised, so it's all good. Granadías are the best fruit ever. They made us churros one night which were so good-better than America. I like food here better than in the US. Spanish keyboards are pretty cool, but sometimes I don't know where punctuation is... 

 

My district is awesome. My companionship are the only hermanas in our district, but it's great. All the elders are straight out of high school. Funny things are said almost daily. They were fighting over who's tie was better, and one elder used the argument that his tie brought in the Spirit. Every single person in my district, except me, is going to Arrequipa. All the Chiclayo people are in the other district. Not even fair.

Oh, also, we watched two old devotionals that were filmed at the MTC on Sunday. One was from mission president seminar. It´s so weird seeing the MTC and old coworkers. I miss it a bit. But being a missionary is better than working with missionaries.  Every. single. one. of the elders in my district laughed when I told them I worked security. I'm so insulted.

 

Um, I have the best teachers ever (so says every missionary ever), but they're sooo funny! Hermano Janampa always says ¿Que en el mundo? (what in the world), which is totally a Spanglish phrase that nobody uses outside the CCM. We also say Santa Vaca... Yeah, Spanglish here is bad.

Saturday night, my sister training leaders came in to ask me to say the prayer in relief society, and I asked which language. They said either, then one of the other hermanas in my room said, she could also say it in Cantanese, being totally serious. I started laughing, so she explained that (apparently), "I had a dream when I was 16 that I was supposed to go on a mission and the I got called to Hong Kong, so I started to learn Cantanese to the point where I was fluent". By that point I was red in the face and laughing so hard. She just said "I was really embarrassed about it". The sister leader totally believed her!

 

Pday is the best day. The Lima temple is beautiful. Pictures don't do it justice. Also, we got to shop around Lima today. We are definitely in a different coutnry, but we were all in one huge group. One creepy old guy commented ''Bonita hermanas'' as we walked by. Yeah, awkward. 

 

For activity time every day we've been playing volleyball, which I don't love, but I deal. Sometimes I just run around the court though. Everything is outside. We did ping pong yesterday though since I came down with a bit of a cold. I'm better now though, so it's okay. Sometimes I try to speak to the hermanas, and it's so hard. I always have to ask them to speak slower and repeat themselves. But it's okay, they're all so sweet and supportive! I speak Spanish really well with the gospel though, it's just the rest of the language that's hard.

We bought soccer jerseys today, so that's cool!

 

They don't really want us sending pictures here (plus the computers are so slow) so I'll send some once I'm in the field.

 

I teach my first lesson tonight!

Hno. Janampa told us that it usually takes norteamericanos about 6 months to learn Spanish, but it only takes the missionaries about 2-3 months, so the gift of tongues is real! (But you still gotta be patient).

We Hna Smith (the one who said I speak Cantanese) always says, ''that's filthy'' so my companion Hna Marshall and I always say ''está filthy'' It's probably funnier here than over email...

One elder in our district, Elder Monson (yeah, he gets a lot of questions, and they are related somehow...), had a birhtday this week. So our teachers brought all of us candy, and we sang happy birthday to him like eight thousand times.

 

So some food here that's really good is casinos- at type of cookie kinda like oreos and inca cola which tastes like bubble gum vanilla soda, but actually tastes good. It legit smells like bubble gum though.

I've started being able to speak sentences that are longer than like three words, which is pretty exciting! (In Spanish of course).

 

Hno. Janampa told us that he killed a cat using a plastic bag one time because they had to but it down, but the bag was cheaper. It horrified all of us, but was also kinda funny.

One of the elders brought jerkey from home- and it´s deer. My other teacher, Hna Rivera has never seen jerkey before so we were trying to say what it was, but we didn't know deer, so Hna Marshall said Bambi, and Hna Rivera was like, ''Oh, mi corazón!'' So funny.

 

Anyways, I´m in a trio, and both of my compañeras are awesome. Hna Marshall and I are more alike than Hna. Esobar, but I love both of them very much.

The CCM is tiny, so everyone knows each other and cares about each other which is great. So I'm very happy here! That's about all.

Con Amor, Hermana Brogan