There are pictures included with this post, and the last one.
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first of all, yes i have already heard about the earthquake in california. actually, just 2 hours ago, the bishop in our ward told me about it (in spanish!) and i understood what he said. Also, you asked if i had heard about the family that was mentioned during general conference, the one whose daughter went to my mission? i indeed have heard of them. during general conference, there were many missionaries around me, and everybody who had been there for longer than a few months remembered the sister. and i watched the sessions in english.
ok so... ill start off with things that have happened during the week. first off, the people here serve us a LOT of food. almost too much. every time i eat i feel like i am going to explode. its kind of ridiculous. the second day i was hear i ate at a bolivians house. they asked if i wanted salsa, and i said why not, so i added in a very small amount, stirred it in with therest of my potatoes and corn and things, and ate some and my mouth almost burned off. good thing that my companion said argentines dont really like spicy foods.. i dont know how much i could have handled. i also hope that the water members give us is safe... we ask for water, and then just drink it. hopefully it doesnt make me sick hah.
so i absolutely love the buses here. they are very fun. they drive all over the place, hardly ever stopping. very bumpy ride as well. and most of the time there isn´t sitting room, so everybody stands. quite fun. for conference, on sunday at least, our ward rented a bus to get everybody to watch conference because our building is too small. so we had a bus full of mormons. however, on saturday, they didnt have abus to get us there, so we had to pay for our own bus, and then even had to take a train to get where we were going. the train was fun too. quite an experience. saturday night priesthood session ended at 11 at night for us. that was nice. we are supposed to be asleep by 1030. didn´t get to sleep until midnight. in between the 2 sunday sessions, everybody ate lunch, and just sat outside on the lawn of the church for 2 hours. it felt really nice.
this picture is of all the stake sitting on the grass eating lunch between sunday sessions on conference.
its actualy starting to get quite cool down here, feels good. saturday after the second session all of the missionaries went for icecream. during the second session of sunday, a bunch of couples came in with us to the english one, i dont know why. i dont even think they understood english...
there are dogs EVERYWHERE. the first day i had to have passed like 200 dogs. and they all just walk around, i would say 60% of them are just laying on the ground and dont even move when you walk by. everybody here has fences, you can hardly ever walk right up to someones door.
we met ajehovahs witness the other day who said that we didn´t have the spirit with us because we didn´t know if she had talked to mormons before. that was quite amusing. and we had an old guy ride by us on a bike saying go to another country. oh and we also had a priest from an evangelical church talk to us, and at the end he noted how i didn´t say anything... obviously because i didn´t know how. one of the houses in the ward has air conditioning! it feels really nice.
one day we waited for a bus for 40 minutes... and we said if the next bus that passes us isn´t the bus we need, we would go to a different stop. the next one that passed us was the bus we wanted... however it actually PASSED us and stopped on the other side of a busy road. that was irritating. there were a few processions in the road for easter weekend stuff, some catholic something or other i think. i dont know.
the members that live in an air conditioned house gave me a key chain made of argentine leather. looks pretty cool.
during p day this morning, we went to a HUGE mall in central morón. by the way, my area is morón 2 (dos). we did some shopping in Jumbo, apparently its a walmart equivalent down here. well, my companion did shopping, i still dont have my mission credit card to use. thats quite irritating. then we went to the bishops house for lunch, which apparently we do every monday, and every friday. it was good, it was pasta with chicken, and then arroz con leche, or rice pudding as my companion tells me.
there have been a few foods that i have had to stuff down, mostly because i dont like the texture of them.
this is a dog that made friends with us. we didn´t make friends with it. last night, it came into our little area by the door. we scared it away. when we came back 2 hours later, it was there. we scared it away again. it came back 10 minutes later. scared it away. half an hour later it came back, so we decided if it wanted to sleep there it could, but we wouldn´t be giving it anything. so thats our dog friend that was gone in the morning, thankfully.
another is an easter present one of the members in the ward gave us. its a little chocolate egg and had candy and things inside. pretty good. and she had the cutest little girl, she was like 2 or 3 years old. they also had a big dog, and the kid would hug around its neck and sit on it and things, and the dog wouldn´t even move. it amused me for a bit.
and the last picture is my companion inbetween sessions on sunday. we were tired from the night before, and decided to sleep a bit before the second session, and this was his idea of going to sleep.
my spanish is... not feeling adequate. i understand probably 15 percent of what people are saying. although i am making big improvements in hearing what people say and picking out words. i actually gave a blessing to a lady in spanish while we were waiting for our bus on sunday morning.. and i dont think my spanish has ever felt worse. i´ve given like 30 prayers in spanish, and 10 or 15 scriptures. i feel like i am barely scraping by. so hopefully i will make huge improvements as time goes on.
the area i am in is very city-ish. although a certain part of it doesn´t have paved roads at all. so its kind of like a mix. but i really like the ward. all of the members are very nice, and i already feel like i have a connection with the bishop and his wife, so thats good. we found out today that the bishops wife has a lady gaga song as her ringtone, hah. and she doesn´t even know what it says. thats pretty funny.
i will use email to communicate, and i have an hour every monday to do so. then i have another half hour to use to write the president.
to use the computers we go to a little shop on the road, which charges 4 pesos an hour, which is about a dollar an hour.
during our time in the mall in central morón, a couple of elders found a store that sold ties for 10 pesos, which is like 3 dollars. the ties were a little ugly, but wow 3 dollars is cheap. and my card right now has 322 american dollars on it. thats because i still cant use my card so it just keeps adding on... and i still haven´t heard anything about my 131 dollar reimbursement. hopefully i will hear something about that in the future.
many of the houses and fences here have fences as i have already said. and theyall have sharp spike things on the top to prevent people from climbing over. one picture i wanted to get, but forgot to was of the glass bottle shards stuck into the concrete walls. it reminded me of bourne ultimatum, haha. but yeah, they are very sharp, and i wouldn´t want to get that stuck into my hands, so i wont be climbing over any walls anytime soon.
my dry knuckles have pretty much fixed them selves by now, haven´t had a problem since. and the sleeping bag that bryce got me is quite warm, i slept in it last night. nice and cozy.
did i mention my companion passed out on saturday night? during icecream, one of the elders came up behind him, and had him in a headlock or something. well, he started spitting everywhere. a few of us were trying to decide if he was faking or not. anywho, when he ´´woke up´´ he claimed to have no knowledge of it. so i guess he fainted. interesting huh? i guess thats everything...
argentina is awesome. i love it. the bus rides, the roads, the people, the stores, everything. there are signs for things everywhere, and at least right now, the weather is great. its the beginning of fall, so i wont have to experience summer for a while. other than that... chow.
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