8.4.12

Hello Everyone! 
Well I hope you got my last email but I didnt hear from anyone....but I'm here and things are going. We have a mix of Latinos and north americans. I try to talk to the Latinos but mostly I just don't know what they are saying and just smile and nod ha ha. The food here is very different. For some reason I just thought it would be kind of the same but it is most definitely not. We had chips and salsa yesterday for breakfast...and a couple days ago we had a seminar about the rules in the MTC and one of them was to eat EVERYTHING they give you so I have been trying but it is way hard...i.e. last night they gave us this massive piece of fish...and so I was like 'you know I will try it' so I took one bite and thought it would probably be more offensive to throw it up than to throw it away...but I at least tried! It really has taken some getting used to. They have huge freezers full of ice cream too which are SO good/will be the death of me. If I could only eat that I would be happy....ha. So the gym is a dot big....they have a few machines but so many people have gym at the same time that we usually end up watching the Latinos play soccer. Hmm what else....oh yes they have snack time every night like one hour after dinner where you tell them a new word you learned and get a treat...one of my favorites. The temple is very beautiful. We went there yesterday as a class which was awesome to get out because we haven't been outside these gates since we got here....anyway we had to go and find a member at the temple and share a message with them. That was a little scary but they were very willing to stop and listen...no way would that have been the case anywhere in the US just saying. So mom about my glasses....I don't know what to do. It seems super sketchy to send them here, but I don't know what else to do! A girl got a package yesterday from her family with treats in it and it was opened with a bite taken out of a Rice Krispy treat they sent her.....anyway let me know what you think. I am trying to just write everything out in this short time and its not organized at all, so sorry. So we have Latino teachers that speak a tiny english but hardly anything. We have this one teacher that tries so hard to speak english and I cant help but laugh every time.. and then I think 'what does he do when I try and speak spanish, he is probably dying!' It helps being around spanish all the time, unlike the Provo MTC, but I still have to try really hard and listen to pick out words to understand and usually I have to tell them to repeat it a few times too ha ha. Well we had a cool experience yesterday where we took turns teaching the missionaries in our room how to pray and the teacher played Paul Cardell's piano song 'Baptism' (which was amazing because I have not listened to music since I left), and even though we knew they weren't real investagators, I could feel the spirit really strong testifying to me again that the things we were teaching were true and the things they said during their prayer were true as well. My companion is really good and patient with me because she can speak fairly well and understand me, but she is good about teaching me and answering my questions. Tomorrow is Sunday and they told us that they will randomly call on two missionaries to speak 5 minutes before sacrament
starts...and then in district meeting they will call a companionship up to teach a topic for 20 minutes....I am so nervous about that....scares me for sure...so guaranteed I will get called on because they said the new ones always do! Well I better wrap this up. Love you all! Xoxo- Hermana Ahrendsen