Subject: Re:From:
randerson@myldsmail.netTo:
ckrcr88@msn.commy flight to los angeles was good and I did get some sleep. I sat next to a member and we got to chat for a while. then when we arrived in los angeles we went to the tv thingy to see where our next flight left. it said guadalajara but it didnt say where. so we decided to wait and see if it would show up. bad idea. we ended up waiting for around 2 hours and then when it didnt show up we went and asked. they said we were in the wrong terminal and that we had to go to the other side of the airport. to do that we had to catch a shuttle and everything and that took like 20 minutes or so. when we went to get our tickets they said we were too late and that we would have to go reschedule a flight. we waited for 2 hours in line to reschedule and then found out the next flight to guadalajara didnt leave until 1 am. so we sat and waited for around 12 ish hours for the next flight which was oh so fun.
so then I arrive in mexico. I step of the plane at 6 oclock in the morning, I have had maybe 4 or 5 hours of sleep if im lucky, and this wave of nasty smell smacks me in the face, i honestly almost threw up all over the place. then we go through customs all right but when we went to claim our bags, they weren´t there. i still dont have them.
my comp is a native from the state of chiapas in southern mexico. the only english he speaks is what i have taught him ha. anyways as soon as i arrived the APs drove me to pick up my companion and then dropped us off at the bus station to go to our area. Everyone here drives super crazy. they are always cutting off each other and honking, its pretty funny.
My area is called Tala. it is a small city about 30 minutes or so west of Guadalajara. our apartment is pretty small but average for all the houses around here. we spend most of our time in a town called Ruiseñores because that is where most of the members are, and we are going to live there on thursday of this week. one of our friends who isnt a member is going to help us move. his name is juan and sells what they call churros every night in the town square but they arent like churros we are used to. they are more like scones with sugar coating and then he cuts a hole in them and puts caramel inside. They are soooo good! every night we walk by he gives a free one.
The food is super good. Everyone here asks me if it has made me sick yet, which it hasnt and i hope it doent. they hardly ever use utensils. what they usually do is put beans and meat and rice on a plate along with a big stack of 4 or 5 inch corn tortillas. you tear off a piece of the tortilla and use it to grab your food and eat it. i love the food and everything. they also have a drink here they call horchata. i dont really know what it is but its kinda like cinamon milk, or the milk after you have had a bowl of cinamon toast crunch. it is heavenly.
This morning i did my laundry of the little clothes that i had, we use a wash board and a bucket of water ha its awesome. there is a laundromat but we are to lazy to walk all the way over there and we dont want to spend our precious pesos ha. everything here is way cheap. a gallon of milk is about 20 pesos which is like 2 dollars and saturday we ate at a steet vender for about the 2 bucks for a full plate of food. they were ´´face tacos´´ they scrape what meat they can get off the face of a cow and cook it. it was pretty good and very very spicy, as is everything. my comp puts tobasco on his pizza and about everything else.
The people here are crazy. my second day here, we were on the bus and this guy gets on and starts yelling at the top of his lungs. no body even seemed to notice him, then he stopped and started asking for money. later my companion said that he was singing and that it happens all the time. im not going to lie, i was freaked out...
Every one here speaks so fast that i cant understand so i am pretty quite during the lessons.. my companion will stop and look at me and then i know that its my cue to bear my testimony. ha but i am getting better at understanding them.
Yesterday at church, there were about 15 people there including me and my companion. only one of our investigators showed up which made me frustrated because we were expecting more like 5 or 6. the one that showed up was supposed to have been baptized last saturday but when our zone leader interviewed her she said she didnt think she was ready and that it seemed rushed. that made me frustrated too. but that comes with the job ha
We walk all over the whole city, probably something like 6-9 miles a day and I am beat every night. I have already noticed a difference in my weight. we dont have a scale but i would guess that i have lost about 6 pounds. and also because we only eat 2 meals a day and they arent very big, but I am almost never hungry, which is crazy because in the mtc i was alway hungry.
ha something funny is that there is a company here called zeta gas that drives around all day playing this annoying song that gets stuck in your head way easy. there are so many of their trucks everywhere that you can basically always here it. we will be teaching and there is this annoying song playing in the back ground.
Well tomorrow me and my comp (his name is elder guzmán) are going to G town (guadalajara) to meet the mision president and his wife and stuff. Usually when missionaries arrive, they come in like packs of 10 or so, but I was the only one and so they just sent me out to work. So we are going there and spending the night there and doing something there which i don´t really know and then coming back.
Well thats basically my week!!
Love you all
Elder Anderson
ps the keyboards here are way weird so thats why most of the stuff isnt capitalized or all that stuff haha
