2010 Oct 19

2010 Oct 19

¡Hola mi familia!

Sorry that I didn´t get a letter sent off to you last week. You guys were probably worried sick (or else I hope you were worried sick. The more sick with worry you were, the better.) Also, I don´t have any idea how to do emoticons on these keyboards so you´ll have to bear with me. Also, sorry about having to send an email today rather than sending it tomorrow. Some things took place that required the new schedule which I will go into more detail later...

This week has been really great. The group of Latinos and old Americans just left so now it´s just the Americans that I came with that are here. Some more Americans from the Provo MTC are coming in later tonight. So that will be exciting. It doesn't even seem like that long ago that I was the one getting off the plane in Guatemala to see a sketchy-looking bus driver waiting for us in a red school bus with a sign on it that said CCM (That´s Spanish for MTC) So that´s crazy. And in only double the time that I've been here, I´ll be in Quetzaltenango (also, called Xila (Shae-la)) bringing the gospel to all the people there. So that´s really really exciting.

This week has been really good. In my other Spanish class, we've been going over subjunctive tenses (there are like 50 of them). And while I was kind of complaining to a roommate of mine who was from Mexico (who also happens to be really fluent at English) he said that there are 4 different subjunctive tenses in English! 4! And we just use them all day every day without even thinking about it! That will hopefully be me in 3-5 months except in Spanish.

Today, though, we went to the market next to the capitol building. It was really fun bartering with people though I've basically just accepted the fact that I´m never going to be very good at it. Why? Because, according to them, all Americans are rich and what kind of a non-American would be more than 2 meters tall and have white-ish skin (which, by the way, is starting to darken up). There isn't too much that I will be able to do about the height though. Pero esta bien.

Anyway, today: So we started out just like any other ordinary day. We got up at 6:20 went to gym at 6:30, I was kind of tired today so I decided to only get my heart rate up to 161 instead of 175 and then I took a shower and went to breakfast and went to do personal study for an hour and then everything changed! Not really changed because I've known since I got here that the Tuesday after everyone left that it would be different... I´ll just cut to the chase. WE WENT TO THE SUPERMERCADO! It was really awesome. First, before we went there though, we went to some place that has Guatemala all mapped out and everything and it´s about the size of a small park... like the size of the area of 3 of our church building put together. It was pretty really cool. Also, I didn't take my camera on this trip because I was scared that it would get stolen so I didn't get any pictures. Which is kind of sad. But anyway, on the way from the big map thing to the Supermercado, we crossed over this bridge (it may have been on the way back to the CCM from the Market) and there was this really big river (or maybe glacier but it´s Guatemala, so probably river)-formed gorge with the poorest looking community of people I've ever seen in my life. It was insane. Look it up on Google maps. Anyway, it was really humbling and I felt really grateful that I was blessed to be born in America to a Dad with a great work ethic and a great education and a great job. So that was good to see. I´ll be seeing that for the next couple years. But, anyway, the market. That was great. I bartered this one guy down from 50 to 45 Quetzales (which is only like a 60 cent difference but I felt pretty good about myself). And then I bought some crazy looking fruits with like spikey things coming out of them. They are red and, apparently, you are supposed to peel it to get to the white fruit in the middle. But that was really cool. Look them up and put a picture of them on the blog if it isn't too much trouble.
I have to go soon...

So I haven´t been getting any dearelder.com s and they are free so if you could send them then that would be amazing. It would seriously make my life. :) Also, I know that Heavenly Father loves us and that, through Christ we can return to go again.