September 3, 2013

¡Hola Familia y Amigos!

Hey everyone, how is it going? Mexico is a crazy place but I love it. Thank you all for your messages it really made my day. I read them on my way to the temple this morning. It takes about an hour to get from the CCM to the Mexico City Temple, and traffic in the city is insane. Street lights, lanes, and crosswalks are just there to look at. People rarely use them, instead they use their horns when people don´t do what they want or don´t let them do what they want. Esta es muy loco.

It has been very different trying to adjust to the way of life here in the CCM, I really am not a morning person and waking up at 0630 cada manana regardless of weather is not my favorite. But I am loving it here any way. My companera is a sweet short girl(shorter than me) from San Diego, California, Escondido to be correct. I don´t know if she knows Aunt Sheila because I have no idea where Aunt Sheila lives and thus can not give any help to end the matter. 

I was really scared that I would end up in a spanish class that was far above my spanish abilities, but in fact the opposite has happened. I am currently in a spanish class where I am the most competent student, my companera is below me and then everyone else falls off the scale. It has been a bit frustrating because during our lessons with nuestro investigador I end up doing most of the talking because amazingly I can hold a conversation in spanish! Or at least make up a pretty good sounding conversation. Everyone in my district is younger then I am which is really weird to get used to, its like being stuck with a bunch of Joshuas. (just kidding!) Its been hard for me but they are all still amazing misioneros with very strong testimonies.

I miss being at home but I have started to see how things that I have been through in the past few years are helping me to make it through things that are happening here.

The campus is beautiful, I love how green it is. And its really easy to keep it green because it rains cada dia. And its not just a little sprinkle, when it rains it pours. I have been wearing my short boots since I got here so my feet stay dry, unfortunately for my companera she has already almost lost 2 pairs of shoes to the rain. I wish that I could go splashing around in the puddles after the rain because they get so big. But that wouldn´t be very proper for a misionera to do, so I haven´t.

Hmm....what else can I tell you......

Oh, thank you all for your messages of encouragement it really means a lot to me. I want you all to know how much I love you and I am so thankful that you are in my friends and my family. Unfortunately I don´t have time to send any pictures with this letter because of all the time we took at the temple this morning. Oh I can tell you about that (squierrel!)

The temple was beautiful and so peaceful, it was hard to stay awake during the session though because everything was in spanish and I didn´t really understand. But it was such a wonderful feeling there and I was so excited to go again. Though it made me miss Kaytlyn with a fresh longing because of all the temples we went to before we left.

I´m sorry about what happened to Samuel, that is quite a break and I´m sorry I am not there to help, it might have been my chance to watch a surgery! Just kidding, I love you Samuel and I hope that you get feeling better soon, and please try to be careful and let yourself heal before you start out on other adventures.

There are a lot of misquitos around here but thankful I have been protected from them thus far. One of the Elders in my district wasn´t so lucky though, it walked into class last week with at least 15 bites on one arm. ¡Ouch! We have been trying to kill the misquitos when we can and so we have greatly reduced the numbers in our casa. The food is decent, I have cereal pretty much every morning they serve other stuff but it just doesn´t look good to me. I´ve been told though that the food has gotten a lot better, just a week ago they introduced peanut butter and nutella to the comedor. As I´m sure you can guess, it doesn´t last very long. Its funny when they bring it out on the little cart people follow it all the way to the table.

As I´m sure you have guessed my P-day is on tuesdays, kind of an inconvinence in a way but I will live with it. I have one week down now just 5 more to go here at the CCM, unless of course they move me into a more advanced class. My maestra mentioned maybe doing that the first day of class but hasn´t said anything else about it since. I don´t know if thats I was kind of not sure about moving up to a higher class or she realized that my spanish really wasn´t that good. Oh there is a really funny story about my class. So yesterday during class she was trying to speak only in spanish. And she was telling us how she was playing an investigador and the misioneros that were teaching her were trying to say "Dios es amoroso" (god is loving) but instead they said "Dios es almuerzo" (god is lunch). I started laughing so hard, a few seconds later my companera began to laugh, but the rest of our class didn´t get it until the teacher told them in english. Because of this event, and quite a few others like it, I haven´t really made friends in my district. Most of them really really REALLY don´t like the fact that I can speak more spanish then they can. But, oh well, we will all survive it anyway.

Well I´ve got to get going now so that we can do our laundry, ugh, I was lazy with laundry before and I feel lazy about it now. Some things never change. Send everyone my love and hellos. Feel free to write me whenever you feel the desire to do something crazy (as I am sure you have noticed, my letters are crazy!) I love you all and hope to hear from you in a week (so long!) I will make sure to take more pictures and send them next time. And oh look, perfect timing, its raining....again....for the 7th day in a row.....(another squirrel)

Bless you all! (said with the squeaky voice of Lina Lamont from Singing in the rain)

Love you!

Hermana (amazing! I´m official, though I sometimes have to look at my name tag to remind of such) Monsivais

P.S. Lo siento that my letter is crazy and probably has spelling mistakes, I was never very good at english. And please forward this on to other family and friends you feel would like a good laugh, or a nice puzzle (I´m sure there  is a lot here that doesn´t make sense, and thus makes it a perfect puzzle)