Carnival for me was really boring. It´s a bigger deal in other parts of the city, where they started throwing water balloons and using squirt guns weeks ago. However, here in villa mexico is only started on Sunday. Sunday afternoon there were lots of little kids running around with big squirt guns and water balloons and generally having a great time. Some of them got us wet too, but it was so hot out that we didn´t mind much. Monday and Tuesday we stayed inside, but could hear a lot of fireworks and fire crackers and such, plus lots of loud music. I´n sure that lots of people had water guns and balloons and even buckets of water, but you can´t hear that as much.Today a lot of houses and cars are still decorated with streamers and balloons, but it´s pretty much over.
With all our time in our apartment we followed the normal schedule for study in the morning (one hour of personal study, one hour of companionship study, and one hour of language study). Then we cleaned the apartment really well, updated the area book (records of all the people we are teaching, where they live, what we have taught them, etc), which took awhile, did laundry, and caught up on a lot of assorted little things like writing letters, making some new cardboard drawings to teach the Plan of Salvation (remember the missionaries who had Calvin from calvin and hobbes? I´ll take a picture of mine this week.), and organizing my desk really well. However, we still had lots of time to be bored. I´ve gotten used to having lots to do and being really busy, so I didn´t like all the free time as much as I thought I would (I was really looking forward to our "vacation").
Hna Nuñez and I get along fine. It wasn´t that hard to adjust to teaching with her because all missionaries learn to teach with the same basic principles and, obviously, the same lesson outlines. We talk a lot about our families and what we did before our missions, more than with Hna Aliaga. Looking back, Hna Aliaga told me almost nothing about her family or life. I´m not sure if Hna Nuñez is more soft spoken or not. She talks just as much, but I think is a bit more reserved about her feelings. maybe?
I feel like I understand Spanish pretty well. I am aware of how much I need to work on conjugating my verbs. I know how to do it right, but I have to think about it for a second first and often don´t bother. I still never know when to use tu or usted, but I think that´s a problem that everyone has. I´m reading the Book of Mormon in Spanish and can understand pretty well, except for the Isaiah parts, but I can´t understand the Isaiah parts in English either.
I have a couple photos to send you, but I can´t get the computer to accept my memory reader. It just doesn´t show up at all. When I finish everything here, I might have time to switch to a different machine and try there. The pictures are of us in front of the temple, we finally went to the temple. As missionaries we get to go once every 3 months, so I hadn´t gone in ages. We went really early in the morning and got back to our house by 10 or 11 if I remember right. That morning, while getting ready to leave by 5:30, the sink broke and wouldn´t turn off. We were able to stick a brick on top of it which kept the leaking to a minimum until Hno Fernandez (the father of the family who lives in the house) could fix it. Now the shower won´t heat the water and we have to use the shower in the house until it gets fixed, which is a bit of a bother.
The other picture is of the lunch we made the monday. We had permission to leave to go to the pension for lunch and dinner, but Hna Anavel can´t cook for us on Mondays because she sells juice all day and on Tuesday she called us and said she couldn´t that day either because she was visiting her mother. We had permission from the Fernandez family to use their kitchen and food, but there wasn´t much in the fridge. Thus we had potatoes and eggs with tomato and onions for lunch for two days. Boiled potatoes the first day and fried the second. We made pancakes for dinner, which turned out pretty good. I am learning to make them thin enough that they don´t burn before they are cooked through. Next time we have to cook for ourselves I want to make latkes because all the ingredients are really easy to find here. Could you send me a recipe. I just need to know the approximate ratios between eggs, potatoes, onions, and flour. Am I forgetting an ingredient? milk?
Love,
Natalie
PS This computer is set to English and thus you are getting an email without many spelling mistakes.
Here are some pictures from paintball. They are really unflattering because the girls have to wear an extra padded vest under the jumpsuit (this is also really hot), but we had fun.
No comments:
Post a Comment