June 22

We´ve had a pretty normal week without much to write about as well.

Aw, the birthday card [to Dad, which has never arrived] was pretty. It didn´t say much more than happy birthday, but I decorated it nicely.

We are really starting winter here, which isn´t that big of a difference in temperature, but it´s noticable. For one, it hasn´t rained for a few months now and it´s quite a bit colder, especially in the middle of the city where there´s more shade from the buildings. It still gets sunny in the middle of the day, but not at all hot. Occasionally I keep my thin sweater on all day. San Juan (the winter soltices) is the official start of winter and opinions are divided as to when it ends (some say that by the middle of August it´s getting warmer, some say that October is still winter).

It´s interesting to hear a bit of news from the wider world. [Church shooting in SC] Race differences is a very interesting topic. I see it more here in the language difference between latinos and nortemericanos in the mission. A lot of latinos feel that we are in Bolivia, here we speak Spanish and get rather annoyed when a group of the nortemericano missionaries start speaking English together because it excludes the others. In my experience it´s more that all the latinos group together and when we find that everyone in the circle of people talking speaks English we switch to English.

In Bolivia I don´t hear almost anything about guns and thus think that it´s not a huge problem. Probably because guns are expensive. However, people still manage to rob and all the rest without guns. Some policemen seem to have a type of rifle thing, but I´m not sure what it shoots because it seems too simple and plain to be a normal gun.

The guy from Last Week Tonight did a program on gun laws in Australia before he started last week tonight, which was really interesting. Basicaly, Austrlian used to have the same problems as the US with guns. They changed the laws, the government bought back most of the guns and they have have much fewer shootings and other problems since. It shows that the US could completely change their guns laws and it would probably work out very well. [John Oliver gun control trilogy]

This morning I realized that I didn´t have any new pictures for you and took a few. 

The wall with some of my things stuck up there. 

Hna Gonzales washing dishes this morning.

A really cool street art thing a few blocks for our house. 

This morning we went to the cancha (GIANT market). I bought a new sweater, even though I said that I didn´t need any new shirts or sweaters and would just look at things while Hna Gonzales tried to find what she needed, but it´s really soft and I like the color. I bought a bunch of mandaries (oranges? really big clemintines?), peanuts, and cereal to eat for breakfast. Hna Gonzales was very patient as we tried to find the cereal.

We also ran into Hna Graciela and Noelia in the cancha, which was really nice and made plans to get together next Monday. They seem to be doing well.