Courtney's Week #34

Well, this week has been a really humbling experience for me. I am learning a lot from my new companion Hermana Perez. She has told me that I have problems with ´d´, ´r´, ´rr´, ´m´, ´n´, and ´g´ in my spanish. There are only 26 letters in the alphabet and I have problems with 6 of them, Ugh. She pretty much says that nobody can understand me, but that´s not entirely true. It´s just been a little bit frustrating. Oh, so it is not bad manners in the latino culture to tell someone that they are fat. But Hermana Perez has some sort of sickness where she can´t eat a lot of things. It´s also really hard for her to finish all her food, but we have to finish all our food or else the people get a little offended. And so since she got here I have been eating almost double portions of everything. So yesterday after lunch I was overstuffed as usual and I was lamenting because I am gaining weight. Hermana Perez was nice enough to expand on that thought. She told me that I was gigantic and how when I arrived I was not how I was now and she just went on and on about how fat I am getting. It kind of made me a little bit unhappy because I am the one who has to eat all of her food! Oh well, I will just have to work on that a little bit more.

 

Oh so it is no longer cold down here in Chile, it is actually quite toasty. We pretty much are drenched in sweat all day. But because it so dang hot we are also drinking a lot of water, and all the people that we teach give us coca-cola. I have never drank so much soda in my life.

 

So for Thanksgiving we didn´t do anything, we actually had a very small lunch on Thursday and we didn´t receive any food for the rest of the day either, so I was actually really hungry on Thanksgiving. I did pick Thanksgiving hymns to sing in all our lessons though, but Thanksgiving doesn´t exist at all here. Which I think is weird because they celebrate everything else. During the summer they had Dia de Madre (Mother´s day), dia del Padre (Father´s day), and then they also had Dia del niño (Child´s Day?). Anyways it seems like they are always searching for reasons to celebrate, so why not celebrate Dia de Gracias.

 

Anyways I don´t have a lot to say today, but I will be sending off your package today! You should be excited!

 

Love you all!

Hermana Evans

So just as an afterthought, the temple open house and dedication in Quetzaltanango, Guatamala is the hometown of my companion Hermana Perez. How cool, when she gets home there will be a new temple.