Week #4 - Peru CCM week one

Hola familia!!!

Ah! One week in Peru can you believe it?????? I cant!! Holy cow. First off quick reminder- its next to impossible to receive packages here, but i´d love to get some mail!! I haven't received anything yet but it might just be because i don't understand how to get mail... everything is in spanish here so if i dont understand something (ok everything) i'm lost for a while haha. did you get my email last wednesday? hopefully.

Anyways!!!! ok. so Peru is amazin!! i love it. The Peru ccm has some differences: the showers rotate from cold to hot, and doesn´t really go in between. so thats fun to try to deal with haha. The electricity is a little bit slow it blinks to turn on. Meals are basically some kind of grain ( usually more than one) : rice, bread, noodles, etc. With a large serving of some kind of meat.  Every once in a while we get fruit and vegetables. It all tastes super super good and is seasoned and prepared differently, but i do miss fruits and vegetables. Every night at 9:20, we have fruta time, where we get a snack which is usually a tangerine, a granadilla (similar to a pomegranate but orange outside gray inside. it took me a while to get the guts to try it but its super good!), or ice cream. So thats usually my fruit for the day. sometimes theres a side salad for lunch. they have a tea here that you can get for your meals that helps with digestion. I don't really like it but i drink it anyway!

Theres lots of earthquakes in peru! my first word i learned here was sismos, which is earthquake. there's signs all over the ccm that say we are in an earthquake safe zone so dont worry! there's only been one since ive been here, and it was tiny. The latinos know when they are coming though its cool.  

Other differences: not even my teachers speak english!! Its difficult and confusing a lot of the time, but i feel like i'm learning spanish much faster this way. My Companion is actually Hermana Odar for when I'm not in class so for meals pretty much. She does not  speak one word of english!!! Its difficult to communicate but we are pretty close. we taught our first investigator on monday together and it went super well. it was my first time teaching with someone who actaully knows spanish, and we got done 5 minutes early. usually we go like ten minutes over when im teaching with my north american companions. My N. american companions who are my companions in class are H. May from Colorado- she was in the three some with me my first day in provo! and H. Kimes who is from Georgia and i just laugh when she talks because i love her accent so much. All the Latinas absolutely love us. At meal times basically the three of us try to talk to each other ( they speak better than I do) and they think its hilarious. Haha we have lots of good times. The three of us all deal with stress by laughing, so we laugh together all day long. its the best i love them so much!!

ok so on thursday we went to the temple!!!! Its going to be closed for the next couple of weeks. It was tiny but awesome. I had to wear a headset to understand what was going on. i felt like a giant there because lots of the women came up to no joke- my elbow. Yeah its nuts. They talk to me, and i feel really bad because i have no idea what they are saying. I have learned that i absolutely love understanding whats going on. speaking of which, we took a van to the temple. when we got out, our driver said some stuff in spanish and drove off. we pieced it together- he gave us directions for walking back. hahaha. we had to walk 30 minutes to get  back to the ccm through the middle of peru- praying that we understood the directions. haha it was awesome.

Well Saturday was Peru´s independence day!!! we had a special celebration at lunch and all the Peruvians stood up and sang. they all love peru so much, some of them were close to tears. H. Odar is from Peru. H. Kimes is serving in Peru. H. May is serving in Ecuador. I{ve met some Bolivians here! everytime i tell people here that im going to santa cruz, they all say oh mucho calor! which means it's gunna be super hot. which is funny because all the hermanas make fun of me because i always say its so hot outside and its winter for them so they are all in jackets. i sleep with only a sheet and gave my blankets away because they all are freezing. I'm hot, and its winter, and bolivia santa cruz is hotter than here!!! Im gunna die haha.

Ok so on sunday i straightened a bunch of hermana's hair that was fun. Basketball is my favorite thing to play here because i'm like super amazing compared to everyone. its hilarious watching all of us hermanas play basketball. the facilities are super nice here- we've got this beautiful futbol court thing that i'll have to take a picture of. the sand volleyball is fun. lots of great things to do for gym.

I haven't gotten sick or anything at all which has been super nice. i take all my meds and things :) Ive even had to help my n. americana companeras, both have needed a lot of arnica for different things. also one of the oils really cleared up a rash she was getting. call me doctor Elisa! haha.

I beatbox for my hermanas one day. big mistake- now the entire mtc does it or tries to haha. Between my beatboxing, amazing singing (no one here can carry a tune not even most of the n. americanos haha its hilarious so they think im amazing) and my name being super easy to say and even translates into spanish, i am pretty popular here haha. well theres only 100 people here haha.

Its good that i brought sweaters though it gets a little bit chilly at night. we got to walk around town today for pday which is weird because you don't leave the provo mtc. we had to take a bus today i was so scared to do that because its insane. it was like riding a roller coaster haha i ended up enjoying it a ton.

My companera H. Odar loves David Archileta and was super sad she wasn't called to Chile- haha he's super big down here.

things are not super organized like provo but its good because its teaching me how to deal with things that aren't perfect. like one day im walking to class and the intercom says my companions and i need to get on the van and leave the ccm. we were super confused. it turned out to be that we needed to go exchange our money at some place 10 minutes away. always new adventures here its so much fun and i love it and i wish i could tell you more!!!

but i love you alll soooooo much!