23 August 2017

Well, time to apologize in advance. I don't have any pictures this week. We aren't allowed to take pictures on any day that isn't our P-Day. It's only 8:30 here, so we didn't have anything particularly picturesque happen this morning. We did play a little basketball in our regular proselyting clothes before breakfast though. Yeah, I have seen Elder Bryan around. I just talked to him at breakfast this morning, and we got a picture. You'll probably have to get that from Sister Bryan though, because I left my camera back at the house and we didn't want to wait to get it. Sorry. I'm trying to stay away from things like sugary cereal and actually eat healthy because my companion and I are running almost every day and doing weights too. We both have a goal of being able to do 100 consecutive push ups with no breaks. As of day one of trying, he's only at 31 and I'm at 34. Not very good, but we'll work on it. As for the eclipse, we had two people come into our classroom and say from the hours of 11-2, don't look at the sun. Don't try at all to see the eclipse. So we didn't. I didn't notice it even get darker at all, so it probably wan't even that dramatic here. And yes, the Spanish is much better. On the first day I saw Elder Bryan, I was able to correct his Spanish. He also keeps on trying to call me Sam, which I find hard to even respond to now. He yelled it this morning and I didn't even turn until he yelled Elder Battraw. Funny side note: only one person here has gotten my name right on the first try, and the teachers (all natives) have trouble saying it at all. I can always tell when they're trying to read my name because they squint and turn the paper a little bit. Really not too different from the U.S. My companion and I try to speak it out of class, but there's still a lot of words we don't know. As for the packages, it depends. One Elder in my district said his mom sent him a package that never arrived, but one of my roommates has gotten one each week. One of the Mexican Elders told me that if you want your stuff to stay safe when being sent, draw a picture of the virgin Mary on it and they'll leave it alone. It might be better to wait, but the clothes situation is getting a little rough. Speaking of clothes, why would I rinse them in the sink? Does that prevent them getting really bad? Anyways, we have one towel hook in our room and four people trying to use it. All of the chairs already have towels hanging off of them. Yesterday we started our mixed group, where I got assigned a Latino elder, Elder Roderno. He seems like a pretty cool guy. We had 40 minutes to get to know each other and prepare a lesson, and it seemed to go pretty well. I have the first vision memorized in Spanish, so I got to do that at least. I'm hoping that you're still teaching so I can get that same benefit too! Well, we'll see how it goes.

Love, 

Elder Battraw part III

I just realized I completely forgot to explain why my last email was titled, "Christmas." Well, my district's first two pdays were completely taken up with temple trips (not a bad thing) and so this first one that we had the whole day was exciting. So we called it Christmas and had a secret Santa gift exchange last night. I gave my person a bag of their favorite suckers from la tienda, and I got a nail file from my guy. There was a twenty peso limit (about $1.20) so there wan't much that you could get your person. It was awesome. Anyways, my hour is up, so time to sign off!