5 March 2018

So that title was the coolest thing that I heard all of this week. We were knocking doors and we shared part of the Restoration with her, and when I was talking she cut me off and just looked at me and said, "De donde eres?" (Where are you from?) "De que pais?" (From which country?) When I told her that I was from the US, she looked impressed and asked where I had learned my Spanish. When I told her that I had learned it in North Carolina, and in only seven months (yeah Mom, I've been out that long! It's flying!) she was impressed but confused. I was confused as to why she was confused, but that's not important. That's one of the weird things about Spanish work, you pick up things about different countries that they say. For example, I've been told that I have a Venezuelan accent, I use Mexican sayings/phrases, and that I'm so white that I have to be from Puerto Rico, Spain, or the Dominican Republic. So I'm a bit of an strange person to meet for Hispanics. But getting that reaction for the first time was pretty awesome. At least I know that my whole 7 months of Spanish is starting to really click. For a while I forced myself to have every conscious thought in Spanish, and that helped. I still have some random times when I think in Spanish. It's pretty great, but sometimes I'll be thinking and then I have to stop because I can't think of the word in either language. It gets rough.
On Wednesday we got a call from our branch president's wife to ask us to set up the headsets for translation for the Young Women's New Beginning thing, but we wouldn't have to translate, because the same member who was feeding us that night was going to translate. Well, the member called and canceled on both. So we went dinnerless and got to translate for that. It wasn't too bad, but I'm the one who does translations from English to Spanish. I can do that just fine, but if you want me to go the other way around, I suddenly can't understand Spanish. It's weird. So that goes to my companion. But I was in the middle of translating and they said the word "colors." Not a problem, right? Basic word, something you learn in your first week of Spanish. Somehow I forgot it, and just said the first word that came to mind. The English one would have worked, because most understand at least a fair amount of English, but my brain decided that if it couldn't use the right foreign language, it would at least use one. So I used the German word. Probably went right over the heads of everyone there. Whoops. But other than that I did just fine. There wasn't a whole lot else that went down that was unusual this week. Well, we did bring the sacrament to a member yesterday who had back surgery and when we were leaving, his wife gave us a "house warming gift." We have absolutely no idea why, but now I am the proud owner of a brand new towel set. I'm not going to turn that down. For whatever reason, missionaries get offered the weirdest things. Also this week, I was offered a free puppy. Again. Actually, this time I was offered 8. People just love giving us stuff. Unfortunately, having a pet is against mission rules, so I had to turn them down. But they were great, and super tiny. Probably not even ready to give away yet. 




And then just a random fire truck parked in the Walmart parking lot across a whole bunch of spaces. The one in the cab was making faces at me when I took this, but you can't see him.
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