My companion is Elder Cook, he is half Vietnamese and from L.A., but he speaks a fair amount of Spanish and some Arabic too, so he's a lot better at talking in Chinese than I am (He's more conditioned for learning/speaking a new language). Also, he's going NYNYCN too, along with one of our sisters in the district. For the record, we've had 3 teaching assignments already, all of them in Chinese, and while I can now understand most of what is going on in the lesson, I can't follow fast enough to interject myself into it very well. As a result, my companion does most of the teaching.
My scab on the side of my head has yet to have any trouble, so hopefully that mole is gone for good. I don't find the food here half bad, but I'm sure after nine weeks, I'm going to be more than ready to leave it behind. I forgot to bring my camera to the computer lab today, so no photos of my district today, maybe next week (most of them are going to taiwan).
One of the older generation elders, Seegmiller is his name, convinced all the new missionaries for a week that he was here while on leave from the Russian military. Had a marvelous fake accent to go along with the story, and all the other older generations played along, so we all fell for it.
I'm afraid I can't write my testimony to you in Chinese, as I have no Idea how to show tones on the letters (we haven't really started into characters yet, which is a problem, as I am much more a visual learner).
I have yet to need the scratchy sheets, as I sleep on the top bunk, and it is surprisingly hot in the room up there. Looking forward to going to the temple later today.
Oh, I ran into Ari Nash, she works here, but she got her call to Vladivostok, Russia. She goes in in May, I think. (That's the Russian peninsula just above Japan and the Koreas.) I'm afraid you may need to forward this email to Ethan this week, the computers are being incredibly slow and irritating right now, and I don't think I'll have the time to write him a letter of meaningful length.
I met Alex Campbell about 5 minutes into the orientation when I first went to the book store to pick up my stuff to learn Chinese (speaking of which, did you know that I got enough books to completely fill the small suitcase you sent me with? I have no clue how I'm going to take them with me, but I definitely need them, the grammar rules are ridiculous.)
Spiritual thought of the email: Make sure when I come home, I don't leave the mission field. Got that from a devotional where we watched a video of Elder Bednar. We had some church media guy do another devotional, don't know who he was, but he had a lot of info about the early missionary work of the church. Michael Hemmingway I think was his name, if that means anything to Dad.
Going to the gym is not fun, as I have to walk outside in about 5 degrees in shorts and a tee shirt, but the Volleyball is fun. My back has been tweaked a little, so I haven't gone running or done any heavy resistance workouts in gym yet; I'll wait until its better, then start really working.
Oh, Sacrament is...interesting. We have 2 Elders talk every Sunday, and they have to do the full thing in Chinese, then one of the Branch Presidency gets up and delivers a talk in a form of Chinglish. There are 57 Chinese missionaries in our Zone, and we are all the Chinese missionaries in the MTC out of the 3000 people here. I can say my personal prayers every night in Chinese at least, so I am learning.
Hopefully I can get more into the spiritual aspects of the MTC once I understand what's going on more, and when the computers are actually being effective.
Jacob
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