Fiesta Del fin de la semana

So every weekend (when it doesn´t rain), the city has a big party. Complete with lots of honking, loud jumbled music and fireworks. It seems like everybody plays their music as loud as they can. They even had airplanes flying low and playing music. Which is not the smartest idea because you only get a couple seconds of the song. There are also tons of really loud explosions. Like really really groundshakingly loud explosions.

Besides that, this week has been pretty normal. My Spanish is progressing and i´m getting better at teaching. Everyday has basically the same schedule so the days kinda blur into one. But it doesn´t matter because we are working so hard all the time that we don´t have time to think about stuff like that except on pdays. Which is how it should be.

Tuesday was our "half way there" party which consisted of cinnamon rolls and staying up 15 minutes later. We party hard. Although the cinnamon rolls were quite delicious. I don´t feel like i´m half way done. It feels like i´ve been here a couple months but at the same time, I feel like I need to learn a lot more before going to Chile.

As many of you know already, I got sick on Wednesday. It must have been something for dinner on Tuesday because the next day, many people woke up with parasites, me included. So while the rest of my district went to the temple today, me and elder Strang stayed home and within close range of a bathroom. My intestines finally realized that i´m in Mexico. But all is well because I have plenty of medicine and they have a couple good doctors here. I´m much better off than Elder Strang who is waiting to get results back to see if he needs to go to the hospital. I´m already feeling a lot better. And plus, today is pday so it was the perfect time to get sick.

The MTC is getting way too full. The lines at meals are ridiculous. Sometimes we don't even have time to get the food before our time is up. But we are finding loopholes to getting to food faster. There is also only one barber so getting a haircut takes half your pday. But conveniently, I won´t need one while i´m here.

Melissa-I got you letter on tuesday! It´s so weird being able to understand spanish. Also, it got here really fast so i´m going to start sending letters back.

How was cannon beach? I really miss just sitting on the beach and not having anything to do. Who went? How long did you stay?

I´ve decided that one of my goals during my mission is to get really good at soccer. I´ve been playing everyday for about an hour and I´m loving it. Plus Latinos are ridiculously good at it so if I wanted to learn, this would be the place.

That's all for now. I´m putting more pictures up on dropbox today. I might send another email with the things I inevitably forgot.

Love you

Elder Thompson

all I could eat at lunch

almost racist

a very important sign

Everyone has these cool bikes

40 minute bus ride

Hello,

new record: 27 emails

This week we were supposed to start teaching actual investigators. Which meant actual Latinos with actual fast spanish. PERO,  Because of the bad scheduling, no one showed up so we really dodged a bullet. My spanish improvement is slowing down, which is scary because we are teaching more and more. Translation errors have always been really funny to me and it´s really hard not to laugh when someone is giving a heartfelt talk and they say things like "through the atonement we can be clean from our pescados (fish) instead of pecados (sins). Someone was also trying to say I am in class. but instead of clase (class) they said carse (prison). which is slightly true. I can use dropbox so i´ll send you my pass word and stuff and you can put those pictures on my blog. Alright 15 minutes. We went to the temple today and as always, the bus ride was crazy. I wish I could have taken a video the whole time because everything is so different. I do have a lot of pictures though. The Temple was also pretty darn good, though very difficult in spanish. We had a live broad casted devotional last Tuesday in which Richard g Scott paused for like 30 seconds after his talk than said said that he gives an apostolic blessing to everyone learning a new language. It was a super powerful talk besides that and that was just the cherry on top. I´m loosing my English skills and i´m still not very good at Spanish so talking and writing is just not my thing. When people say hi to me, I don´t know what is coming out of my mouth. It could be spanish or english or some weird mix like "good tardes." Our spanish lessons are getting much better though. I can basically say anything I want with enough struggling. OK 5 minutes left. Adios! Love you all

a much needed p-day

23 emails. That´s how many I got in the first week. keep it up!

Ok so there is so much to say in so little time so imgoing to write in catigories.

Mexico

Mexico city is giant. Like really really big. hopfully I can send pictures that i took on the flight in because it is mind blowing. When I first got off the plane it felt like I was breathing in ash because of the smog but I don´t notice it anymore. The weather is pretty hot but bareable. The skies are clear all day until 7 a clock it goes from clear to thunderstrom and rain and wind in a matter of 10 to 15 minutes. Then it only lasts for at most 30 mintues and it becomes clear again. It does that every day at the same time give or take 30 minutes. we have to plan our schedule around it so we can stay inside for that 30 minutes of crazy storm. I love it. Mexico is also really loud. there is always traffic and everybody honks always. Literely. And horns here arent just a honking noise, they are little 3-5 note jingles. Kind of like our washing machine when it finishes. there are also really loud dogs all night. and all car engines sound like a fork in a garabage disposal. Mexico also has very unique sounding birds.

The CCM (MTC)

When we arrived at the CCM it was like coming into a little oasis from the city. It´s sort of like hawaii in here. The food is really good and authentic. especially the amazing fruit juices they have. oh man, juice will never be the same. With every meal they have tortillas, beans and rice which by themselves are really good. The breakfast on the other hand are terrible. everyday we have waffles or pancakes, which would be fine however they only have chocolate syrup for topping. Which gets really old really fast. They also have really inappripriate uses for fruit. Like a pineaple and guava sauce on chicken corn on blue (I know that isn´t how you spell it) But other than that the food is amazing. Oh, and tons of guavas. There are a lot of people here. My group made it 600 people. by next week we will reach 800. Although the campus is giant so that isn´t really a problem. I thought the CCM was going to be a lot more americanized but that is not the case. There are very few people here that speak english, other than missionaries, which makes it difficult if you need something from the office. We all sleep in houses here and they are actually pretty nice. Each companionship has their own shower and double bathroom. aswell as their own bedroom. And it´s not a race thing, but all the employees are good at yard work so the campus is always really upkept.

My District

There are 11 of us, 8 elders and 3 hermanas. 4 out of 8 of the elders went to school on a sports scholorship and the other 3 just play college sports. So you can guess what the topic of conversation is most of the time. Oh, and one of the elders is apperently famous. People are always taking pictures of/with him and awkwardly coming up to talk to him and everywhere you go you hear wispers of "look thats elder mangum" it´s kind of funny. Luckily, everybody in my district is pretty socially equipt. My comp is also really funny.

Me and stuff

So people told me that the MTC was hard but I didn´t expect this. The first couple of days litteraly felt like a couple weeks. They were the longest days I have every experienced. Everything is completely in spanish from day one. By day three, right after we learned how to pray in spanish, we had to teach a 30 minute lesson about the restoration of the gospel to an investigator that doesn´t speak english. He was actually a member but it is still pretty difficult. And since then, we have to teach one lesson a day. My spanish is getting a lot better though. It is already difficult to write this email in english. Oh man, 10 minutes left. I got that package! It was super unexpected and awesome! it´s funny that you put peanut butter in there because they dont have peanut butter in south america and I was really craving it. My schedule is as follows. Wake up at 6:30 and be in the classroom at 7, which is like a 10 minute walk away. then personal study until breakfast at 8. then we are in different spanish and gospel classes until 11:40 when we have gym time until 1:00 lunch. then we do personal spanish study and for an hour or so then we teach an investigator then after the lesson it all depends on the day. There are usualy big meetings with multiple Ramas, which I don´t know what english equivilant of Rama is but I think it means branch. Ok times up. I might be able to email again later today if im sneaky. Love you all and thanks for all the support!

This is the wall separating us from the city.

These are the little houses for the missionaries

trying out the washboard