WEEK 10 The Dreaded Weekly Email

May 03, 2016

I went to the Temple this week. I went to a conference with a whole bunch of other missionaries (a bunch of whom speak ENGLISH). And!!! Today we went exploring in the JUNGLE. We took a 3 hour bus ride this morning, which meant we had to wake up at 4, but it was so worth it! The place we went is called Incachaca – look it up. It was beautiful. We got to HIKE, explore, find waterfalls and see a whole new part of Bolivia! Bolivia is so cool. There are so many different climates so close together!

Favorite scriptures this week:

-Alma 14 – The crazy Faith in this chapter. It´s a good one. Read it.

-Exodus 14 – THE PRINCE OF EGYPT

-Mosiah 4:9 – it says something about how we have to believe that man cannot understand all the things that the Lord can understand. I liked it because we don´t have the answers to everything. We cannot understand all things but we have to have faith that the Lord does.

So our schedule is a little like this:

6:30 wake up

8-12 study

12-1 teach

1-2 Lunch with our penchinista (who makes bomb food)

2-9 or 9:30 teach

9 or 9:30-10:30 EAT dinner, plan and go to bed.

Things I love:

Remember how last week I was complaining about how everyone goes to the bathroom everywhere? Welp. I´ve now joined that group of people. But it´s ROUGH when you have a small bladder and there are no public toilets and you´re out for 10 hours… I´m now with the Cholitas. The world is my toilet.
THE FOOD. Alright. I may complain about the cleanliness of the food… but that shouldn´t keep me from mentioning how incredible the food here is! So far my favorite plates have been; Sopa de mani (Peanut soup), Ahi paplisa, Medio Loma, Fritanga, Pike Macho (this is the one I always saw pictures of and swore I´d never eat… Welp, I eat it. And I enjoy it!), Falso Conejo and Charque--- this last one needs some explaining. Someone in our ward apparently makes this dish and sells it on the weekends. When my comp heard about it she told me we had to get it. Haha so this plate consists of dried meat, which they dry for a few days in the sun (I could just imagine all the flies), after which the boil the meat and then they fry it. It´s served on a plate with boiled potatoes, a boiled egg and corn the size of my eyeball. It smelled like death and they of course gave me a family size portion but it was surprisingly good!!
GUYS. A dog peed on my companion. A random dog just walked right up to her and lifted it´s leg on her like she was a tree or a fire hydrant. I DIED LAUGHING. I could not stop. Which of course means it´ll me next time but it was SO FUNNY.
I´m normal. This week we had a mission conference where a bunch of the other missionaries all came together. All of the other ¨sisters¨ recognized that I was new and came and talked with me. They all told me about how they cried for their first few months and how hard the language was and bla bla bla. I don´t cry. But the language has been a STRUGGLE. So it was good to hear I wasn´t the only one, and it´ll come.
WE FOUND SOMEONE TO DO OUR LAUNDRY. For dirt cheap. Cool

Things I´m learning to love:

Everyone gives us coke. Or soda. ALLL the time. A member, in their car, saw us walking the other day offered us a ride. We hopped in their car and out of nowhere the girl in the front seat pulls out a 2Liter of Pepsi and plastic cups. WHAT?! In the car?! Just picture the creep face from Lonely Island… BUT SERIOUSLY!! I can´t escape it.
The struggle is so real with being told what to do. Oh my gosh. I´m terrible. Comp tried to tell me I coudn´t work out for more than 30min… mmmhmmm. Watch me.
I´m bad with time. But here, they REALLY bad with time. We make appointments for the same time our other ones end…and they´re like 30mins apart. HOW is that supposed to work?! We´re never on-time to anything. And it´s not just a HOFFMAN thing.
Everyone gives us food. Which is so nice… but My stomach cannot it with all the coke. This week I had to sneak food into my bag when one of the ladies we were teaching wasn´t looking so that I didn´t have to eat it. I also dumped coke in the rocks when someone wasn´t looking. Let´s hope no one catches on.