The MTC is an emotional rollercoaster. So many ups and downs during your day. My district is so great! Theres 6 Zhanglao (Elders) and 3 Jiemeimen (sisters). 4 of us are going to Sydney, 3 to Hong Kong and 2 to Brisbane. I live in a four bedroom dorm that has SIX people in it. 4 people have to share closets and 2 have their own. Luckily we randomly picked sheets of paper, and the two who picked ones with black dots got their own closet, and i got my own closet! I also got a bottom bunk. I have a Chinese companion! He doesnt speak Chinese though. His name is Elder Quass and he is from Minnesota. I see people that i know ALL the time which is so nice.
My good friend from school, Elder Bennion (going to Taiwan) is in my zone which means that he loves two doors down from me, its nice that hes so close because hes been here for 6 weeks and hes someone that i know really well. We got to go on a temple walk yesterday and i got to talk to a lot of my friends from school. We took a bunch of pictures together (i dont have my camera with me right now but I'll send you some pictures next week). Sunday was by far the best day that I've had here. We listened to a devotional by Brother Swenson who is such a great speaker, after that we got to all seperate and the MTC played a bunch of different talks in a bunch of different rooms and we listened to a talk by Elder Holland when he spoke at the MTC last year. The food here is SOOOOO good. Way better than the canon center. I never got to meet my branch president though. Elders going to Sydney that were here last week were able to meet them though.
The first day i got here was crazy. You guys dropped me off at 1:15 and before 2 oclock i was in a classroom with our teacher learning chinese. Our teacher STILL hasnt said anything in english yet. Definitely an immersion program. We had papa johns pizza the first day which was nice as well.
The second day was a lot of orientation kind of stuff which was really boring. The health clinic made me come in and take parasite medicine becasue they thought i could have some sort of disease from eating food in China. It got me out of orientation class though so i was happy. There are 900 missionaries that came in on the 26th! So many missionaries here.
The third day we taught our first lesson! None of us were prepared for it, so we did a lot of reading to our investigator. They give us SO many helpful learning materials. I probably got 10 pounds of books on the first day, all to help us with our chinese. We also have this online chinese program called "tall". It helps a lot with our pronunciation and learning vocab words. Its overwhelming to look at all the vocab you need to learn, but if you just take it one day at a time youll be fine.
The next day we taught another lesson to our investigator. We challenged him to read the book of mormon and he accepted. Ive been trying to start reading the Book of Mormon in characters, pinyin and english. You just take it verse by verse and try to recognize some words.
Its so nice here becasue everyone has the same goal of learning Chinese. We all made flashcards that we have on ourselves at all times and we like to quiz each other. Its nice that i know a lot of Chinese because im able to help everyone else in my district learn.
Theres an elder in my district that lived in Japan at the same time we did! His name in Elder Sheffield. He went to ASIJ and was a year younger than me. Just wondering if you knew his parents.
I've definitely learned that your attitude on everything depends on how your day is going to go. Having a bad attitude can bring everyone else around you down.
Today was my first Preperation day so we dont know what to do with ourselves! So much time. The temple is already closed so we werent able to go there today. Ive just done my laundry, some personal study and written some emails. Glad to hear Wes's wedding went well! Everything is great here. Having a good time and i can just hope that these next 8 weeks fly by so i can get to Australia!
Zai Jian!
He Zhanglao
(Elder Hall)
