Limonada

Things are going alright.  I'm getting kind of sick of always being in the same place.  General Conference a few days ago was amazing.  The good thing about being in the MTC is that you get to watch it in English.  It would have been cool to listen to the Spanish talks in Spanish though.  Which by the way was super legit that they did that.  Just a week or two ago my district was talking about if there will ever be conference talks in other languages.  That question was answered pretty quick.  There was some really good talks.  I really enjoyed President Eyring's talk Sunday morning about revelation.

Last P-day they changed the e-mail time because we got to go on a tour of the city.  It was really cool. It doesn't really feel like Guatemala in the MTC, so it was a fun experience to be out there.  We went to a relief map of Guatemala.  You should try to Google pictures of it, it's really cool.  I doubt there are too many giant relief maps of Guatemala so it shouldn't be too hard to find.  It's crazy how steep some of the mountains are.  They said the map is almost perfectly accurate, which is crazy considering it was made by a bunch of guys riding around on horses.  The map was made a long time ago and the story about it is pretty cool.

The other thing we did that day that was really neat was we went to a market.  It was underground.

There was two parts to it.  The first one was a meat and fruit market.  The meat shop was pretty much like you see in pictures, just big hunks of meat hanging from hooks.  There was mountains of fruit. Some of it was different looking fruit too.  Anyway, it was pretty cool.

I leave for the real world on Tuesday.  It is pretty exciting.  The days here are the same most of the time.  I can't wait to just be able to walk more.  I've heard that our mission president is a cool guy.  All but one person in my district is going to my mission.  Somebody here, I'm not sure who, has a friend who is in the Guatemala City East mission right now.  The best news I've heard is that mission president doesn't have strict music rules, so I'm hoping that's true.

It's really pretty here in a lot of places.  It was really neat to be able to see things when I was out on the tour, because really all I've seen of Guatemala is what I could on the drive from the airport to the CCM.  It's really green. Like really green.  Even parts of the city look like a jungle.  There were some amazing buildings when we went downtown. There is a big green palace and a cathedral-ish thing, some sort of Catholic building.  It's too bad they're in the Central Mission so I won't get to go inside or anything.  I did hear that the map was in my mission though.

The culture here seems really cool.  There are some really neat and different places and people here.  There is amazing artwork and architecture and some really poor places too.  The last part of the tour we drove past a community that was pretty much a steep valley coated in shacks.  I can't remember what they call the places in general but I think that one in specific was called the Limonada (or something lemonade in English).

I can't wait to be able to speak enough Spanish to be able to talk to people.  Or even just to talk to people with the Spanish I do know.  I can teach the lessons alright, and can usually understand words I know.  I just don't know a whole ton.  That should be fixed in a few months though.  And if they go as fast as this one has, that should be in no time.  The first few days here felt like the longest ever, and I'm sure the first few in the field will too.  But the weeks are never long.  And as little as it feels like I accomplish, some days at the end of the week I'm a lot better than I was.  My Spanish is coming along a lot better. I'd even say it's going good.  

Things here are alright. Sometimes the supervisors are idiots (I mean this in the kindest way).  A lot of the teachers are really good though.  We've been really lucky with teachers.  The first two we had were amazing.  They changed our afternoon teacher last week, so we don't have Hermano Ruiz any more, so that's too bad.  Our new teacher's alright too, and we only have one more week.

Before I forget, I got your letter last week that you mailed me.  I just forgot to tell you.  And I got a Dear Elder letter from Michaela.  On the topic of letters, thank Sister Dabel for her letter.

I don't have much time left to write, so last thought is I love and miss todo de ustedes.  I'm sending a letter home today hopefully.  I'll talk to you next week.  It might just be a small letter next week because we are leaving and I don't know how much writing time we will have.  Goodbye.

Elder Jarvie