Hola! Hows everybody back home?
Life here is grand. We get an hour of email a week which is sick (though I´ve already used about 25 minutes on various stuff. Lo siento). But after I write the president I´m good to go for extra long emails. The keyboard is wierd tho so it takes a little longer to type. A bunch of the keys are in the wrong place. lol. Sorry, but I forgot any letters to respond to back at the house, so those´ll have to wait till next week. Also, we get dear elders like 2 weeks after they´re sent, and real mail takes like a month or two. So yah. You can send a weekly email if you want, and then everyone else Dear Elder if they still happen to care. It might take a while for my letters to get back but whateves.
Ugh. Where to start! We spent P-day and tuesday packing like madmen. It was nuts. Just trying to wrap eveything up, get all our stuff done, collect and pack etc. Hopefully Mackenzie got my scrips. The suitcases were all right on the line of being too heavy. I weighed and re-weighed a tonne of times trying to get them just right. The final weigh in at the airport was 50, 49, and 40 lbs. for each of them. Ridiculous. I even had to put a couple of things in someone elses bag to keep from having to pay overweight charges. Tuesday night was full of goodbyes and last minute packing, but we managed to get to bed on time. Wednesday morning we got up at 3 AM and took all our bags to the travel office, got our info about the flights, and got on the bus. Got to the airport and checked in. For some it was their first time on a plane. Crasy stuff.
Flights went well. The first one we all sat by missionaries. The second one I sat by two strangers who were nice and I talked to them about going on a mission. Sorry the phones were lame. It was fun to call home tho. Some people talked for at least 2 hours which was kinda annoying, but whatever. Toy Story 3 was playing on the plane to Miami. It was super distracting even with no sound, but I justify seeing maybe a quarter of it, because while I tried to write a couple letters on the plane, my eyes wandered to the movie while I thought, instead of the not-appropriate magazine that the guy was reading beside me. lol
Miami was hot, but thankfully short. The plane to Buenas Aires was pretty huge, and as luck would have it, I was in the very middle of the middle section (5 people wide). So I was stuck in my seat the whole time. But the lady and her husband beside me only spoke spanish so it was fun to talk to them. Ah. I´m going too slow. K. Anyways, transfered in Argentina and made it to Paraguay alive. We were picked up by the mission president and his wife. They are very friendly and nice and speak pretty descent English which is super cool.
My first impressions of Paraguay: There were a suprising number of descent cars, there were quite a few dogs in the parking lot which was crasy (I just wanted to pet them all. They are super submissive and just sit at your feet. But they´re kinda dirty too so you just dont touch them...). It was raining when we showed up so it wasn´t too hot, but it got ridiculous pretty quick and I´ve been dying ever since. The roads here are crasy, and the office elders that drove us around fit right in. lol. Half the roads are paved, and the other half are just made of rocks jammed in the ground. Pretty bumpy. The mission office is in this chapel in the middle of town. Pretty sick. They fed us some descent food there. We spent most of the day just getting oriented there. There was a baptism that evening which we attended. Cool, but we were so tired from the plane ride (we all slept, but it wasn´t good or really for too long), that it was hard to stay awake.
We slept in a house full of beds together the first night. It was chill. Things are pretty descent as far as houses go. They aren´t really all that nice, but they´re bearable. All the floors have tile and the shower just drains into the floor. Not like a tub underneath it or anything.
The next day we met our companions. My companion is Elder Lee from Salt Lake City. He´s really chill. Our area is called Moroni B. Its in the middle of town and is pretty much the richest area in all of Paraguay. Our house actually has air conditioning, we get fed every day for lunch basically (lunch is the biggest meal here), and in most of our area everyone has a car. Kinda ridiculous, but maybe it´ll be good and help ease me into Paraguayan lifestyle. There is a part of our area where houses are just randomly put up and its pretty cool. Theres random animals everywhere which is sweet. Dogs, cats, chickens, pigs, lots of different birds, some people have parrots as pets, giant ants etc. The people are really cool and friendly. Its really hard to talk to people right now and so I usually just sit and listen while Elder Lee talks, but I´m working on figuring out their different accent and contributing more. We do lots of contacting in our area (which we didn´t really practice much at the MTC), and so I´m working on that, but with the people being all rich here they don´t usually let us in no matter what you say. We managed to get two people to come to church this week tho and we taught some legit lessons which was really cool. I don´t know what else to talk about really. Its hard to discribe it all. In some places the houses are just put up wherever and you have to walk around and about and through someones front porch to get to a whole group of houses.
I´m having a great time. Even though talking is a real challenge, I think I´ll start to be able to get involved in conversations more pretty quick. The hardest time for me is just that everyone mumbles like crasy and if they start rambling I just get super lost. But I got faith that I´ll pick it up quick, and I´m just trying my hardest, so I should get it sooner or later.
Elder Lee leaves a transfer and a half from now (getting back in time for school). So with that in mind, I´ll probably be here for at least 4 and a half months, maybe 6 months. But thats fine by me. There´s some really cool people here. I just have to make sure that I don´t get too used to living the high life here in chuchi (guarani for rich) land. We have tonnes of money left over because we don´t ride too many buses and we get free lunch every day, and so we can buy snacks like every day. We ate out today and I accidentally ordered some seafood pasta instead of the spagetti (long story). Anyways, we found out after that the wierd things in in were calamari and something like muscles I think. I´ve also had my first 2 real paraguayan meals and some chipa (paraguayan legit food).
Anyways, times up. Love you lots. Loving the mission. The language will come. lol. Keep it real.
Love,
Elder Humphreys
Life here is grand. We get an hour of email a week which is sick (though I´ve already used about 25 minutes on various stuff. Lo siento). But after I write the president I´m good to go for extra long emails. The keyboard is wierd tho so it takes a little longer to type. A bunch of the keys are in the wrong place. lol. Sorry, but I forgot any letters to respond to back at the house, so those´ll have to wait till next week. Also, we get dear elders like 2 weeks after they´re sent, and real mail takes like a month or two. So yah. You can send a weekly email if you want, and then everyone else Dear Elder if they still happen to care. It might take a while for my letters to get back but whateves.
Ugh. Where to start! We spent P-day and tuesday packing like madmen. It was nuts. Just trying to wrap eveything up, get all our stuff done, collect and pack etc. Hopefully Mackenzie got my scrips. The suitcases were all right on the line of being too heavy. I weighed and re-weighed a tonne of times trying to get them just right. The final weigh in at the airport was 50, 49, and 40 lbs. for each of them. Ridiculous. I even had to put a couple of things in someone elses bag to keep from having to pay overweight charges. Tuesday night was full of goodbyes and last minute packing, but we managed to get to bed on time. Wednesday morning we got up at 3 AM and took all our bags to the travel office, got our info about the flights, and got on the bus. Got to the airport and checked in. For some it was their first time on a plane. Crasy stuff.
Flights went well. The first one we all sat by missionaries. The second one I sat by two strangers who were nice and I talked to them about going on a mission. Sorry the phones were lame. It was fun to call home tho. Some people talked for at least 2 hours which was kinda annoying, but whatever. Toy Story 3 was playing on the plane to Miami. It was super distracting even with no sound, but I justify seeing maybe a quarter of it, because while I tried to write a couple letters on the plane, my eyes wandered to the movie while I thought, instead of the not-appropriate magazine that the guy was reading beside me. lol
Miami was hot, but thankfully short. The plane to Buenas Aires was pretty huge, and as luck would have it, I was in the very middle of the middle section (5 people wide). So I was stuck in my seat the whole time. But the lady and her husband beside me only spoke spanish so it was fun to talk to them. Ah. I´m going too slow. K. Anyways, transfered in Argentina and made it to Paraguay alive. We were picked up by the mission president and his wife. They are very friendly and nice and speak pretty descent English which is super cool.
My first impressions of Paraguay: There were a suprising number of descent cars, there were quite a few dogs in the parking lot which was crasy (I just wanted to pet them all. They are super submissive and just sit at your feet. But they´re kinda dirty too so you just dont touch them...). It was raining when we showed up so it wasn´t too hot, but it got ridiculous pretty quick and I´ve been dying ever since. The roads here are crasy, and the office elders that drove us around fit right in. lol. Half the roads are paved, and the other half are just made of rocks jammed in the ground. Pretty bumpy. The mission office is in this chapel in the middle of town. Pretty sick. They fed us some descent food there. We spent most of the day just getting oriented there. There was a baptism that evening which we attended. Cool, but we were so tired from the plane ride (we all slept, but it wasn´t good or really for too long), that it was hard to stay awake.
We slept in a house full of beds together the first night. It was chill. Things are pretty descent as far as houses go. They aren´t really all that nice, but they´re bearable. All the floors have tile and the shower just drains into the floor. Not like a tub underneath it or anything.
The next day we met our companions. My companion is Elder Lee from Salt Lake City. He´s really chill. Our area is called Moroni B. Its in the middle of town and is pretty much the richest area in all of Paraguay. Our house actually has air conditioning, we get fed every day for lunch basically (lunch is the biggest meal here), and in most of our area everyone has a car. Kinda ridiculous, but maybe it´ll be good and help ease me into Paraguayan lifestyle. There is a part of our area where houses are just randomly put up and its pretty cool. Theres random animals everywhere which is sweet. Dogs, cats, chickens, pigs, lots of different birds, some people have parrots as pets, giant ants etc. The people are really cool and friendly. Its really hard to talk to people right now and so I usually just sit and listen while Elder Lee talks, but I´m working on figuring out their different accent and contributing more. We do lots of contacting in our area (which we didn´t really practice much at the MTC), and so I´m working on that, but with the people being all rich here they don´t usually let us in no matter what you say. We managed to get two people to come to church this week tho and we taught some legit lessons which was really cool. I don´t know what else to talk about really. Its hard to discribe it all. In some places the houses are just put up wherever and you have to walk around and about and through someones front porch to get to a whole group of houses.
I´m having a great time. Even though talking is a real challenge, I think I´ll start to be able to get involved in conversations more pretty quick. The hardest time for me is just that everyone mumbles like crasy and if they start rambling I just get super lost. But I got faith that I´ll pick it up quick, and I´m just trying my hardest, so I should get it sooner or later.
Elder Lee leaves a transfer and a half from now (getting back in time for school). So with that in mind, I´ll probably be here for at least 4 and a half months, maybe 6 months. But thats fine by me. There´s some really cool people here. I just have to make sure that I don´t get too used to living the high life here in chuchi (guarani for rich) land. We have tonnes of money left over because we don´t ride too many buses and we get free lunch every day, and so we can buy snacks like every day. We ate out today and I accidentally ordered some seafood pasta instead of the spagetti (long story). Anyways, we found out after that the wierd things in in were calamari and something like muscles I think. I´ve also had my first 2 real paraguayan meals and some chipa (paraguayan legit food).
Anyways, times up. Love you lots. Loving the mission. The language will come. lol. Keep it real.
Love,
Elder Humphreys
