Monday, August 25, 2014

First week in the field!

hello all,
this week was definitely exciting. my area is called Ixtla 2. its one of the nicest areas in the mission. lol that worries me. i will get to that in a bit. left the mission offices tuesday morning for the netzhaulcotoyl (dont think i spelled it right) stake center for the missionary exchanges. my new comp. is elder o. he is a great missionary. he is from hondorus. and his primary language is spanish of course but luckily for me he knows a bit of english which i am so grateful for because i dont understand 90% of whats being said around me. i figured i wouldnt know a lot of what was going on around me but dang its crazy.. i am learning more and more every day though. my learning curve is exponentially increasing with spanish. i have 12 weeks with elder o. i talked to other griengos (slang for white missionaries) and they said they felt pretty good after their first transfer. so i will give it 12 weeks and if i still dont have a clue whats going on, then i will be worried lol. so the life here in mexico city is ridiculous.. i dont understand how any of these people can live in these conditions.. its hard to describe without you all actually being here but i will do my best.. it feels like every building ive seen since i got here has been spray painted on. their are the nastiest dogs and cats i have ever seen here and they are on every street. the people are nice for the most part. you get the occasional ones who yell at ya and call ya names but thats normal.. most of these people have never seen a white person, let alone one with red hair so i get weird looks on the daily. its pretty funny actually. it is almost impossible for people to find jobs here so they all just buy tarps and tables and either set up right outside their front door or on the curb of the streets. it is really sad. they sell everything and i mean EVERYTHING. what ever they can get their hands on they will sell. they have these big deals called tiengas.apparently mexico city is famous for um. this is when all the people who usually set up the shops in front of their houses bring um all to one street and set everything up there. its basically a mall just mexico city style lol. i asked my comp where these people got all of this stuff they were selling and he said they either buy alot of it for mass price and resale it or just steal it. look up ^tiengas^ google images and they will probably come up. we walk through one on the way to church yesterday. it was at least a half mile long.. craziness.. my apartment it pretty big actually. i have pictures of it. we are on the top floor and we door our laundry on the roof the building. its by no means clean but i am very happy with it compared to some of the other missionaries apartments in our area.we havent had hot water this last week because they ran out of gas so we we fill up a 5 gallon bucket of brown water from the shower faucet (all the water is contaminated here) and we have this wire thing that you plug into the outlet and put the other end in the bucket of water and it heats it up. pretty janky. oh wow atm there are dogs fighting outside the house.. they are super loud. anyways yeh so we took a bowl and scoop out the warm water and pour it over ourselves for a shower. lol it was rough at first.. luckily we got gas today so i got to take my first real shower! so happy. it usually runs out before the next shipment of gas so im going to enjoy it while i can. im no longer nervous to contact random people on the street or teach lessons. i just accepted the fact that im going to be doing this for two years so no more comfort zone lol. so i got 800 pesos for the rest of this month and yeh im being super frugal with my money, every missionary ive talked to has spent all of it and had to either go hungry or get money out of their own bank account. I'm making a budget and i calculated it out to be about 20 pesos for each meal. thats like 1.50 us dollars. which can get you a lot of food here. i bought a bag full of like 20 tunas (prickly pear cactus fruit but different from az pricklys) for 7 pesos! 50 cents thats was the deal of the week for me haha. they taste so good! kinda like a pear and kiwi mixed. i went shopping and 107 pesos a couple nights ago. i have a picture of everything i bought with the 8 us dollars worth. 8 packs of ramen noodles. 6 liters of water, a kitchen towel, a coke, milk, 6 rolls and a package of bread. pretty good deal eh whitley? the food here is great for the most part. i havent had anything crazy yet but some other missionaries have. we went to a restuarant (more like a persons living room with tables and chairs) and we got soup with a chickens leg in it. somebody literally cut off a chickens leg, cooked it and threw it in the soup. About made me want to puke.. the tortillas are soo good here and we have had um for every single meal.everything you eat gets rolled up in a tortilla with some hot sauce. i cant think of much else thats going on other then us preaching the gospel lol. its so bizarre to be here for me. its a huge culture shock. oh and the tents in the street are actually spelled tianguis i think.. anyways yeh im happy to be here and finally my ON my mission after preaparing for my entire life.. i love you all and look forward to hearing from you guys more! keep asking questions and hopefully i will be able to answer um all. xoxoxo
corson

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