January 5, 2012

hey everyone!

not a lot has been happening still. i feel really bad cause i'm sure all of these emails are just boring cause nothing ever happens. really all we do is get up at 6:30, go to class at 7, eat breakfast at 7:30, have class at 8 usually for three hours, then we have an hour of personal study, then lunch, then back to class at 12:45 for more hours, then an hour of language study, then dinner at 5, then TALL at 5:45, which is just language study on the computer, then we have gym after for 50 minutes, then we plan for half an hour, then before you know it, you're waking up the next day doing it again. there are like variations, sometimes we don't have class until 12:45, but then we have 2 classes in the afternoon, or sometimes we only have one class, so we do get some variety, but not too much.

one cool little story i guess. so we have this teacher, hermano wiest, and he's a sweet guy, but one day he said some boss lady was gonna come observe him so we needed to be on our best behavior. so of course we were right? but then we had to do some practice teaching, and he stuck her with us, so she was pretending to be an investigator and we had to teach her. and we did so well, we made her cry! now who knows if she really was crying about that, but hey it was still cool! so we told our teacher we just got him a raise :) so we are getting better at teaching. we still have our struggles, mostly just cause we still can't communicate very well, but we're starting to be able to carry on a somewhat normal conversation, so it's good. it's just like putting a firehose to your mouth and trying to drink all the water, there's just so much information to take in it can be hard. but we're doing our best and getting along just fine!

yeah new year's here was really just another day. new year's eve we still had all of our classes and whatnot, no special fireside or anything. some kids did stay up til midnight, but i never really got into that, and i need to be obedient as i can because i need as much help as i can get, plus it's not worth staying up to be dead the next day. so i said happy new year at ten with the people in new york, but that's about it.

i am missing taylor though! lyce had him talk in the little tape and it was just funny. i'm sure he's a lot of fun now! but i did not know lyce got a new job! what does she do?

we had a tiny little ray of hope the other day. so a few elders in my district decided to take their suits in to get dry cleaned, and when the girl at the dry cleaning place pulled their names up, the computer says we're leaving on the 20th! so obviously it doesn't really mean much, but hey 3 days less in this place is ok with me! :) i really am just antsy to go, i want it to be real now.

i don't know if i've told you, but my comp has had a rough few weeks with his body. so first he had the ear infection, which he still has, and we have to go to the doctor again on tuesday, but like a week ago he got headbutted while playing basketball, so we got to leave again to go get some stitches. we've left campus like 5 times, and it's pretty dang exciting! we had to go to this rite-aid place to get some antibiotics, and it was so weird seeing normal people! since it's utah, everyone wants to say hi to the missionaries, so we got to talk to a few people just casually, and when you've been cooped up in one place for this long, a conversation with a normal person is exciting!

so i've also been buying a few things, like i bought this scripture marking pencil, some abreva, just some random things, but i obviously don't want to spend what little money i have saved, so do you have any advice for me there? maybe give me like monthly allowances? or just updates? whatever works. but probably before i leave i'll stock up on a few things just cause it's cheap here, so if you could let me know a little about that it'd be great.

well i think that's all i've got. i hope things are going well with everyone. tell karissa to stop slacking off in school :) and tell lyce good luck with the new job that i know nothing about :) and i see trev a ton, so i have nothing for him :) anyway things are good down here, pumped i only have like 3 weeks left! until next week!

much love,
elder paskett