Oh and the pictures he is describing, we didn't get. Hopefully we will sometime. No idea still who the "other" missionaries are and the cake sounds amazing but sorry, no picture!
You know what is really wierd about this place? They love American music. Right now that "I - can´t - wait- no-more I´m-yo o ours" Song is playing in this internet café type thing I´m in right now. I hear Lady Gaga and newish rock and pop all the time just walking around. They have a fair amount of their kind of music, you know, Rigatón, Mariachi, that sort of thing, but you´ll hear American as often as not. People know about many states, usually New York, California, Washington DC, maybe Texas. All the members know Utah. They call it the "fávrica," which is to say, "factory."
I am going to buy more food this week. It turns out I was roughly at half my budget last week. Bread is about two dollars per kilo. A person´s bread for a week is probably 250 pesos, or 50 cents. They have jam in bags that´s about a dollar that lasts for two weeks. It is one of the coolest things they have here - you can just squeeze it out of a corner. I have no idea why we don´t do that in the States. (That´s what we call it here. America can mean Canada too, so you say Estados Unidos, or usually just Estados) You want jam on bread, you just get bread and put it on, no sticky hands or knives required.
Before I forget, though, the address. You send it to that mission office one that´s in my packet and stuff. By the pouch system, which is actually a senior couple who drive stuff around all day, they get it to me. It´s way easy to do letters and stuff, especially dearelder ones. Nothing comes to the pension, as we move often. As for stuff I could use, mostly just ties and handkerchiefs. I can´t find either of them in our sector. There´s the Walmart-owned LIDER, but they have Walmart stuff, but less variety. There isn´t a food I can´t get here, but some stuff just doesn´t exist. Good shoe polish, for example, is extremely difficult to find, says an Elder I know. My big problem right now is finding foot supports or gel inserts. We walked through this mall all day for them and found nothing bigger than a size 11. I am going to call up to the medical advisor to see about it. I have a few blisters, which is, you know, crappy, but my feet feel bruised and the long bones hurt all day. That, with a wierd gastrointestinal attack yesterday, made for a fairly so-so Domingo.
We are in the middle of the city Maipú. We didn´t take the metro today, but we have a few times for meetings with the President. It´s like the DC one only it´s ten times the people in the same size of car, and the lines are several times longer. The buses go everywhere, and between them you can get anywhere. Things get pretty personal on the bus. You hold your bag in front of you so no one takes stuff, and usually you touch no less than two people just by standing. In the metro it can get mosh-pit, because people will almost tackle into the car to compress everyone so the door will close. Pretty ridiculous. I feel bad because I´m a big white guy who takes up a lot of space.
You have a beep (called bip, because "i" in Spanish is "ee") card that you scan to get on, and it charges some amount. If you use another system within 2 hours going the same general direction, it doesn´t cost extra, so you can get somewhere on just 500 pesos, which is normal. There are machines that let you recharge your bip card, but it´s easy to forget. Which is bad.
I actually would like a little colder weather. It's pretty hot here nowdays. It's up to 90 usually while we work. Right a 4 or 5 is the worst. It's bad enough that if you don't eat something salty you get all de-electrolyted and tired in an hour or so. It's worse after you have a gastrointestinal attack of some kind... wait, I think I said that. It all started when I discovered the best thing they have here.
They call it manjar. It's dulce de la leche, I think. We had a cake with it in the middle instead of frosting. Un-freaking-believable. It's like carmel but more creamy and less sugar. That's the philosophy with everthing here, actually. Less sugar, more cream. The milk tastes like a milkshake, but has about the same calores because they barely put any sugar into it.
We haven't had a lesson this week, really. We contact about five hours a day, at least. I'm kind of starting to look for those days when we don't have to go out for the full time. I know that's a bad attitude to have, but it gets really, really long. I'm pretty much hot all day, only ending at night. There has never been AC for the common man, except in the chapel and certain rich-people stores. Sometime we'll go in just to be in. Last PDay we did that by going into a mall. It was like we went back to America. Same restaurants and brands of everything, just cheaper and less selection. Pizza Hut is really good here, actually. It's a little Latinized, which is to say, they put more vegetables, and the sauce is more cream, less sugar.
Let me see what pictures I have. Those crazy two are the others in my pension. Elder Silva is.. ethnic. And Elder Smith is a saxophonist from Texas. Figure it out.
That cake is the manjar cake. We got it for his one-year-in-mission.
That overpass you are seeing is over the big freeway in Maipu. It's like 70 feet above ground.
That street is the street we live on, and there are some pictures, I believe, of the inside. It's small. It's really, really small. The closet is ridiculous. Apparently it's one of the smallest in the mission, and I believe it. The only space you can be comfortable in is the bed, which is wierdly smashy... so whatever. The floor could have ringworm so we can't touch the ground, which is frustrating, especially when I fell in the shower, which was gross. The shower is really gross, but the way. Let me just say the Scouting program was invented for more reasons than to give boys patches. There's no way a person could deal with that level of grossness having lived in American Suburbs for his whole life.
But we have hope. We have a new investigator that wants to be baptized before she's even met us. She decided while talking to a member in our ward (her uncle) that our church is true. That works. I want to be a part of it, but I don't know how much I'll be able to say. We did a lesson for a preacher... no, really, and his family, and I sucked. There were like seven people watching, and I sucked. I couldn't remember how to say anything. I ended up giving the First Vision, having luckily memorized it, and at least a few of them want us to come back. The preacher is so-so with us, but he'll let us return. He was one of those ones that say "Glora, Amen" and stuff while you pray. It was way, way wierd. Then his wife prayed, but it was more like a revival speech. She was almost yelling by the end. Hno Maughan at the MTC said you'll see some stuff you'll never see in the States that will wierd you out so bad you can't even speak. There we go.
I have to admit, this really does seem like a long time. I've only been here for two weeks? What? But at the same time, it hasn't been that long. I don't know. I hear that after you can speak the language, the rest is sickeningly fast. Companions will go by like bunnies, they say.
Love,
Elder AC Crist
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