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Monday, August 10, 2015

Minnesota!




Hi fam, So as you can imagine, this week has been crazy. I've never been so tired in my life. My trainer's name is Hna. Scholl, she is from AZ, is the oldest of seven, has been on her mission for nine months, and has been in this area for six of them. We are in the Richfield/Bloomington Spanish area. Sister Cupke told you Roseville, which is wrong. Our area covers all of Richfield, Edina, Bloomington, Chaska, Eden Prairie, and the south part of Minneapolis, it also goes further west about two hours, but we don't have the miles to go that far. You can send my mail directly to my apartment, packages still go to the mission home.

8080 12th Ave S #111 
Bloomington, MN 55425


If you send me mail I can get a library card. I don't know why I need one, but you should send me a card or something.

My first night here, we taught a lesson in Spanish to three people. My second day, we started knocking doors a little bit. First door we knocked invited us back. A little bit of a shock to my brain, but it was good. We had a baptism on Saturday, so that was a neat way to start here. The Hispanic/Latino culture is one of my new favorite
things. It's so fun. I get told/asked how tall I am all the time. (Que alta hermanita!) Haha so cute. I love being called Hermana/Hermanita. Besitos (the greeting kisses) are adorable, church was an interesting and new experience. I've met so many awesome people in the past week. I think my favorite thing we did this week was service with an organization called FOCUS, which collects necessities like hygiene kits, clothes, and shoes for people that need it for free or really cheap. We go to help translate a little bit. You meet fascinating people at places like that. It's in this basement with 6'6" ceilings in Minneapolis. One of the volunteers Chris and I started talking. He's an older guy, with MS, so he doesn't walk very well, but he has two masters degrees and a doctorate degree in composition, piano performance, and like Greek or something like that. I love talking to people. Most of the volunteers there are from different denominations, so it's fun to talk to them. Chris is staunch Eastern Orthodox. Seriously, people are so fascinating.


My embarrassing/funny story of the week of course happened because I'm a gringa. Hna Perez is a fantastic member of the church, a single mom, and an RM, asked us if we wanted to go out to eat, and I said I wasn't
really hungry, but we could go if she wanted, etc etc, I don't really know what happened, I don't understand most of what anyone says to me. But fun fact, declining food is really rude. "Super offensive" I think is the phrase Hna Scholl used. Awesome. Hna Perez was cool about it though (I think?!) and we ended up going to this hole-in-the-wall Chinese buffet, and Hna Perez didn't even get anything! She just watched us eat. She said "coma con confianza" more than once and kept asking if I was full and to eat more and more. I felt bad about declining food earlier, so I ate probably three plates more than I would have (I only had three plates.) sketch. They had whole octopi there. So anyway. Funny, sort of. Hopefully I made up for it. I realllly dig Hispanic food though. Soooo good. One of our less active members made us mole (moh-leh) verde and it was probably the
best thing I've ever eaten. 

I love Minnesota. It's absolutely gorgeous. My favorite thing though is seen all the different types of people. So many different cultures. It really is awesome. My Spanish is coming along. It's harder than I though it would be, but even in a week I have gotten better. It's so fun. Basically the whole mission thing is great except for being so tired all the time. It's also been hard because even though Hna Scholl works hard and we teach a lot, I feel like we could be so much more productive and I don't know how to bring it up. She's been here for six months and obviously has a groove, but the groove isn't as productive as I want it to be. Things like spending twice as long at
lessons as we should be, or playing futbol every other Friday, just little things. I am going to bring up Thursday at the latest because that's when we have comp inventory. I want to be as obedient and productive as possible, and I don't know how to do that with another person haha. But it's inspired to have companion ships, so we'll see. All in all, I love it. The hardest thing is being tired, because it zaps motivation so quickly. Hopefully you've enjoyed my adventures this week!

Love, Emily

P.S. Also we have iPads. So send me pictures so I can save them. Will you also send me exercise ideas? I have done nothing this last week because Hna Scholl likes to stretch. The pictures I'm sending are of my desk and bed. I just bought the camo sheets today. I'm a cool kid. I actually love them. And then also my iPad selfie with Hna Scholl being productive bakering in the background.

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