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Well, I can honestly say this has been the single hardest week of
my life. But somehow it didn't seem so bad. So I got to Panama with my comp from
the CCM and one other hermana. We woke up at 1 am to go to the airport. And I did
get Wendy's to eat!
I have no idea what I am doing here. First off, I got off the plane
and almost died, the heat was miserably hot, but now I'm kind of used to it. I
just sweat off about 2 pounds a day. My first day I had a lot of orientation. My companion doesn't speak hardly any English at all.
I do have an address for you to send stuff to but I forgot it in our house so I will send it next week.
But I got to go through the temple in Panama. It was the most
amazingly spiritual experience I have had since I left home. All I wanted to do
is go back to the temple. I didn't want to leave when I was there. It was
quite a bit harder because everything was in Spanish.
We live in a little 2
room house. We do have water and electricity, but water pressure is like an
unheard of thing, we have to use a bucket with water to shower sometimes. When I got there I just thought what the freak is this. But now I'm kind of used to
it. We have spiders everywhere. And there are a few things I learned real quick
here.
1. You will sweat your brains out regardless of what you do, and we
mainly only have fans or wind to cool us off. But I am at least grateful for
that.
2. Public safety is non existent. People walk in the middle of the
street, (including us)
3. Fart cannon exhaust is like a religion down here. Everyone
seems to have a fart cannon and rims on their cars.
4. I have no clue what language this is. Everyone leaves off the s sound in almost every word. It is so hard to get used
to.
5. Always have small bills and change, since we ride the bus pretty much
everywhere we go.
6. No there is no thing as hot water or cold water where we
live, it's always the same temp. about 60 degrees.
7. You don't knock on doors,
you stand in front of the house and yell buenas until someone acknowledges you.
8. Instead of saying buenas noches or buenas dias, they just say buenas. FOR
EVERYTHING.
9. They call Utah the factory, (Mormon factory) and finally
10. People will most likely say yes, they want to hear about the Gospel. But it's getting them to follow through where
it goes bad.
And this is Panama in 10 points.
There is jungle about 5
minutes from our house. We share the house with another companionship. We are
in a town called Arraijan or something like that. We live in this neighborhood
called Vista Alegre. It's what our area is called.
We had a baptism this last
week. Marriage is not a big thing here,
many people aren't married and but they have been together like 12 years and have 4 kids.
Easter Sunday didn't feel any different. But sometimes we don't have any food
so we run to the tienda, there is one on almost every street. They are called chinos because they are all run by Chinese people.
And that is roughly it. I
have no clue what is going on half the time. It's hard to understand people. But other than that this week was okay. I love the food and I found a good type of apple juice too so I can't
complain. So that's pretty much my first week!
I love you!
