siestafiesta

Hello!

I finally feel pretty settled in.  I unpacked after I sent the email last time, so I guess I officially live here for 3ish more weeks!  I have been learning a lot.  I am reading Jesus the Christ, and oh my goodness, that book is amazing!  It is so full of good stuff!  I'm only about 230 pages in, but it is so inspiring.  I encourage everyone to read it!  Even though I'm less than half way through, I feel like I know Christ better than I ever have before, and I also know way more about his life.  It's like listening to Dallin H. Oaks in conference, but for like 800 pages!  I can feel the spirit testifying to me the truth of what I'm reading, and it's wonderful.  Don't skip the notes at the end of each chapter though, because those are also so good!  And he has footnotes throughout the whole thing, so you can look at the parts he's talking about and read it from the scriptures.  It's amazing!

I got sick this weekend, and it was not fun.  It may have been what some would call a man-cold, but I felt destroyed for about two days, but now it's just a cough and congestion.  I did do everything I needed to, I just felt awful the whole time.  Also, in a less real manner, I feel slightly sick of Mexican food.  Some of the meat is interesting, and it's mostly the same combination of flavors over and over again.  Oh well!  Also, in a similar vein, they have chocolate milk, but it's chocolate ice-cream milk.  It's a little too sweet for me, so I usually stick to carbonated grapefruit juice.  

I am a little worried that I'm not burning as many calories as I'm eating, but luckily for me, there is a well equipped gym here! I get to do some pretty exhausting workouts for an hour every day, so I think I can burn it off, and get a lot of muscle as well!  I figured that if I workout cross fit style, where you do weight-training, but don't take any breaks so it turns into a cardio workout as well, I can most efficiently use my time.

  

Also, I discovered that if I want a hot shower, I can do one of three things: shower really early, shower after I workout, or shower at night.  I gave one of my razor blades to my companion, because he was using my knife to shave his arm, but he gave himself a really deep cut on his arm, which, because he wasn't worried about it, was really funny.  He now has half of one arm shaved super smooth, with a deep cut in it.  Word of advice, If you don't have a razor to put the blade in, don't just use the blade!  

Another cool thing about being here with a whole bunch of elders is I have participated in probably 6 blessings, watched another 3, and given 2.  It's incredible how much faith there is in the CCM!

It's really been raining this week, so I feel right at home!  We had one lightning strike followed a half second later by ear-splitting thunder.  It was hilarious, because aside from the fact that we all jumped, there was a guy in the shower, and he screamed, because he thought somebody was trying to break in.  We laughed for about 15 minutes!

The prices at the Tienda (technically tent, but really store) are awesome.  It's like buying individually wrapped items, for the price of buying in bulk!  I'm stocking up on chips and candy for conference this weekend, which will be awesome, and in English!

I heard of this service, and I'm not sure how extensive it is, and I don't have the liberty to find out, but it's mtcmexicocarepackage.com (I think..).  I know it at least lets people send emails, and I receive them as letters, so I could theoretically receive daily updates on life back home!  It also lets you purchase goods of some sort which are then shipped to me at the CCM.  Not sure how much more, or how well it works, but it's probably worth a shot if you want to try it!

We got to go to the temple today, and it was awesome.  I think I'm finally in the state of mind to really start noticing things and learning from them (probably due to Jesus the Christ).  I noticed so much!  It was such a cool experience, even though it was in Spanish.  I got headphones to translate most of it, so that made it better!

 

I'm not sure if I'm missing anything, so if you guys have particular questions, let me know, and I'll try to answer them in the next update.

Love you all!

Elder Dahl

P.S. I love seeing pictures of back home, so even though I am being slightly hypocritical because I forgot to take any this week, if you have pictures of events and such, I would love to see them!  I'll make sure to take more next week!