Week Three - Argentine MTC

Hey everyone! Sounds like things are going great at home. I'm glad I'm not there doing taxes. It's good to hear from you though. I got your letter with the Corbata Fea last night just in time for the Corbata Fea ceremonies. I don't even know if I've told you what that entails. I have some extra time today, so I'll tell you about it. Every Wednesday night, in preparation for Preparation Day on Thursday, all the Élderes gather in the hall and put an ugly tie into a backpack. Everyone makes a lot of noise and does that snapping thing that South American missionaries do these days (Most can't actually do it, so we just say SSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHH really loud to imitate it.) and we line up and draw out someone else's corbata fea. Everyone gets really excited and yells stuff like ´´OOHHHH MUY FEA, MUY FEA!!´´ Yeah...it sounds really dumb, but it's fun. We all wear that tie the next day. One of the Elder had his mom make some terrible ties. One is made out of a comforter or something. One is...carpet-y. One tie that's been in Corbata Fea for years is ´´El Diablo Negro´´ It's black, skinny, and covered in mysterious stains. The Sunflower tie was a perfect addition to the backpack. Tell Jack and Sean congratulations for me. Okay, lemme answer some questions:Is the CCM air conditioned? Yes. Better in some areas than others. Every room has a little unit and a fan. Our fan is broken right now though, but it'¿s really not that bad Do you have a blanket to use? Yes, but I don't use it. It's pretty warm How is Elder Pike working out? He's getting better. He's a good kid, not quite a good missionary yet though. He's a lot better though How did you get Argentine candy? Our proseletismo area doesn't really have any stores, but the older group's areas, soon to be our areas do. The older group didn't get as nice of Bibles as we did, so they traded bibles with Elder Pike and gave him some candy for make up for the difference. Sugus are good. They're pretty much like mentos. Alfajores are good. They have ice cream ones that are really good. Apparently there are a million different kinds of alfajor, but I've only had one or two kinds. Once I get out proselyting in the city, I'll probably try a few more kinds. Password for the Voicemail? It's 2705 and then either # or *. Okay, I need to tell you about proseletismo this last saturday. I almost forgot, but I don't know how. It was our second week and most groups are still only going out for 2 hours on the second week. We asked for a time extension to go out 4 hours. We got out there and an hour later, I had to come back in because I got really sick. I had really bad diarrhea and my stomach was killing me. About a quarter of the CCM had the exact same sickness about a week earlier, i just got it a little bit late. So, anyways. We'd been clapping doors and trying to street contact for an hour with not much success when I started to feel bad. I asked a few people at houses if I could use their bathroom, but they always had some reason I couldn't. We had passed a few shops, but I didn't want to risk using their bathroom unless I had to. The houses in the neighborhood were nice, but the shops weren't. We went to one house and said it would be our last one before i resorted to going to the shops. I decided we'd try to teach her and if she turned us down, I could at least use the bathroom. Instead of turning us down, she talked to us for 20 minutes...about how terrible we were and how we weren't prepared because we didn't speak well enough spanish and we didn't know the 10 commandments, and how she was ´´Catolica Romana Apostolica...´´and all that. I didn't have the heart to ask to use her baño, so we went to the shops. We asked around to see where there was one. They told us to go to a store on the end that was an Auto Loan place. They gave us a big golden key and pointed to the back of this strip mall. That's where i discovered the ´´Baño del Diablo´´ The lights didn't work. The floor was gross(fortunately I couldn't see it very well.) One stall was filled with buckets. And the one ´´Working´´ toilet didn't work. There was a couch propped up on top of the stalls. There wasn't any toilet paper. And I was sick. I got my companion to go get me some toilet paper and I finished up...and then I went back to the CCM and slept for a few hours. Then I felt fine the next day We've been learning lots of spanish and lots about teaching. It's fantastic. The new group just got here and it's fun to see how terrible they feel after their 10 hour plane ride and how long ago ours was. Time really does move pretty well around here. It was slow for the first two weeks, but now we're almost halfway done with the CCM now. Love you all,, thanks for everything. I'll probably be on a little bit more today than usual because the new people only get a few minutes to write their emails on the first day.