December 18, 2012

Hello family!

It's nice to finally be able to email again. It seems like the week goes by fast and slow at the same time. Things are going well here. Yesterday one of the Brazilian teams beat Chelsea so there were fireworks and people yelling in the streets all day. It was insane. We'd be studying and then we would hear BOOM! I sure which we could do that in America. Too many laws I guess... I've made a lot of Brazilian friends here even though I can't understand half the things they're saying. We also got 2 new Brazilian roommates. They don't understand any English so it's really good practice. All the Brazilians are hilarious. It's amazing how you can laugh with someone even though you don't understand anything they're saying. We're also learning a lot of slang. We're told not to but how are we just not going to learn Portuguese slang... come on.

Funny story... So we were teaching our teacher a mock lesson about the plan of salvation and my companion was talking about why God wants us to be here. He said in Portuguese, "God sent us here to be testical..." our teacher started laughing out of nowhere so she broke her character a little bit. We had no idea what he had he said right then. We were wondering why she laughed because she's the one who never laughs or smiles or anything. Five minutes later into the lesson both of my companions started laughing cause they realised what had happened.. And I was still completely oblivious to the whole situation while they were trying to keep their composure (they were doing a really bad job of it). Anyways I was all by myself in teaching the rest of it and they closed it before I could challenge her to read or pray or anything cause they just couldn't take it anymore. So dumb. Funny as heck though.

On that note.... The weather here is standable now since it's been raining for the past couple of days. It definitely doesn't feel like Christmas, not just because of the weather though. It's because we're in a bubble compound place with no culture in it except for Christmas hymns, which even then don't bring in that much Christmas spirit believe it or not. It don't matter though.  Apparently Nike is really hard to get here because  when I whipped out a pair of my Nike shorts in the room one of my Brazilians got really excited and pretty much wanted to trade all of his possessions for them. I got a sick orange tie and a Fortaleza jersey out of the trade. The jersey is way cool, red, white and blue stripes.

This missionties.com thing would be cool if you actually used it. You can also add other people onto it. You just link email addresses to your account and they get to use it for free. It's like 9 bucks a month or something like that. Also, I'm pretty sure hand written letters take a week to get from there to here. I'm not sure how long it takes to get letters from here to there though.

The Sao Paulo temple is super cool. It has a lot of gold trim on the inside and palm trees on the outside. The Celestial room is spectacular. Its not big, but the whole theme of it is amazing.

Gym time is fun here. When it rains it leeks onto the gym floor for some reason though. So they have to mop it up and stuff. It's alright though. I like playing volleyball here more than basketball.  In Provo everyone was chill about playing basketball. I've gotten pretty good at spiking the heck out of the ball, so fun. There aren't weights to use here like there were in Provo though so my roommates and I just do pullups and pushups, stair sprints and situps, etc... bodyweight stuff just repping everything out. That's really all you need. I haven't gained or lost weight. That either means I've lost muscle and gained fat or just stayed the same. I hope it's the latter.

I still haven't been informed of a blog that's been made or a missiontie account started. I would love it if that would happen. You can decide for yourself what needs to be censored haha. When you make the account for missionties, make sure you add everyone's email addresses to it so they don't have to pay. Its 9 buck a month for you... maybe I already told you that. But make sure you put that up on facebook to please.

Tell Ashton to send me an email or something. I've only heard from her once. She owns a laptop for crying out loud. And I hope charlie is okay. That weird scab thing sounds... weird. Keep me updated. Also keep the sports updates coming, they're legit. I guess right now our house is covered with Christmas. I do miss it but I know I'm in the right place. Everyone keeps saying these Christmases will be the best of my life. I don't think they realise how amazing Christmas is in the Carroll household! Traditions out the wazoo. Those gummybears are still being eaten and conserved to last as long as possible. Those are my favorite. Also I haven't finished the builder bars. Those are my other favorites. I have a list of things I need once I get to Recifie. You can just go ahead and send them to the mission home there and I will get them when I get there. I heard packages take 3 weeks anyways so it'll be right on time for my arrival.
 
I hope everything is going alright. It sounds like the normal life.  I'm glad to be here. I met a guy at the temple today who had been here for a year and he said not to even worry about the language. The mtc is stressful in that way. Everyone is pretty competitive in how fast they learn the language and who can speak it the best. Well, at least I am. I'm ready to get out of here. It's the same thing every day. And I'm not sure how Christmas is going to work out here, probably just like how Thanksgiving was in Provo, service project and a movie. Yay. Haha whatever. I'll be alright. I love you all so much and miss you tons. Keep me updated with everything!

Love Elder Dallin Carroll