Well, I´ve had quite the interesting week. It´s been pretty intense with the whole culture shock thing. I´ll start with my first day here. We can pretty much call it my first day of the mission because... I´ll explain.
So we got to the Mission Office at around 10:30 and we were all exhausted from the crazy-ness of traveling. Well, we got there and had to fill out a few forms and take a picture and finally got to go back to where the AP´s were staying. They had a really nice house. It had a big garage and 3 floors with at least 4 bathrooms. Well, after a little bit of unpacking (enough to change our clothes for the next day) we got to sleep at around 12:30. We had to wake up at 5:45 for breakfast with the president, then we went downtown to get fingerprints for our visas. We got back to the office, had 2 hours of lessons about money, mission rules, etc., and had interviews with the mission president. President Gálvez is a great guy, so is his wife. They don´t speak spanish, but I could tell they had a genuine love for us. Anyways, the trainers all started showing up at the office, we got paired up, and left for our areas. My companion is Elder Portillo. He is about 6 feet tall, and definitely native. He´s from El Salvador, and is... I dunno... different than me. He has a lot of different views on how to work, maybe thats because he´s been in the mission for 9 months, but I was ready to get to work. I guess the President told the trainers to take it easy on us for the first weeks so that we don´t want to go home. But I was completely opposite. I hated going and visiting the members for an hour and a half and waking up really slow, barely studying anything in our four hours of study time. Well, he told me that he was doing that on purpose yesterday and that now we are going to work hard.
So the reason that I said we should call this my first week in the mission is because I couldn´t understand anything that was going on. I could barely pick up on the conversation, and when people ask me a question, I just look at them. Thinking to myself ¨What in the world did they just say?¨ I thought I could understand Spanish pretty good, but with natives it´s another story. Well, luckily Elder Portillo can speak pretty good English and can help me out a lot. Right now, after a full week with the natives, I still can´t understand what´s going on. I don´t even understand why we go to the MTC, it doesn´t help. Well, I´m here, and I´m trying, so that´s all that matters.
My area is called Puntarenas. It´s a pretty big area, so they might put the name on the map. I live in a little crap-hole city called Juanita Mora. It looks like i like in Mexico. I took a picture of the street, but I don´t know how to send it just yet, so next week you´ll be recieving visual confirmation of the place they call a city. Well, my house is tiny, and smells so bad. Elder Portillo said that the apartment is cursed. It stinks and they can´t do anything about it. There are 4 rooms. One is the kitchen/living room where we have desks and a sink. Then there is a small room that is maybe 10x10 for our closet. We have two tables that we have our bags on and live out of. I don´t have anything to hang my shirts up or pants so I just try to fold things nicely. Then we have our bathroom. This is the source of our stench. It REAKS!!!!! I try to hold my breath when I shower, but I end up running out of air and giving in to breathing. Get this, a cockroach died in there on maybe Thursday, and it´s still in the shower. Just sitting there ha ha ha. We don´t have anymore toilet paper, so I´ve been holding it in for a couple of days.... ha ha. Well, the last room is our bedroom. It´s barely big enough for 2 beds and a desk inbetween them. It´s my favorite room in the house because it has a fan.
Well, the weather is pretty good I guess. It´s SO hot in Puntarenas. I´d guess about 90 in the middle of the day. And it is so humid that you start sweating when you sit down to study at 8. Yesterday was the worst day of rain. It rained for about 2 hours and the road turned into a river. We tried riding some member´s bikes home to not get our feet wet, but we aren´t the most coordinated bikers and both of us fell over and got our feet wet. The water was so deep that our feet were getting wet while pedaling the bike though.
All is well family. I´m doing good, feel good, a little homesick, but that´s life. I love you all so much and can´t wait for this next week. I´m hoping my spanish gets better, and the days have more work in them. Love you all so much.
Elder Adam Paulsen
P.S. This guy in our Branch came up to me on sunday and was wondering if you could sent him a HLJ (CTR in Spanish) ring from Deseret book. He said he was a 9 or something. He didn´t care what it looked like, but that it was in spanish. I also would like a ring if you are sending something. I´m a 10.5 and I want a cool CTR ring. It doesn´t need to be in spanish. I told him to pay me when it gets here. If that´s a lot of work, or it´s really expensive (over 20 or 30 bucks) don´t do it. In other words, tell me how expensive it would be to send a ring or two here and I´ll let you know if i think it´s worth it. He´s a little crazy so whatever. And you can send it to the mission office. It´s the address that I sent you. We don´t have and address, I don´t know how you could send a letter to my house. Love you!
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