Okay, details about the CCM:
It's been kind of a long week, especially the first couple of days, which were full of like training for the training. It's been going faster lately, basically what we've been doing is: waking up, studying, eating, studying, eating, studying, teaching, studying, eating, studying, gym, bed. It's a nice little routine.
Some odd things have happened with my district so far: We started out with 10 people, 6 elders and 4 hermanas, but one elder couldn't handle the spanish, so he moved down to an easier class, and an hermana moved up to our class, so now we have 10, 5 elders and 5 hermanas. So now I'm in a trio actually, with the old companion of the elder who moved out.
Also, when that happened, we had to move out of our dorm, because those rooms only have room for two peoples, so we had to move to one of the "casas". This alone would have been pretty difficult, because we had to pack and unpack again, but what made it even more strange was that the reception people told us to go to one house and gave us the keys to a different house. So we actually slept in the house that they told us, although we had to knock on the door to get the other elders in that house to let us in, but the next morning we had to move out again to the other house, so that was all pretty fun.
We've been teaching a mock "person who we are teaching" for the past few days, and we've had varying success. Saturday it went pretty well, but yesterday we weren't as prepared as we could have been for the meeting, and it was much more like rocky then we would have hoped.
The food here is pretty great, I assume it's authentic mexican, but honestly I really don't know. I've been trying not to overeat, but sometimes it's kinda tricky considering how good all the food is.
My district is pretty great, we all get along really well (although that sometimes gets in the way of studying), and we generally seem to like each other. We've got: Me, my two companions, Elder Rhead and Elder Smith, from Utah and Texas, respectively, Elders Lillywhite and Sievers, who are both from Utah, Hermanas Jones and Bukoskie (sp?), from Utah and Nebraska, and the Trio of Hermanas, Hermanas Barnes, Gardner, and Johnson, from Utah, Utah, and California. We all know kind of a lot of spanish, either from learning it through like immersion (Elders Smith and Sievers), or from classes (the rest of us). We've also got our teachers, Brothers Osorio and Salvador, who are also pretty great. One really interesting way they've been teaching us is by making us practice gospel phrases in spanish, actually talking to people outside, just around the CCM. It's kinda odd, but also kind of cool, so that's good.
Sundays are pretty cool, by the way. For sacrament meeting, we all have to prepare talks, and then the branch presidency chooses names basically out of a hat. So by the time I'm out of here I should have six talks pre-written that I can just whip out.
Today, in addition to it being P-day, we're going to go to the temple, which is super exciting. It all should be pretty great, and I'll make sure to take pictures there. (Editor's note: the Mexico City temple is about thirty minutes from the training center where Peter is. We're glad he can go there.) http://www.lds.org/church/temples/mexico-city-mexico?lang=eng#gallery=
Okay one more thing: there are these cookies in the store that are just like super great, like packaged cookies, kind of like Chips Ahoy? If you all ever like want to try something that I'm eating a lot of here in the CCM, go to some mexican grocery and get some "Chokis". They're great.
Okay, I think that's all I've got for now. If you're wondering anything specific, ask. I love all of you guys.
Love,
Peter
