Thanks so much for the email. I am feeling much better, and we did celebrate Mexican Independence Day, don't worry. I even have pictures!
To answer your questions you sent a while ago, it is mostly feeling like fall. It was kind of hot today, but most of the time it's pretty cool.
The people living in our casa are all Americans, which is kind of sad--our district-mates who are living in the dorms have Latino roomates, and apparently they're awesome. Ah well.
This was another kind of odd week. As far as normal activities--classes, practicing teaching, things are proceeding pretty normally. We have three "progressing investigators" now, one for each of our teachers. All of them present different challenges: one smokes and doesn't really want to stop, one barely believes in God, and one's been the only non-member in his family for a long time. Also, starting tomorrow we're going to be pretending to be an investigator ourselves, for other people in our district--yesterday, we took some time to invent an investigator, which was pretty interesting.
Okay but odd thing #1: one of my companions was pretty sick last week--he stayed home Friday-Sunday. It was weird going out and doing things without him, but it was a learning experience. I think I got closer to the non-sick companion, and it was also a lot different teaching lessons with only two people, as opposed to three people trying to get in their thoughts all at once.
Odd/cool thing #2: This Sunday was Mexico's Independence Day, so for the whole of last week it's been kinda crazy, with decorations everywhere, Mexican candy at lunch every day (of varying quality, btw), and then on Saturday night, we had this huge school-assembly style thing, that was pretty awesome.
We had a flag ceremony, we sang the national anthem, we watched a video about the Mexican war of independence, and then a really like pretty publicity video from the government.
After all that, we watched a ton of dancing, from different cultures around Mexico, performed by local members. It was pretty awesome.
And then, on Sunday night, we did this thing called the "grito", which means "shout". We got a broadcast from the central plaza in Mexico City, where the President of Mexico (Enrique Peña Nieto) rings a bell, then shouts "viva x", where x is a hero of the revolution, and in response, everyone shouts "viva!". We participated in the viva-ing, it was awesome.
It's weird thinking that we'll be leaving in just a couple of weeks. This one district that we've known since we got here left yesterday, which was surreal and kind of sad. It's weird to think that probably I'll never see these people, who I've gotten to know really well over the past month, again. Well, that's what Facebook's for, I guess.
Oh, I have pictures today, too! The dancing, fireworks, and salute are from Saturday night, the video is the "grito", and the self-portrait thing is also at the Sunday night thing.
Oh btw, funny story: I found the Jango Fett Keychain, with keys still attached. It was in the Bach Fest bag. So now, when I come back home in 22.5 months (OH BTW I got my tentative go-home date. It's August 3rd I think.), I'll be able to get in the door.
Love,
Peter
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