14 Days in Chile!

We had a baptism on Saturday!!! Raul! He was 84 years and 1 day old on Saturday! I felt so blessed to be apart of his experience even just for the last end bit. He is really hard of hearing so we have to really speak up almost yell when we teach him. Which has been pretty funny because it is really hard when you know you are speaking really loud really bad Spanish. But great practice for sure. 

Dogs:

My goodness there are dogs everywhere. Loud, mean, dogs. So I got over my childhood fear of dogs in not even 10 minutes from being in Chile. 

The Gringa Life:

It always surprises me when I hear English in Chile but people will yell it to me in the streets all the time. From across the road even they will yell, "Hellllooo, how are you," or when even just passing others they will say "Gringa! Bye bye," it can be pretty funny. When we go to teach families with children in Elementary school they always bring me their English homework. I just love teaching them and it is a great service opportunity. Plus we invite them to our English class on Saturday at the church to help them build relationships with the church members as well. 

H2O

I miss water! Chileans do not really like water. They do not think it has much of a taste so if you do ever ask for it they put stuff in it for flavor. Besides that you are always drinking juice or soda. So by the end of the day I just want to brush my teeth so badly because of all the sugar. 

Spanish??

Chilean Spanish is not what I was studying in the CCM. "Po". The word "po". They say it after almost everything and I finally figured out what it means........not a thing! It does not mean one thing. But it is just said every 7 or so words. And lapiz. I think that is how you spell it. It is pen. And everywhere else in Spanish pen is pluma. Or boyfriend or girlfriend. Everywhere else is novio or novia but here it is pololo and polola. I learn tons of new words everyday but for every one I learn I write almost 10 more new ones down that I need to retain. Never ever bored. 

The Members! 

Our church members are great! There are a group of teenage girls that love to hear my broken Spanish. They call me Hermana Honey because of my hair and think it is so cool that I have seen American singers live. The members try so hard to help me understand jokes but I think I am far from that. I let them try about 3 times and then I will give them a good laugh and nod like I got it. 

MOTE

Chile is getting crazy with their Independence Day coming up on the 18th. It is bigger than Christmas here. They drink Mote a ton during it and if you ever have the option to try it.... DO NOT! I may have not done a very good job at keeping it down. I am trying to come up with something in it that I can be allergic to so I won´t have to sweat it out anymore. Just look it up. I can not even start to describe the texture and flavors. 

Till next week,

Hermana Lance