Is that really Spanish you're speaking?

April 16, 2012

Hello Family!

I happen to be right in the middle of my first Houston rainstorm. It's really pouring!!!!

We live in Stafford, and I don't actually know the address of our apartments, sorry.

We are definitely in the suburbs. There is no part of our area that could really be called the city. It's a different experience to walk down the street looking for people to talk to and not see anybody. There was almost always somebody in the street in Spain.

It's a pretty good sized ward. Definitely the biggest one I've been in. The boundaries are kinda big, so they've split the ward between Elders and Sisters. So we only work in about half of the ward. We actually do just about all our teaching in Spanish. There are English missionaries in our same area, so we pass the English speakers on to them. Some times we'll teach in English, if they would prefer it, but everyone we teach goes to the Spanish ward, so that's what we usually teach in.

We use plenty of Spanish so it has definitely come back. And some people do wonder where I'm from because I do have a different accent. I also have a very different way of expressing myself. I guess the way they put their sentences together in Spain is different than in Central America, so people have commented on that as well. I can also tell how Americanized Central American Spanish is. There are a lot of words and expressions that have made their way into Spanish, that it's kinda funny to listen to.

I'm doing ok with the food so far. But we are eating in members homes way more than we did in Spain. So that just usually fills me up for the rest of the day and the night. We actually ate in a members home yesterday after church, and I still wasn't really hungry when it was time for breakfast this morning. We do a little bit of cooking, but it's mostly microwave food or sandwiches and things we can eat on the road. It's difficult to get back to where we live and eat and head back out. So we just make do with what we've got.

We ride our bikes a lot, almost everyday. We will usually put them on the back of the car, and then park it in a neighborhood and bike around, but every once in a while we just take our bikes from the apartment. Our apartment is kinda in the corner of our area, so leaving straight from home isn't always the best idea.

We have our district meetings at a local church building. My last district meeting was pretty good, even though it was a little weird that it was in English. Any meeting of missionaries is in English, especially when there are more languages in the mission. Not everybody here speaks Spanish! And I believe that most of the native Spanish speakers speak good enough English, so there isn't really a need to do everything in the mission language. In Spain, all meetings had to be in Spanish, because most of the natives didn't speak any English. So adjusting to that has been a little weird, but good.

We've been looking for some new people to teach, and it looks like we've got a few good prospects...but they are all just starting out so we'll see how that goes.

Love you lots!

Amber