Almost a New Year!!

Hey, thanks so much for all the emails - there was a lot of big ones this week. I really hope I can get around to answering all the questions. It was super nice to see all of you on skype.

Christmas here was a little weird - ha-ha - definitely very different then back home. We started the day with going to a member's home (John-John- the family that allowed us to Skype on their computer last week) Their family has been really good friends to all of the missionaries. We talked for along time about back home and other random stuff and then went back to the apartment and spent time doing stuff with the other elders in our apartment. Then later that night we got invited by the same family to a party at a different member's house for their big family get together and that was pretty fun. They do crazy stuff like a big dance-off with all the kids. The music is all the same for the most part except for the odd Tagalog song. I really do miss listening to my music back at home - I am starting to really forget all the lyrics (It's a good thing that our neighbors blast music till like 2 am everyday or else I would forget it all...) Also fire crackers and fire works are really big here around Christmas and New Years. Some of the members told me that New Years sounds like a war zone.

Tagalog is super hard here. My biggest problem with it is having correct sentence structure, making sense when I am speaking, and trying to understand it when others talk ( the accent is hard to understand) but it is getting better everyday. At first I couldn't understand anything but now I am able to pick out words a lot better and sentences are starting to make sense to me.

I get 8000 mga peso every month which equates to about 133 mga peso for food and 67 for travel each day. 133 is about $3 a day.

Lately it has been very cloudy here which is super nice. It really keeps the heat down.

Today we went out to these waterfalls that are in my area (my area is huge) and that was quite the adventure. (Again I am stuck in the scary computer shop so I can't send any photos. Even the shop owners think so.) Anyways, we did a lot of rock climbing and hiking to get to these falls and when we got there, we got to stand under them and take showers - so nice. A bunch of kids took us to the falls and their path was kind of sketchy.

Oh and quickly, I got to eat my first balut. I even have pictures of it - ha-ha. So gross but actually didn't taste that bad. My prize for eating it was a halo-halo which means mix-mix in Tagalog. What it is, is a bunch of random fruit and purple ice cream that you mix together (kind of like mushy-cooka) very masarap (delicious). I hope you're not all too mad about me eating a hard boiled duck embryo - ha-ha. I really wish I could send you some photos. Hopefully next week I can send out a bunch of them.

 Anyways, I love you all. I really hope you have a great week. I am loving it here. Every morning I wake up and look outside and I am reminded of how beautiful it is here. I miss you all, and please don't do anything stupid.