So, uuuhhh, this week was str8 flaymz (straight flames)

Yomies!

I made it through yet another week!!  Are you proud of me??  We have like 16 days left in the MTC (or something like that I haven't actually been counting.) and it's semi freaking me out!

My favorite people ever left on Monday to go out into the field and I'm super bummed, but still super stoked on it.  Lol, Naluai and I made a pact with Hudson and Jenkins (two of the now gonezo's) to go on a climbing trip or drive around Sud America (South America) upon all of our arrivals back in the states, so if anyone has a crappy van they want to bring with them on the trip, you're welcome to come! (; jk sorta lol if you're d (down)to come lmk (let me know) and we can figure out the details in 2 years.

This week has been packed so I wrote down the happenings in a bunch of short thoughts.

1st, I've been participating in choir because all my Elder yomies out serving rn (right now) have "sung" praises (lol that pun is just too much).  And my thoughts are these:  choir is an experience that I am having!  Not 100% on the whether it's good or bad, but it's happening!  AND the director looks like Cronk from the Emporer's New Groove.  Legit.

Um, next on Tuesday we had a devotional where the AC probably should have been turned on higher cuz OH MY the speaker was ROASTING us the whole time.  Lol, it was crazy to see a frail old man rake us all over the coals like that.  DIRECT QUOTE "Sometimes I think missionaries are professional wasters of time." um, zinger??  But he was also pretty savagely funny cuz his wife helped him remember something so he went and gave her a kiss and when he got back to the mike he said, "Two years, Elders."  I laughed so hard it was awesome.

To break up the monotony, we've started participating in "Wildin' Wednesday" where the Elders wear their worst ties and Nahl and I wear my loudest socks.  We got many appreciative comments on the hedgehog and cactus socks (thanks mom) and we were psyched about it!  Until yesterday when our teacher said that we shouldn't be wearing socks that can be seen.  Another rule I will struggle to obey, thx MTC.  I'm waxy but I'll get over it, esta bien.

More evidence of my district slowly losing our minds...  A common young adult phrase to say is "skrt skrt."  Generally the two "skrts" are said in quick succession to add emphasis to a sentence, fill in silence, or comment on awkward situations.  We recently learned that the word "skirt" in spanish is "falda."  So now we'll toss in a quick "falda falda" into our everyday language usage lol and I cannot help but cry laughing when Elder Brown says it.  The Elders in my district are so hilarious, they are vital in making it through the long class hours I love them to pieces.

Also, shout out to LeeAnn because I've run into about 60 students from Davis who sing her praises when they find out that I'm her niece.  My fame has increased due to that one relation, soon everyone in the MTC will know my name and love me and then I can make the rules and then everyday will be Wildin Wednesday!!  >:)

I LOVE YOU ALL and lol we celebrate birthdays on the number of the day that we're born and my bday is on tuesday if jawanna (you want to) Dear Elder me some good good TLC <3

HH

 singing around the tree (but we don't link arms anymore lol thanks to nahl and I starting that tradish)

 ​ze sud american explorer squad!

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​This is hermana Wheatley (she's adorable and we all call her mom)

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​lol this is the one and only Elder Brown (in my district it's crazy how popular the last name Brown is)

There's No Place Like Home

My dudes! Una semana has passed. lol, my español es gradualmente getting better.  Poco a poco!  We are talking with native speakers now and it's semi crazy cuz they speak so differently than our gringo maestros.  This chick, Diana, is someone we're practicing with now and she's from El Salvador.  Her spanish is so fast and tough!  But with every lesson we get better at understanding what she says and (hopefully) speaking better than before.  She laughed at me during the last lesson cuz Nahl was talking and I was so confused and just kept raising my eyebrow higher and higher lol.  It's been a journey, but I'm way glad to be figuring it out.  I am starting to feel for the people learning english cuz I forget how quickly I speak until I think about trying to understand spanish when they speak that quickly.  I got a little bummed after a lamé lesson cuz I couldn't explain what I wanted to say, but then I remembered that I'm the whitest of the white and don't actually speak spanish lol  BUT Ya gurl finna be fluent in Argentina let's GOOO.

Next, I absofrootly LOVE my district.  We are such a crazy bunch of yomies that bool about in class and speak spanish and just play all the time!  The other districts are kewl 2 but mine is the best evar.  We play sand volleyball all the time and it's such a blast!  It gets semi intense cuz one of the elders played in high school and he gets HYPE.  Ya boi is str9 slamming spikes left and right!  It's insane but it's so fun!!  I received one, no biggy, y'all will catch me playing at the next olympics, nbd, I'm bouta be famous. jk lol.  We seriously go hard doe.  Like one day we played volleyball at 2 pm cuz that's our gym time and we had to keep our socks on cuz the court was so flamez.

I kinda feel like being trapped in the "klink" (as ze boi Raff calls it) has turned all of us into these intense prisoners who LIVE for recess.  To normal humans, recess is a wumbo time of frolicking about, playing friendly games of kick the can or tag or whatever, running through a field of wildflowers with a slight breeze.  no.  My dudes. // we. // go. // hard. //  Recess is the time to assert your dominance and rule the courts.  There is no such thing as a playful game of four square cuz we ain't here to play.  All those poor dudes whose comps are the DL's do not mess around lol This is where they thrive.  It's semi primal, but somehow I've been suddenly blessed with the ability to hang, so I have yet to be trampled by everyone's power trip during recess.  Someday ya gur' will rool the court.

Sitting through class is getting easier!  Because we go so ham during recess, it's easier to not have an insane amount of energy at the end of class.  The evening session is RUFF my dudes.  I get so stupid slap happy that it's bad.  Last week I was in TEARS because I was laughing so hard at Elder Lyons' poor growling stomach.  It was so loud and so hilarious.

K, the subject.

I miss home, but not in the way I expected coming in here.  I thought I would go crazy missing the people and wearing pants and baggy t shirts and basically just being all around ratchet, but the missing of home has come in the form of something a little odd.  Everything here is just so... how does one say it..... ~off brand~.  Don't get me wrong!  I love me some good off brand goodies.  (The cheesy whale things from the Dollar Store are so surprisingly awesome.)  But like everything is 17° tilted the wrong way.  Like instead of POG, it's OPG.  Instead of Capn Crunch, it's the Frooty Crunch Blast things or whatever you call them.  It's not so bad that it's disturbing?  It's just unsettling.  It's like when a chair has one leg that a little shorter than the others and you wobble around, jafeel?  I've never been stellar with balance, but I'm getting better haha I'll get there.

LOVE YOU ALL SM!!

~the juan, the only..

HH

and I figured out the pics thing!

me being waxy about chopping off my BBz

my chopped off BBz

after a ruff day lol

on the roof!

Cheezin

PACKAGE JOY

PACKAGE JOY PART 2

LET YOUR LIGHT(house) SO SHINE

alrighty people.  we're just gonna start off by saying this week had a ROUGH start.

sunday was probably the worst day in the history of days since the MTC was constructed by probably the most creative people in the world cuz who knew that all these obscure rules were actually able to be written??  (I'm being totally dramatic but stay with me my dudes.)

I woke up sick.  Uh-oh.

But that's not all.  Do not worry, there is more to come.

Sunday was a disorganized mess and no one knew where church was and it was mega hot outside and I don't speak a ton of spanish and sacrament meeting was in spanish and we were lost and then we went outside to sing songs around a tree in the 100 degree heat with our arms LINKED(?!? guys it was so gross and uncomfortable to be sharing elbow sweat with people I barley know just saying) and then we went to a MATCH THE MESSAGE meeting that started off with the words "We're not here to judge people" and proceeded to spend an entire hour talking about judging people on appearance and then after like 12 more meetings THEY MADE ME CUT MY DREADS.

I'm not proud to admit this, I cried in the shower for like 5 minutes before holding a full length funeral for Gerald and Gerome and George (who now reside in a plastic bag with a tombstone drawn on it on my desk) and then killed the things I have held dear for a year and a half now.

Sunday was tramatic, but the church is still true, moving on.

Monday was dece!  We had classes for a long time and then in between classes, one of the leaders of the branch brought his wife up to interview us and get to know us one on one.  Keep in mind, I'm mega ill at this point.  Migraines, nausea, coughing, sore throat, fever, the works.  A buncha people go, it's my turn, I head out there and she asks me how I am.  I tell her I'm mega sick.  She's like k, how else are you feeling?  I'm like, a little unmotivated cuz I'm mega ill.  She's like, "Oh no! Are you okay? Do you like to be alone?  Are you struggling with your companion?  Do you need help?"  I'm tryna fit a word in but she's on a roll now saying things like, "Just remember you're loved and here for a reason and tell yourself positive things to keep yourself going!"

Moral of the story:  The branch presidency thinks I'm depressed.

Everything else is mega fun doe!  I love my district sm (so much).  They're so fun!  We have a blast all the time and laugh and just keep each other going.  And help each other relieve stress when it gets crazy.  Lol, classes are really crazy and long, and when I've been doing something for a while I just check out and get weird (ask my family they know)  and yesterday I hit the wall.

We were getting a lesson and Elder Lyons' stomach was growling SO loudly I could not keep it together!  I was in tears from needing to laugh so badly but supressing it cuz we were in class and then laughing more cuz his stomach kept growling, it was bad hahah, I'm almost laughing about it right now writing about it.

Aight, time for the subject line.  Now that the suspense has marinated long enough.  All the copious amounts of stress and learning has expressed itself in the form of something none of us enjoy.  A truly marvelous edifice with the sole purpose of attracting attention has been constructed above my left eyebrow in the form of a zit and I'm not down and it's bad the end.

My photos won't upload??  The computers here are weird, but here are some pics people sent me from earlier this week.

My comp and I felt like ghost busters with out vacuum backpacks doing service on tuesday.

the last photo is of my roomies, they're adorable, love em sm.

Love you!
HH

PS, if you have extra time, send me a little something on dear elder so I can take it with me to argentina!  It's the best ever to get a letter to read in my down time I love it so much.

I'm district 25C and mailbox 84 and I leave the MTC August 14 and I think that's all the info you need???  ​

PSA: for this email // stands for the clapping emoji.

Hola!!  (Saturday is my P-day)

Guys.  I'm here.  In the center of Happy Valley.  Surrounded by Happy Valley freaks. (jk the people are cool)  It's crazy-pants.  Sometimes I feel more lost than a froot loop in a bag of cheetos.  It's tough but it's good!  (Look up that vine of the fake Caitlyn Jenner, it sounds whack but it's actually one of my faves.)

My dudes, we sit and study.  ALL DAY.  We go to class at 8:30 and stick it there til lunch and then do different types of studying.  Good thing, I know a lot more Spanish than I thought!  It's been nice to at least kind of understand my teacher because he/she will speak only in Spanish the entire time we're in class, except for when we ask about what somethings means, which happens often lol.  My comp, Hermana Naluai, and I taught our first (fake) investigator yesterday and the lesson was about 5 minutes long haha, but we teach her again today and hopefully it will go better than it did yesterday.  We've definitely prepared a lot more material.

Naluai is so cool!  We're basically the same person and people keep saying we look like sisters.  Funny story!  When Peter (Syd's name for Gretchen) and I and the Brimleys and the others went to the temple on thursdays my senior year we saw Naluai all the time!  We just never talked haha.  It's fun to have a familiar face be my comp.

My district is fun, we're the only pair of sisters with 5 sets of elders.  They're all pretty loud and funny, they're getting used to talking to girls haha the first day was rough cuz they were in super missionary mode and would slightly ignore us haha.

AIGHT.  now that you've read about the bueno, here's the tea on my SAVAGE first day.

some info pre-story. I love food.  Food makes me happy.  Sydney without her food is an unhappy camper, missionary, person, extraterrestrial being, etc.

anyways,

My mom and I drove to the MTC and were utterly aghast at the truly gnarly amount of vehicles waiting to enter the MTC.  Like, wHAt?!  who knew that Utah had so many mormons what the john.  After we made our way through the line and said goodbye, I went in and was directed various places until I dropped my stuff off and went straight to the spanish only class and then had .3829356 seconds to write an email to my fam, instructed only in spanish smh (shake my head), and then when back to class and then straight to a meeting that was a loooowwwng time.

And then we had DINNER @ 4:15.

(I put that by itself so y'all would understand the importance of this statement.)

Dinner at 4:15?!?!?!

**(Say it louder for the people in the back!)**

DINNER AT 4:15??

// ya // girl // necesita // la // comida //

like, come on people.  this was not a drill, this was not a practical joke, we ate at 4:15 and then had class until 9. )':  

lol, but other than that first scary happening, life is good.  They feed us at acceptable hours now.  We are no longing staging a coup and taking over the cafeteria.

<3 LOVE!! <3

the kewlest mish in el MTC

HH

ps, we visit the temple from 12:30 til whenever on Saturdays so if you happen to be carrying TBell that direction during that time and we happen to bump into each other and you happen to give me a bit of ya taco bell, who am I to turn down such a kind and caring act of service from a fellow child of God?  Lol. (;

PSA from Denice - Sydney's actual temple walk day is on Sunday so please don't try to bump into her on a Saturday // Also all italicized words are my translation of Sydney slang.

Obviously not a mtc picture but one from the day before checking in to the mtc. Good times.