August 19, 2013
Dear Family,
My first impression is
that you are already beginning to forget me. I am saddened by your
happiness. You should be walking around with disfigured faces to remind
everyone that I'm gone. If, when I return, you have not all lost hair or
weight through grief, I will return to Hong Kong promptly.
To answer a few
questions:
I have met Elder Wong,
grandpa's secretary's nephew. He was going to be the sixth member of our
district but he actually does speak a lot of Cantonese, so they moved him up to
the advanced class. He seems cool. He isn't learning Cantonese in a
classroom, and he told all of us that we'd probably be better than him in a few
weeks, because he only knows a little because of conversing with his parents,
and he doesn't know any missionary words. I think he's lying, he talks
extremely fast in Canto. I also met Elder Carmack, though only briefly.
I saw Cory Goates and Josh Green (whom you do not know (note correct use
of whom Joseph)).
My companion, John
Imano Stone Ah Mu (that is misspelled) is half Samoan, half American. He
is somewhat quiet, fairly short, but pretty athletic. He did soccer and
football in high school. He is pretty driven. He's definitely not lazy
and doesn't waste any time getting ready or anything. He's a bit shy, in
the sense that he's a bit conservative. I'm not an extrovert, but I'm
more talkative than him, mostly with strangers. He seems pretty happy
here, and is definitely a dedicated missionary. He was made DL, and he
hates that job. His Cantonese isn't as good as mine, but he works a lot
harder.
I received the contacts
moments ago. Thanks. For nothing.
Our district has been
to the Provo Temple twice now. It's pretty nice. It's one of the
small ones, where you don't switch rooms. I think I already mentioned
this, but Ah Mu has been to the temple over 30 times since he was ordained an
elder a few months ago. Impressive.
In regards to Joseph's
comment on Cantonese:
I really am amazed at
how simple Cantonese is. The grammar follows a very consistent, simple
organization, subject time place verb object. There is no conjugation,
and a lot of words can be verbs or nouns based on context. There is no “the”,
you make something possessive just by adding a 'ge' to the end, no adverb
conjugation, not really much of anything. The only grammar rules to learn
are different sentence structures, like because...therefore..., or
if...then..., when...at that time..., etc. The vocab is hard, because of
the tones, but it really is an elegant language. I do agree, though, I
think the characters are cool but inefficient and difficult to learn. I
am loving it so far. I try to SYL a lot, and they encourage us to use our
language as much as possible. Oh, that reminds me. My Chinese name
is Mohk Jeung Louh. Mohk is pronounced like mock, and is a low tone.
Jeung is pronounced kind of like jerng, or j u umlaut little r ng, if
that makes sense, and is mid rising tone, and louh is like low, low rising
tone. Ask Eva about the tones. I didn't write the romanization much
because it's long (lots of vowels) and I can't draw in the tones on the
computer.
About the oil, I found
out I can buy some, which I will do soon. If you get this first, don't
send any. If not, it's fine, it's pretty cheap. The bookstore here
has a ton of stuff you can buy, and missionaries get a 40% discount. Granted, we only get a $6 a week allowance. You can buy oil, candy,
books, pictures, t shirts, white church shirts, and much much more. So
come on down.
As to the blog, put
anything in the letters not too personal. I'll leave it up to you.
And ask Matthew to send the website to anyone he thinks would be
interested.
Laundry the first day
went well. None of my companions really knew what to do, but it's pretty
simple. The wrinkle free shirts are great. I haven't ironed anything and
they're literally not wrinkled at all. It's amazing. I've been
going to the choir practices with my district, which I didn't think would be
fun. It has been pretty cool though. I'm obviously still not a
singer, but I can read notes and I sound decent, so even though I haven't been
to any choirs before, I feel good about my skills. The choir director is
a really cool guy, Ettier or Edgar or something like that. He teaches
1500 missionaries, most of whom are not amazing singers, how to sing a short
but actually cool 4 part song in less than 1 hour 45 minutes. I think he
works at BYU, tell me if you know who he is. He's very funny, but often
falls into preaching to the choir as he directs. He tells us about the
background of the song, that sort of thing.
On Sundays we have a
devotional and then time to watch a movie in one of the rooms (oh, did you guys
look up Character of Christ? It's very good), and yesterday there was no
room, so we all just went back to our classroom and watched 15 Mormon messages.
Kind of weird, but whatever. So far the hardest thing about the MTC
has been the lack of privacy and dealing with my district and companion.
They're all nice, but often times I don't want to have to drag them
around or get them to follow the rules, or have to interact with them socially.
And though I like Elder Ah Mu, we don't have a lot in common. I'm
trying to become closer, but it's tough, especially because we have to teach
together, do planning sessions together, and study together most days.
So, our first
investigator, A-Sum (pronounced a some) turned out to be a teacher. He's
from Hong Kong, served in New York Mandarin and English and Cantonese, and he
talks in really fast Cantonese. Our other two teachers talk pretty slowly
to us, but he has no mercy (probably because we insulted him so thoroughly in
our 5 lessons). He's really cool though. He knows how they actually
speak in Hong Kong, what colloquialisms they use, and what it's like over
there.
I've been sick all
week, probably from the lack of sleep. Nothing too bad, just a cough and
runny nose and sore throat and exhaustion, but since we have no down time it's
been a bit rough. I'm starting to feel better though, so don't worry.
And I'm finally sleeping easier, so that's a relief. I hate my
sentence and flow and voice when I write emails. So mainstream.
I wish our district
had some sisters in it, because since we don't we have almost no interaction
with sisters so everyone is super awkward. We all act a bit like talking
to sisters is breaking a rule. Kind of annoying. I've been playing a lot
of volleyball. We all play volleyball every gym period, which is
extremely fun. We started playing beach volleyball at the exercise field
instead of normal volleyball in the gym, and it's way better, even though I'm
pretty bad.
Some stuff that I
thought Matthew and Spencer and any other guys coming into the MTC soon would find
interesting: (I know I am probably repeating myself a bit)
You teach your first
lesson, in your language, the second day. It's a pretty pathetic lesson.
We spent about 35
hours in our classroom this week.
You have a lot of
study time, hours every day, and it's hard to know what to do with it.
Despite this, we always feel rushed for our lessons.
Lessons go better if
you don't bring in notes or go off prewritten scripts. Say what you can
remember, nothing else.
It's never worth it to
try to change out of church clothes unless you're going to bed, doing service
or gym, or it's P-Day. Even if you think you have time, you probably
don't.
Dad,
I thought your letter
about the Mayo clinic was very interesting. Your mention of things never
before seen intrigues me. I'm liking the MTC so far, but I wish I was out
in Hong Kong already. You didn't say much to me, so I won't say much to
you.
Mom,
Miss you, but not too
much, surprisingly. Everything's been good so far. I don't think
I've ever really heard about your MTC time. What was it like? I'm
sorry I haven't sent any pictures. It's a little difficult, and to be
honest I've only taken about 3. It's too inconvenient to bring the camera
everywhere, and honestly there's not a lot to see. I'll try to get one
next to the map, but no promises. Enjoy Hawaii. My companion's dad
got us all lava lavas and chop sticks, so that's been cool. Don't send me
any food. We have waaay too much from the other parents as is. I'm
not joking. Thank you for the photo book. It reminds me of how good
a baby I was.
Joseph,
I thought Sand County
Almanac was okay, but nothing amazing, and Shimmin doesn't love it like
Doherty. Believe me, he will beat it to death. You will probably have to
memorize it, or put the whole thing to the tune of an ancient American folk
song and sing it. Good luck with school. Describe your impression of
your classes, because I've probably had all of them.
David,
Glad you did the
programming thing, and I'm glad you finally modded Minecraft and got the server
up. I'll just warn you, you should probably delete any mod you make in
the next 3 weeks, cause they'll be dumb. No offense. The girls didn't
lose it, you did get them banned.
Rebecca and Abby,
