11-13-14 letter

Hey hey hey! How's it going?! How's life? Casey has kept me up to date on life. Super jealous they got tickets to The Hunger Games, it'll be way fun! I seriously can't believe I've been out here for almost a month. Next month will mark the big 1 month :) haha crazy. AND next week is Thanksgiving! That's so weird! It doesn't even feel like the "holiday season" here! It's been good hearing from ya'll about the "crisp morning air", the "temperature dropping", the snow your getting, and even mom canning apples! Yum!! Things are still the same here temperature wise. You walk outside and it's super wet and humid, the flowers are still in bloom around the temple, the palm trees are as green as ever. And they have the wild parrots you'd see at the zoo just flying around. You can see the ocean from our bedroom on the 4th floor. It's rained a little bit. Ya know, just another day in paradise :) Okay so nothing too crazy has happened this past week. The weeks are all starting to blur together. We did go to the University this last Friday though! It's about 10 minutes away right next to the store. Um, it's definitely not like the colleges in the U.S., but I wasn't expecting it to be similar. As we were walking to the University we past by street vendors, stray animals, and what not. And one of the dogs even followed us to the University and layed right in front of me wanting me to pet her. Knowing me, it was a struggle not to! We had orientation with the Doctor about the "Do's and Don'ts" of things in the DR. Let's just say that if Lonnie, Lindsey, Carlie, and even Kellie were there they'd be packing there bags and leaving. I even got a little paranoid after hearing the lecture. Anyway back to the University. So we went and talked to some people. The first group was by I'm assuming the Art/Literature building and it was a small group of older adults. 1 woman was Catholic and 1 was just Chrisitan, and the other was actually an inactive LDS member. They were very open to us talking to them which was super nice and we shared a brief message. Then a student came up towards the end of the message we were sharing and thought that my companion and I were Russian. Probably because the literature that was scattered every where was Russian stuff, I don't know. So then we headed towards the History building I'm assuming and ran across this Dominican Asian, yeah that was nice and interesting. And then we back tracked towards the English building and met up with this other guy who we thought was interested in our message. Until he asked if we had Facebook haha. So we quickly just left a pamphlet and Book of Mormon, and made it to the English building. That's where we met a girl named Sindy. She is actually studying English, she's just starting so her English is super rough. But, we are going back tomorrow to meet up with her at the University and we will be "teaching" her for the first time. So it's a real investigator. You know, we are just a little bit cool. Super intimidating, but cool. Okay so we have 46 people in the MTC right now. I told you we got a new group of Americans and we have Haitians. I've been talking to the Haitians and they are SUPER quiet! I've tried to make it a goal to get to know them better and they are actually studying a little bit of English so I LOVE helping them with that. In return they've also been trying to teach me French, so I try to learn a little bit, but it doesn't really stick haha. All I can really remember that's French is the song the cook sings from The Little Mermaid. haha which won't get me very far, sadly. They are leaving this upcoming Tuesday and the word on the block is we are getting Jamaicans and Dominicans! I'm SOO hoping we are getting Dominicans I would love the practice of Speaking outside the classroom. The teachers are helpful, but I just prefer talking with them, they are less intimidating haha. And they'll make a funny face if they don't know what the crap we are saying. Speaking of the language, it's coming slowly. It's mostly Spanglish at this point which I'll take. We went to the temple today and we usually do everything in English, but since a lot of Spanish speakers showed up today we were given head sets and did it all in Spanish. Which was cool. I turned my headset off for most of it so I could listen. Random funny fact: we were doing initiatories and one of the ladies gets this package out of her pocket and was giving me what looked like "candy". So I just took one to be nice and lo and behold it was a cough drop. Apperently they eat cough drops like candy here. Which I'm definitely not use to haha. They also don't have a personal bubble here which is another thing I'm getting use to. They do that thing where they hug and kiss your cheek. So that caught me off guard the first time I was here. But they are super sweet, and very open about everything. Definitely NOT like the U.S. Anyway it's super nice hearing from ya'll! I love hearing about my cute nieces and nephews! Layton will do great in surgery! He is such a funny kid! Just another thing to add I would LOVE for ya'll to send more pictures of the family and what not so I can keep my photo's updated! Maybe that would be a good thing to add to my Christmas package hint hint :) okay LOVE YOU TONS! HUGS AND KISSES!

Hermana Van Woerkom