Bonjour
Mes Amis!
La
samaine passe ete tres tres cool. Le voyage a San Francisco ete le point
fort de la samaine. Il ete super cool regarder les tours dans la ville et
les rues escarpe. Je souhaite que vous auriez ete la avec moi. Nous
avons eu une experience fantastique! Nous avons vu le pont de Golden Gate et le
Wharf. Il ete tres cool regarder les expressions de les gens quand nous
leur sommes passe. Les gens n'ont regarde pas a notre visages, mais ils
ont regarde a nos plaques. Lorsque nous somes passe la ville chinois,
nous tendions comme un pouce endolori. Mais, vous ne comprenez pas
probablement mes paroles en francais, alors je vais ecrire en Anglais pour
vous.
Well
there you have it, some real French in an email. Hopefully google will do a
good job for you guys, it usually messes it all up.
This
week was actually pretty cool, despite the fact that we had to return to the
MTC. The trip to San Fran was amazing and I would have to say its the best
day at the MTC yet (cause we weren't at the MTC!) haha. But I guess i'll
just do the run through of the trip for you guys, it was quite a busy day, but
we had tons of fun!
So
we woke up at 3 am and had to be at the travel office by 3:30 am, which was
super early. There were 11 of us who went, 3 from our district and 8 from
the district down the hall, the district with Jason Ollverson in it (guy from
Smithfield). Elder Barr was the team leader, since his name came before mine!
(whew!). We boarded a white school bus and we left the MTC (glorious
sight!). It took us about an hour to get to the airport and once we got
there, we divided up the passports and went and got our boarding passes.
Security was deserted, as it should be at 4 am, but it was a whole new
ball game going through security with so many layers and clothes on, definitely
easier in street clothes. We got to our terminal with about an hour til
we boarded, so we conveniently watched some morning news, he he he :) I got to
see what was happening in the world and it was good to watch some TV.
Anyways, we boarded our flight and went off to San Fran. We got in San
Fran at about 7:20 ish and we had to call our driver to come pick us up. He
told us to meet him at Courtyard 1, which there are no signs that guide you to
it, and the MTC directions were off by a mile. We finally found courtyard 1 and
he was there so we hopped in. Our driver is from the Phillipines and moved here
when he was younger. Really really nice guy, he was super helpful all day long.
It only took about 30 min to drive from the airport to downtown San Fran, and
the first stop light we hit, we realized that we had a flat tire. So we all had
to get out, the driver pulled over on the left side of the road (idk why) so we
had to j-walk on the railway tracks on hop on the platform where you get off
the trolley things (eventful start to a trip, sounds about right). We
walked down to the corner and stopped at a corner breakfast thing (similar to
einsteins or something) and we had REAL food, it was amazing. As we were
walking back, some guy ran off the train (he had to be crazy or drunk) and was
like "I know ya'll, ya'll are the Jehovah's Witnesses!" We were
like, "Nope!" and he was like "Dont tell me, the Mormons!"
haha it was really funny, the first hour in San Fran and we had already
been called Jehovah's Witnesses. Anyways, the driver couldn't get the
tire fixed in time to get us to the consulate in time, so he hailed
down 3 taxis for us (first time in a taxi) and sent us on our way while he
fixed it. so we got to the consulate, and we walked in through the security
thing and sat down. Our appointments started at 9 and went til 10:30. Well...
we were done within a half hour with everyone. So we walked out of the
consulate at around 9:40 ish. Our flight out of San Fran isn't until 4:30 pm.
So we had about 6 hours to kill (Suhweeet). So we began our journey walking
through the famous square that has all the expensive shops (Gucci, etc.) and
Elder Schultz was having a hard time restraining himself ( he wears stuff like
that). so we walked through there for a bit and took some photos. Then we
started out trek towards China Town which was about 5 blocks away. We got to
China Town, and its pretty nasty, people hanging up halves of pigs and fish
everywhere. We stuck out like sore thumbs though, you wouldn't believe how much
people looked at us, I thought it was funny. So we walked through
Chinatown and headed down to the Wharf, we passed Lombard Street and I took a
quick photo. We took a bunch of photos with Alcatraz in the background and then
we went and ate at Boudin (bread shop on the warf) I had a good italien sub,
but it wasn't as good as real european bread. When we were standing in
line, a guy walked right next to me (seriously a foot away) and stared at my
nametag for at least 15 seconds. It was so funny, just the look on his face.
Like, "Who are these guys in suits, and what does that say ?(its in French
remember)" And one of the Elders always was like "how are you
today?" when people looked at his tag, and it was weird, they
were surprised that he could talk, hahaha they would just run away.
so after we ate at Boudin, we trekked our way to Golden Gate (we
calculated that we walked about 6 miles in the day total). We started walking
to golden gate and got about halfway when Elder Barr ( team leader with phone)
finally realized that our driver had been calling us... haha not the brightest
leader, but oh well. Our driver had been waiting at the Consulate for the
past 3 hours for us to come out. So we told him we were halfway to Golden Gate
and he was like "Woah, you guys can really walk" ahah so he was
really chill. He came and picked us up and took us to the Golden Gate
parking lot where we got out for a couple minutes and took some more photos.
There was a Russian woman there and she asked "So is there a conference
going on in San Fran today?" ( at the sight of 11 people in suits) and we
were like "No, we're missionaries for the LDS church" She was like, "Oh
cool...." and she walked away. hahaha it was funny. But yeah, we
just took some photos and got back in the van to go back to the airport, we got
to the airport at about 3:15 so we had some time to kill, most of us fell
asleep and the rest of us sent out postcards (sorry mom, I sent it to Shanna :)
hehe). While we were waiting a couple of people came up to us and were like,
"coming or going?" we were like, "Staying?" haha they felt
bad that we had to go back to the MTC, as did we :( But yeah, so we got on the
plane and I sat next to Elder Barr, I guess this was his first time on an
airliner, wow... so he was asking it the food tray was for you to sleep on... I
was like... nope, you put your food on it. It was really funny. But we arrived
back in SLC and were planning on calling you guys, but our driver was already
waiting for us, so we didn't get the chance. We did snag some Cafe Rio though
:) and it was amazing. We ate it when we got back to the MTC (around 9 pm) and
people were like "WHAT??? Where did you get that!!???" so we felt
pretty special. But the cooler story is that while in line for it at SLC
airport, a lady came up to us and was like, "Are you missionaries all
together?" we replied, "yeah..." She handed us a $100 bill and
told us that dinner was on her. We told her we couldn't accept money, so she
got mad and shoved it in our pocket... We told her thank you so much and told
her to wait so we could get her change... but she just ran away leaving us with
$10 in change, we gave it to fast offerings. But yeah it was an awesome
trip, It was soooooo nice to get out of jail and back in the world. We stopped
and listened to some Techno by a street performer in San Fran and it was sooo
nice to hear real music (we cant have ANY music in the MTC now).
But
yeah, it was really fun, we had a blast (the other district is way more chill
than our district). So I try and hang out with them when we go on Temple walks
and stuff.
Did
you get the photo that had my flight itinerary on it? It was in our visa
papers, so we knew when we would be leaving. October 22nd at 5 pm.
The direct flight from SLC to Paris ( thats going to be a long long long
flight....). I'll probably be making a couple calls around 3 ish,
hopefully, so make plans to answer cause I want someone to talk to.
I'm
going to be sending the other camera back this week, along with the voice
recording all of us did. Make sure everyone has a chance to hear it and that
everyone can respond. Nothing too important on there, just us being lame
at the MTC. hahaha... I'll be sending a couple more miscellaneous items
within the package: check from Dr Nilson that i need in my bank account,
camera, Nathan Merrills clothes that trev accidentally sent, and the
really old camera that I wont need. I'll be uploading a couple more photos to
FB and emailing to you guys, make sure that you forward them to other people
that want to see them too. Also, I need my checks cashed from cleaning and that
stuff if you already havent done that. I didn't see anything when I logged into
my Zions account, but idk. I'm also sending thank you cards to Gerzewski's and
to Dr Nilson, maybe you can drop it off at their house or something... I would
appreciate it ( either that or email me their address).
Anyways,
we're learning a lot of French and starting to get a grasp on it (as you can
tell from the first paragraph). We can start to form our own sentences
without having a script during our lessons. Something funny that happened this
week, during TRC, Elder Ellis asked a woman "how do you feel about death"
instead of "How do you feel God's love" hahah and he pointed to his
chest and said heart. She was like, "I'm still alive" as she felt her
pulse. It was really really funny, they were like "Omg no thats not what
we meant" hahahaha.
I
woke up feeling pretty crappy. I only got about 4 hours of sleep and I woke up
at 2 am and coulnd't fall back to sleep. Just feel really tired at achy.
Hopefully it will go away later in the week, but we'll see. I also got my
haircut today, which was quite the experience. The ladies there don't have
souls. I walk in and she's like.. sit here. So i sat in the chair. She asks,
how short do you want it. and i was like 3 with a comb on the sides and not too
short on the top. she instantly grabs the buzzer and goes to town... I lost all
my hair in under 7 minutes, but I was slightly impressed at how it was after. I
was expecting some weird shape all over my head, but it wasn't bad.
Definitely give a 2 thumbs up for Natalie though, she still rocks at
haircuts, wish she was still cutting my hair. But yeah, the lady didn't
say a word during the whole haircut and got mad at me for having gel in my
hair. hahahaa i just laughed as was thinking "Must not be any style
in the MTC..." which there isn't.
All
in all it was a pretty good week, definitely wish I was out of here, but I
still got 4 weeks and 6 days to go :(
I
hope you are all doing well! I love to hear from you, especially DearElders at
night, they make me smile so much! Definitely the highlight of the day.
Loralee, I hope you are already starting to plan the Europe trip, cause
I'm going to be spotting out all the cool places to go while in France.
Definitely going to be sick :)
Thanks
everyone! Hopefully i'll here from you soon!
Jason
PS -
Congratulations Arica! I wish I was there to hold the baby girl! I guess i'll
have to wait for 2 years :(
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