Elder Ivan Bowles: Week 5 - MTC - Halfway point at MTC, teaching the teachers, TALL, Peruvian children

I'm about halfway done with my stay here at the MTC, and it's going great. I am learning Spanish like crazy, and it's great. The weeks have been going by faster and faster, and I can't believe that I'm on my 5th week right now. My teachers are great, Hermano Howard said that when he was on his mission reading a scripture to someone it said "don't turn away the beggars" or something like that, and because he didn't know Spanish he said "don't turn away the idiots." It was funny.

We had clean checks, so that was fun.  They're supposed to be random, but they're really not. One of my companions, Elder Willes got a bunch of air fresheners, so our room smells very strongly of vanilla now. But thats okay, it's better than what it used to smell like I suppose.

Mom, you asked about TALL, it stands for technology assisted language learning, I think, or maybe I just made that up, but I'm pretty sure that's what it stands for. Basically you go onto TALL and you read an explanation on the program about a principle in Spanish and then it takes you through a bunch of practices, multiple choice, or answer the question or conjugating verbs and other things like that. I haven't decided if I like it or not yet, but it is nice having everything I need to know in one place. Also sometimes when our teacher leaves it on it idles out and turns off and makes this really loud angel noise, and it's only funny because no one is expecting it.

We teach our teachers, who pretend to be interested in the church, about every other day we can teach them. Oh, they really are interested in the church, since they work here and go to church and everything, but they pretend they don't know anything. When people came in as volunteers to talk to us yesterday, there was a guy who brought in 3 of his sons, who were all pretty young. He was from Peru, and it was great talking to the kids in Spanish, because I knew I could understand what they were saying, and it was awesome.

My comp just got mad that his caps lock was stuck on, so his email's gonna be in all caps to his family back home. Glad that didn't happen to me.

I'm pretty much boss at 4square, just sayin.

I said the prayer for the bread for the Sacrament on Sunday.  Those prayers are waaay longer in Spanish, I probably was more nervous giving it my first time in Spanish than I was my first time in English.

Julia, there is soda here at the MTC, but I don't remember which kinds, they have root beer, sprite, and some others I think. No caffeine though, no surprise there. I am praying for you and your test,

Kami, that dragon fruit looks crazy weird, thank you for the cookies and letter, even though I didn't get them for some reason.  How is your summer goin'?

Love,

Elder Ivan Bowles