Week Nine

Yes my P-day is Thursday now.  I'm glad someone remembered.  And I had a nagging feeling all week that I forgot to tell you last e-mail that I would be starting my P-day on Thursdays now so that I wouldn't have any e-mails today.  I'm glad you remembered though because this is the only e-mail I got.

No the store wasn't crowded at all today which was nice.  When I walked in Wreck-It-Ralph was playing on a tv next to a display case of Wreck-It-Ralphs and Elder Simpson and I (he's my shopping companion now because his P-days are now on Thursday too) stopped and watched some of it before we realized that we probably shouldn't be doing that...and moved on.

I'm not really learning Latin, I just look at this site

https://familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/Latin_Genealogical_Word_List

if I find a record in Latin.  And that hasn't even happened to me yet.  But yes I am reading that Scottish Dictionary just for leisure, I just find it so funny.  And I think it's teaching me how to talk in a Scottish accent.  I'll just randomly pick it up and see:

Herrie- (1) To rob, plunder, pillage.  To carry off in a marauding raid.  (2) To rob birds' nests of eggs or young, beehives.

Then the funniest part is when I read the word used in a sentence.  And it in all seriousness says this:

"Oh, dinna harrie 't o' its eggs, ye cruel, thoughtless bairns!"

So I'm just sitting there in wonder realizing that what I just read was indeed English.  So then I think  "What on earth is a bairn?" So I look it up, and I find this:

Bairn - (1) A child, of any age, male or female.

"Cricky, 'oman, bit they are mair sharp nor the very minister's bairns, an' them jist the scaddins o' the streets!"

Yeah apparently it's impossible to say anything in Scottish without ending it with an exclamation mark, if this dictionary is to be true.  Anyway yeah it's funny stuff.

So I actually remembered to bring pictures and I will tell you about my roommates.  Elder Sy is from California, and I knew he had autism as soon as he started talking to me.  He reminds me a lot of a higher functioning Alex.  He talks in a very simple, and literal way like Alex and he worries a lot about tiny things and random stuff that just pops into his head out of nowhere.  The other night he woke me up because he couldn't find a trash bag for the trashcan in his room and he was genuinely worried and didn't know what to do.  I told him to just use a grocery bag because it saves money anyway.  He now tells everyone he meets that Elder Larson says it's better to use grocery bags as trash bags instead of actual trash bags.  He is also weirdly interested in Australia, as in that's all he talks about.  He says that his parents promised to take him to Australia if he completed this mission...which also reminds me of Alex because his parents promised him stuff like that a lot too.

Elder Bowers is a new missionary that came in on March 1 and is being trained by Elder Sy (who is actually a very good trainer despite what you may think.)  He's from New Jersey just like Elder Scotto.  He's pretty quiet and shy, but I was able to get him to open up to me.  He likes to draw, and he is much, much, much better than me because he showed me his sketchbook.  He likes Nintendo video games and he's a huge fan of the Sonic the Hedgehog universe and draws a lot of characters from that.  He is also, surprisingly, 26 years old.  I didn't ask how he managed to get on a mission at that age though because I didn't want to offend him or anything.

So yeah, I'm enjoying living with them as they aren't crazy and they're polite and respectful.

From left to right: Elder Bowers, Elder Sy, Elder Scotto, and that other guy.

My package arrived exactly on my birthday so whatever happened it turned out fine.  It didn't arrive on Friday or else I would have gotten it.  Thank you for the stuff and the pictures. The pictures were a huge hit in my apartment, Elder Sy especially liked looking through them.  And as you can imagine the Senior missionaries in my zone love looking at them too as I hung a couple of them up on my locker.  And I like the stuffed animals you guys sent me.  My new favorite thing to do is to grab Cyndaquil and randomly scream "Cyndaquil used Tackle!" and chuck it at the nearest elder in my vicinity.  It doesn't seem to amuse anyone but Elder Bowers though.  And the lotion you gave me is awesome.  It works really well, absorbs super fast like it says, and I'm so glad someone invented a lotion that doesn't make me smell like a grandma.

I want the coat that I always wear that Grandma bought me, and some zip up hoodies, and that second overcoat that I got at Men's Warehouse that I forgot to bring that I keep asking for yet hasn't come yet.

This has been a busy week and I'm helping patrons a lot now.  I've helped them find several stuff relating to family history, but they usually just want help getting the printer to work.  Still I'm here to help and that's what I'm doing.  The reason my p-day is now is because most of the missionaries in my zone are part-time seniors and so they won't be here on Saturday and they need me there to handle pretty much everything which is going to be hard.  But whatever I can do it.

The view from my apartment to the left. (You can see the Conference Center, the Church Office Building, and the Salt Lake Temple.)

The view from my apartment to the right.  That's the Energy Solutions Arena but it's probably hard to tell.

P.S. I totally forgot to tell you that I went to the Salt Lake Temple my first time yesterday.  I went to a 12:00 Noon session and there was like no one there.  Grandma sent me a bunch of names and I'm slowly but surely going to start working through them.