October 29, 2012
First off! The water. Huh. Its really interesting. It smells like rotten eggs, we shower and brush our teeth and do all that fun stuff in it and hope i dont get sick. Everyone buys water from either Coke, or another competitor, but Coke basically has the market down here, so everyone walks around with these huge 5 gallon or whatever jugs and use those to drink from. When someone says do you want water? you say, yes. Nearly everyone offers when you go into their house, but its hardly ever water. These people love juice and lemonade and coke. I dont drink much water. Oh well. But yeah. The agua is nothing to brag about down here. I miss taking a nice hot shower too. We only have cold water, which feels nice, but sometimes a nice hot shower would be fantastic haha.
We probably walk about 10 to 15 miles a day if we dont take a taxi anywhere. We usually stop taking taxis in the first week or so of each month cause we are out of money. Well, my comp is. I dont care for taxis so im never one to offer to flag one down and pay. We only get 1500 pesos a month for food and other needs. About 120 american dollars. Everything translates pretty evenly, so something thats 3 american is about 39 pesos. makes it hard to stay in the budget on 120 bucks. Im succeeding so far haha. Ive overcome the blister stage, i hope. I had a few nasty days last week where my feet were covered with blisters and just ached, but now i think they are healed up. Hopefully they dont come back... haha
Garrett: They have those VW bugs you love literally everywhere down here. about 1 in 10 is a VW bug. haha just thought id let you know.
The dogs here are freaking nuts. Not only do we live with a protective Rotweiler mom that wants to kill us, There are dogs everywhere. All strays and all starving and wandering the streets. I dont know why people have dogs here in the first place.. Interesting place. Some people have like 6 of those stupid terriers the neighbors have. And here i thought i was getting away from them...
Everyone has a motorcycle down here. So many of them. Im pretty jealous actually. I miss just opening up the throttle on my dirtbike. Well, i miss adrenaline in general. Havent had that drug in 3 months. Had to quit cold turkey and i want it back. Oh well. 21 more months and i will have it again. Hopefully someone chases me with a machete sometime soon so i can get the blood pumping again haha.
A few small stories..
I have seen more women than i can count that have more facial, arm, and leg hair than me. Its disturbing and frankly i dont know what to say when a 45 year old 4 foot woman has a huge mouchstache and arm hair as dark and thick as their hair. Haha kinda funny.
There are 2 huge trees next to this apartment we always eat with members at that has about 500 crows in it. Hundreds of em! its unreal what that sounds like. Man. I wish you guys could see some of this stuff.. Oh mom, at least Elder Smith has had fish. I was completely lied to on that part. Oh yeah! plenty of crab and fish in veracruz! lies. Havent had one piece of seafood. Haha and as for veracruz being the prettiest area, ill need to see some other areas besides the main city because where we are at is still suburbania and its pretty dissapointing. Still kind of what i wanted. I wish i was with elder smith right now and walking through the jungle. Freak. Dang you city and taxis. Haha if you watch any intersection here, youre more than likely to see 7 almost Tbone accidents every 5 minutes. The people and drivers here are nuts.
The police here are nonexistent. They got deleted from the system i guess. The army is in cahoots with the Cartel, and the Navy and Airforce arent the strongest army in the world. Entonces, the Marines are the police and everything. Im going to try and get a picture of these guys. Fully dressed in military gear, 2 of them are in the front of the truck, and two in the back standing next to a fully loaded 50 cal machine gun. Did i mention they have M4s as well? Sheesh. These guys mean business. I guess there are some really bad people here. Never seen em yet. Not sure if i want to. From what my comp says, 2 headless bodies were dropped off on the doors of the Mission Office last year.. haha fun stuff right?
Oh, yeah send the letters to the Mission home.
[
Elder Conner Wesley Mortensen
Mexico Veracruz Mission
Apartado Postal 10391700 Veracruz, Veracruz
Mexico
]
We dont have an address and i havent gotten mail yet. The ZL´s pick it up everyonce in a while from the Mission home. so yes. Mission home. Im going to send letters the expensive way and cut about 2 weeks off of the pouch mail time. Its about 1 american dollar to send a letter.
Handshakes. my goodness. They love their handshakes and hugs. They hug to the right by the way. Thats a little different. But yeah. Whenever you shake someones hand, you shake when you greet them, and you shake everyones hand. You shake when youre about to leave, and you shake when you finally do. Mind you, you shake everyones hand and say good bye or take care. Talk about time consuming activities.
We finally baptized angel y donata yesterday by the way! Font wouldnt fill up so we had to take taxis to the other chapel. It took my comp 3 tries to baptize angel, and it took me one time to baptize donata. Shes the nicest lady. Both are in their 70s and i love em both. Nicest old couple. I want more baptisms! But my comp doesnt want to work for them. He would rather do breakfast dates, wake up at 730, 8 and hang out at members houses all day and night and play with their kids and eat. I wish we would be more obedient cause i need the blessings...
In any case, gotta go. Ill send some pics. Love you all, Hasta Luego de México! Love, Elder Mortensen
I forgot to tell you the other day when I was catching up on Conner's blog....I died laughing when he talked about the whiskers on some of the old ladies. There was the same thing in Portugal and mission rumor was that is was the hormones they put in the chicken. It scared me enough that I only ate chicken when I absolutely had to. (When someone fed it to us.) When I did eat meat it was from a cow! Then half way through my mission we had to stop eating red meat because of Mad Cow Disease, so I bought rabbit instead. :)
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