Being Sunday, today was church! For breakfast, we had "avena" (oatmeal). I have decided that my mamá has some sort of supernatural cooking power because it was amazing...and I don't like oatmeal. It was creamy, a little sweet, but not too sweet, and the texture was perfect.
We took a bus to Itzimná, the neighborhood where our capilla (meetinghouse) is located. The building is very interesting-looking. I will take a picture next week and post it.
The chapel and a few classrooms are upstairs and there are some offices and classrooms on the main level. The chapel is small and it has chairs instead of pews. We had all three meetings in the same room. In most of the testimonies shared in relief society, the sisters said they were happy to have us there. They are super nice and welcoming. I think we almost doubled the attendance of the ward. The speaker system wasn’t very loud and that made it really hard to understand what was going on but it was nice to be there anyway. The guy who taught Sunday School was fairly easy to understand and his lesson was interesting. He knew some English and at the beginning of his lesson, he said things in Spanish and English. I sat next to a lady named “Linda” and she was really nice. When I told her my name, she had me repeat it several times and the closest she got to my name sounded like “brett.” :) My name is hard for them to pronounce because of the sound the “i” makes. In Spanish, the “I’s” always make an “e” sound.
After church, we went home and ate almuerzo and then it was siesta time! I have not been able to nap very easily before but this place is so hot and tiring, that after eating, sleeping is all I want to do haha. Siestas are quickly becoming close friends of mine! For lunch, we ate more of that phenomenal rice, some type of tender, marinated beef, some hashbrown-like potatoes, and ceviche. Ceviche is raw fish marinated in lime juice and other seasonings. It was actually REALLY good! I didn’t realize the fish was raw until hours after eating it but me gustó mucho! It is eaten with tostadas (tortilla chips) like salsa. My mamá said that her son-in-law only goes fishing on certain days each year and the weeks following are when she makes food with fish because he brings it back from the ocean for her. I didn’t take a picture of the meal, but my roommate did so I will get it from her at some point in the near future and post it.
This evening there was a CES charla fogenera (fireside) so we decided to go with our amigas who live one block away. The fireside was held at a meetinghouse across from the temple about 6 blocks away from el centro (the center of the city). Our mamá’s sister, Amira, wanted to show us how to get to el centro anyway, so we decided to go there with her, attend the fireside, and then make our own way back. Well, there were some miscommunications and things lost in translation so it turned out to be quite an adventure. We knew the temple was close to el centro but we weren’t totally sure in which direction. On the way to el centro, I realized she thought the fireside was at the same building where we had church…which it wasn’t. So I was trying to explain it to her and it was NOT going well. She didn’t understand what I was trying to say and she didn’t understand that there is more than one LDS meetinghouse in the city…so she kept telling me that I was confused (which was totally true) and to leave it to her. One of the other girls in the program (upper level so way better at this than me!) joined the conversation and it seemed that Amira understood…but she kept telling us we needed to take another bus to the church. I thought that was wrong since the building is so close to el centro but she was very sure so we went along with it. The other girl even said, "el edificio con el ángel" (the buiding with the angel) and Amria kept saying yes, yes, that's right. At that point, I was really frustrated because she still didn’t understand that “el templo” and “la iglesia” (the temple and church) were different places and I didn’t think we were going the right way. But we got on another bus anyway and pretty soon we were at the church where we met earlier today…definitely the wrong place. Amira had stayed on the bus to go home so we were in the wrong place unsure of how to get to the right place. At that point, we had ten minutes to get to the fireside and we all were super frustrated. So we went home.
I think I experienced culture shock for the first time today. The situation with Amira and the fireside was WAY more stressful and frustrating than it should have been and that kind of stuff normally doesn’t get to me that much. I was suddenly got super sick of Spanish and I just wanted to speak in English. Looking at the streets and how different they are from the US, I really wanted to go back to my apartment in Utah. The heat was getting to me too. So yeah…a bit weird and frustrating but está bien now. I just needed to have a few moments to listen to some music in English and take a breather. I’m glad we were educated on culture shock because I knew why I was feeling that way and I knew it wouldn’t last even if it seemed it would.
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