Spanish is Scary!

Hola!

I don't even know where to start! So much has happened since Wednesday. I'll just touch on a few key points.

I got to the MTC an hour early than my scheduled time so after they take you to your room and you get your books (like seriously a million books on learning Spanish. And Spanish scriptures. Hopefully they don't add too much weight to my luggage when I leave here) the host takes you to your classroom. I was the only one there and I had to pretend I knew what my teacher was saying because it was all in Spanish. But it was okish. Then my companion came and it's Hermana Harris, who was in my London Study abroad and one of my Spanish classes. So that was way excited. And she is so stinking awesome. I'm so glad she's my companuion. We work really well together. The other Hermanas in our district, Hermana Seely and Hermana Duchene are also fabulous. When Hermana Harris leaves for the Peru MTC in 3 weeks, I'll be a tri-companionship with H. Seely and H. Duchene. The Elders are slowly warming up to us. Apparently, we 21 year old sisters are pretty scary or something.

Thursday was our first real day here and it was a long one. We seriously do so much that by the end of the day I have a hard time remembering what I did that morning. I mean I was probably just as busy while I was at school, but since I pretty much sat around for two months in between, it feels like I've never been busier in my whole life. But anyways, that day started out kind of hard because I missed everyone and my Spanish stinks so things were hard. But we did this activity that really helped me remember that everything I'm doing here isn't for me but for the people I will get to teach in New York. So I'm trying my hardest to not be selfish and think about how hard things are or how tired I am and just focus on the people I'll get to help later on.

We taught our first lesson on Friday, which was terrifying. My classes are all in Spanish and we had to teach our lesson all in Spanish so I basically had no idea what I was doing. But Hermano Salvatierra (our investigator) was super cool and I think that for the first time ever teaching in Spanish, Hermana Harris and I did pretty well. We teach our second lesson with H. Salvatierra later today and I think that one will be even better. My favorite part of the first lesson was (besides the presence of the Spirit, of course) when we asked H. Salvatierra to start reading the BOM and he asked us how much it cost. We had no idea how to say that it was free so we just repeated "No dinero, no dinero" a million times. And also when I said "El Libro de Mormon" except that I said Mormon like a total gringo so I just sounded like a dummy.

Hermana Harris and I have made it a goal to start speaking more Spanish. Yesterday, we spoke only Spanish for all of lunch and gym time. It was hard but I think it really helped us improve our Spanish and be better prepared for classtime. I'm so glad I get to serve a mission in Spanish, but I am a little jealous at the English missionaries because they definitely have it 10 times easier. Although I'm sure the Russian missionaries feel the same way about us Spanish missionaries.

Well things have been great! I can't say that I have too many super awesome stories because I really haven't been here too long. But on Monday, we start our regular schedule for the rest of the time we're at the MTC so things will start becoming more familiar to me and I will be teaching more investgators (who by the way, at least right now, aren't real investigators. Which is a very good thing because they would never convert from the little amount we can currently teach them. But we are supposed to treat them as real investigators.) I have seen a ton of people I know here, including freshman boys I had as a peer mentor and Sister Tara Pearce and Sister Audrey Heaton which has been really fun.

I also just wanted to let you guys know that it's still ok to love me while I'm on my mission and to write me letters. I haven't recieved any yet and it's a bummer in the summer each night when the district leader hands them out and I'm the only one without one... =[ But don't take this as a guilt trip or anything.

I love you all and thank you so much for your support while I'm out here!

Love,

Hermana Parkin

do you know whose air your breathing?

The other night my family and I watched this movie called I Am. It's a documentary by Tom Shadyac about the changes he made in his life after he got in a bike accident. It is a super interesting movie and really changes your world view. I highly suggest you go watch it.

But anyways, while watching this movie, I learned about this cool element call argon. Argon is some weird element in the air and when we breath, it doesn't stay in our body. Instead it is expelled back into the air. So there is all this argon floating around the world. Argon also apparently doesn't ever die (or whatever elements do). Which means the same argon that you are currently breathing as you sit on your couch reading this blog post is also the same argon that George Washington breathed in 1747. And the same argon that Henry VIII breathed in 1503. And even the same argon that Jesus breathed. HOW AWESOME IS THAT?!?! More awesome than I can even explain.

It just amazes me how interconnected the world is. I feel like I already have so many weird and crazy connections with people and I feel like the world only gets smaller as more connections are made. And now even the stinking air connects us, not just to those currently on the Earth but also every single person who has ever lived. Blows my mind a little bit.

P.S. Obviously I am not a smarty pants in the science world. Forgive my simple minded explanation of argon and just love that fact that we're breathing zillion year old air that other really cool people have also breathed.

mission call? you betcha.

In case you haven't heard already, I am serving a mission for my church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I have been asked to serve in the New York, New York North mission and I will be serving in Spanish. My mission area covers the northern part of New York City (pretty much everything but Long Island) and also covers the rest of that little triangle part of New York and a little part of Connecticut. I am super excited to serve there, and I am so grateful for all the support I have received.

Many of the people who have been told where I am going have exclaimed that this area is the perfect mission for me. I agree, really I do. However, I am confused at how they know that it is the perfect mission for me. I mean, we believe that God directs the brethren who assign calls in where each missionary is sent, so it must be perfect because God wants me there. But so many people have told me that they think New York is just perfect for me and I'm not seeing how they have come to that conclusion from the time I told them where I was going to the 5 seconds later to when they responded. It may be something I never figure out, but I know that it is the perfect mission for me and here are some reasons why:

1. Like I said, God wants me to serve there so it has to be the perfect place.
2. I like big cities. New York City is a big city.
3. But I also like suburbs. New York has both. Perfect, right?
4. I like lots of people. New York has tons of people.
5. I like history. New York has a lot of history, both U.S. history and Mormon history.
6. I love the Spanish language and Latin people. I get to serve in Spanish (and hopefully be fluent by the time I'm done) and I get to serve the Latin people, who are awesome.
7. I've been to New York City twice already, therefore I've already seen the tourist sites. Which is really a good thing because if, for example, I was serving in Peru instead, then I would feel the need to go see Machu Picchu, which really isn't the point of serving a mission.
8. I don't need to bring home any souvenir's home from New York because I've already been there. And I tend to be a souvenir lover so this is really good due to the whole limited luggage thing.
9. I love other cultures. Like really love. You should see my list of places I want to visit around the world. It doesn't even actually exist because it's so long. But New York probably has one of the biggest mixture of cultures in the world so I'm going to get to meet lots of cool and different people from all sorts of places around the world.
10. Ok let's be real, this list could go on for years. It just really is the perfect mission for me and I am so excited!

In case you couldn't tell yet, I am so grateful to have the opportunity to serve the people in New York!! I can't wait to share with them my religious beliefs and hopefully bring individuals to the church so that they can be as happy with life as I am.

those tricky buggers

So since the post about my weird obsession with abbreviations, I have noticed that no one knows how to spell abbreviations. For example, the abbreviate of totally has been spelled tots, totes, toats and toates.Who the heck decides how these things are really spelled? It's stressing me out a little bit because I need a uniform spelling...

visiting my old life

In case you weren't aware, I am currently living at home in CA, which is great and all but since pretty much all of my friends still live in UT, I am left almost friendless. I did have an absolutely wonderful opportunity to visit BYU and all my friends this past week though. I loved seeing all my friends and am so grateful to MC 4 for letting me crash on their couch all week. I couldn't have asked for a better week. Unless I lived there. Because let's be real people. Visiting a place you have once lived in is just not the same as living there. You no longer have your own place to stay. You no longer get to see all your favorite people in regular settings but you have to set up special times to see them so that you don't leave without seeing them. You no longer know all the current events because even if you've only been gone for three weeks, everything has changed. Now, I'm not complaining. I'm just saying that it was kind of weird sometimes. And it made me wish that I had never left, even though my reasons for leaving were far better than my reasons for staying. Here's a few pictures of my favorite people playing in Provo with me:

The lovely ladies that let me sleep on their couch, eat their food, borrow their stuff, etc. Love you girls!!

A halfway disgusting picture of Rachel and I. She happens to be one of my favorite people.

The work peeps. I just love them all.

It's also too bad I saw way more people than this but I was dumb and left my camera in CA sooo there are limited pictures. =/

that abbrev is totes fab!

Last semester I went to Disneyland with some pretty awesome friends in my ward. It is definitely on my list of best things that happened to me that semester because I became real friends with some of the girls I didn't know so well. Anyways, these girls are big fans of abbreviations. I have always been avidly against abbreviations, probably because of my grammatically correct freakishness. But spending an entire weekend with these girls just got those abbreviations stuck in my head, and since then, I CAN'T STOP USING THEM. It's like a medical problem almost. I've infected multiple people with the abbreviation disease. Co-workers, family, you name it and I've infected it. Alright, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but I do have co-workers and family who started using them because of my inability to stop. And because a part of me secretly started to love them...

Side note: It is highly unlikely that you will ever see me use abbreviations in writing. Just in speaking. My grammatically correct freakishness just won't allow abbreviational writing. (Although it will clearly allow the invention of new words.)

the nerdiest of nerds: a fairy tale of sorts

Once upon a time, a 20 year-old girl attended college and took a class all about literature targeted at teens. Sounds silly, I know. A waste of time, you may think. But this girl loved that class more than Shakespeare. She felt as though she was betraying her fellow English majors, but she just couldn't escape her love for young adult literature. They were so much more appealing than the classics, which took about 100 years to get through just one. (This girl knows because she has been trying to read Anna Karenina and it has been a very long process.) As one of her assignments, this girl read The Book Thief, which is an excellent book. And in that book there is a passage that goes like this:

"...a room that was full of cold air and books. Books everywhere. Each wall was armed with overcrowded yet immaculate shelving. It was barely possible to see the paint work. There were all different styles and sizes of lettering on the binds of the black, the red, the grey, the every colored books. It was one of the most beautiful things Liesel Meminger had ever seen. With wonder, she smiled. That such a room existed. Even when she tried to wipe the smile away with her forearm she realized instantly that it was a pointless exercise...She ran the back of her hand along the first shelf, listening to the shuffle of her fingernails gliding across the spinal cord of each book. It sounded like an instrument or the notes of running feet. She used both hands. She raced them one shelf against the other and she laughed. Her voice was sprawled out high in her throat and when she eventually stopped and stood in the middle of the room, she spent many minutes looking from the shelves to her fingers and back again. How many books she had touched? How many had she felt? She walked over and did it again, this time much slower, with her hand facing forward allowing the dough of her palm to feel the small hurdle of each book. It felt like magic, like beauty, as bright lines of light shone down from a chandelier. Several times she almost pulled a title from its place but didn't dare to disturb them. They were too perfect."

The girl realized that this was how she felt about books. And this was how much she loved them. And she didn't even care if she preferred to read Unwind, Harry Potter and Matched over Frankenstein and Hamlet. So guess what she's done this summer? Read a lot of books and not one of them has been a classic, except Anna Karenina which she has a weird determination to finish, even if it does take the rest of her life.