Monday was P-day, obviously. Not too much to say about it.
Tuesday, Christmas Eve, we were invited to have Christmas dinner with the Alarcón family in our ward. So we went with the other two hermanas and had a good old time. I taught the little girls the dance for Cotton Eye Joe and they totally loved it. Here they eat late at night and then wait until midnight and open all the gifts then. We had to be in the house at 11:00, so no Viejito Pascuelo (Santa Clause) sightings for us. But it was still fun.
Wednesday we opened up our gifts in the morning (the girls in my house are thrilled about all the American chocolate I got) and then in the afternoon we went into Conce for the mission Christmas activity they were having. There was so much good food and most of it was American - chips and guacamole (okay, so that is not really "American" but they don't eat it here) and pasta and frog-eye salads and ranch and ceaser salad dressings, and chocolate chip cookies! - and I got to see Hermana Call and Hermana Snyder and a lot of my other mission friends who are in the "in" zones right now. I loved it. And then after that, of course, we Skyped our families, which is always fun. My family is crazy. But I love them. I got to meet my nephew Charlie. He was asleep, but he seems pretty cool. I think we'll get along if he likes sleeping too.
Thursday morning I found myself with a few minutes of extra time and so I took down the little Christmas tree that we had. The other hermanas kept asking me if that was some kind of an American tradition - to take down the tree immediately after Christmas. I told them no, that normally we leave it up until after the New Year but I knew if I didn't do it right then I would be too lazy to do it later. Then that afternoon my companion was sick with the flu so I put her to bed despite her complaints and she felt better that night.
Friday was the first "regular" day we had last week, so the week felt pretty short. But we did as much as we could Friday and Saturday and Sunday to move the work along. Saturday we went to visit some of our investigators and the husband, José was getting ready to go play in some kind of a performance with his church "band." He plays the violin, so when he heard that I could play he went and got it out and insisted that I play. Well, I really can't remember all that much and that violin was SO out of tune and I couldn't really tune it because the pegs were like super-glued and I was pretty sure the strings would break if I tried too hard. So I had to just place my fingers in different places on all the strings in order to get the music to sound right. It was strange, but it kind of worked. Hermano José has basically no training and his technique is quite different, but he played a nice little ditty. And then he asked if I would teach him a couple of lessons. I am quite skeptical about that, since I can't exactly speak music-Spanish. Also because I don't think a violin lesson would count for one of our key indicators.... But it was fun to get to play again for a minute. I guess there are a lot of violins in Tomé.
Once again I failed to get a picture of the beautiful views of the ocean that we have every time we climb up one of the enormous hills here in Tomé. I remembered finally to bring my camera yesterday but then I didn't remember to use it. Boo. Someday, I promise, you can know what it is like here. Hermana Gamboa and I went running on the beach on Saturday for our exercise. It was awesome. I had never done that before. We had a great time!
So when I got to Tomé I was super excited because there is a real stove and an oven here. That is not the case in every mission apartment, so I was pleased. But everything is gas and you have to light the stove with a match. Anyway, one night when we got home we were really hungry but we had basically no food in the house since nobody had shopped during cambios. Well, we did have some corn flour and so I asked my Colombian companion to make some arepas, which are like little corn pancake things. Super delicious! Well, she said, "no tenemos fosforos," (fosforos are matches) and I didn't fully understand her or wasn't listening very well and I thought she was referring to the corn flour. But I had some of that, so I told her not to worry, that I had some, so I went and got it out and she made some arepas. Then when it came time to cook them, she asked me for matches and I was like, "I don't have any." And she was like, "I told you we didn't have any and you said you had some - that's why I made these!" Then I felt really silly and really sad because now we had arepas that we couldn't eat because we couldn't cook them. So we fretted about it for a minute and I started looking everywhere for matches when Hermana Gamboa comes in and says, "Do you want fire?" We were both like, "YES!" and I assumed that maybe SHE had matches, but then she points to the hot water heater thing and says, "Supposedly when someone takes a shower this lights a flame." WHAT A GENIUS! So we turned on the hot water and rolled up a piece of paper and stuck it up inside the calefont (that's the hot water heater) and lit it on fire and then we were able to light the stove and eat our arepas! It was awesome. And we lit the stove that way for over a week (since we forgot to buy matches last P-day) until I found the matches that Hermana Vieda had said she thought Hermana Rane had taken with her. They were in Hermana Martinez's closet with her jewelry and whiteboard markers. So now we have matches. But if we ever run out, no worries, right?
Anyway, that's the report for this week. Also, mission time warp side note - this week as the year 2013 closes, it will be a complete year that I have spent in Chile. So after I get home if you ever refer to anything that happened in 2013, I probably won't know what you are talking about. Isn't that strange? But I hope you all have a very Happy New Year! I think it's gonna be a good one.
New Year's Resolution for all of you - READ THE BOOK OF MORMON EVERY DAY! We all have the opportunity to start out this new year right and we can have a perfect year where we don't miss a single day of reading - even if we only have a chance to read one verse, I know that we can do it! It will be a challenge for all of us, but I also know that we will be greatly blessed for our efforts and our sacrifices.
Wellp, love you all. Hope you have a great week and a lot of fun with your New Year's activities! We'll probably be sleeping when the New Year comes in, so make sure y'all celebrate it nice a good in my honor.
Lovelovelove,
Herman
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