The Peru CCM

The Peru MTC, or CCM in spanish, is Awesome!  The first day was crazy, they made us all get buzz cuts, do a bunch of paperwork, and none of us could understand anything that the people in charge were saying.  I couldn´t even understand my own companion.  As the days rolled along the Americans have learned a lot more Spanish and are now actually able to understand real Spanish (except when 2 Latinos are talking to each other, cause that is still way too fast).  Now, I am able to communicate easily with my Latino companion.  He usually speaks in English and I speak in Spanish, that way we both practice the language we are trying to learn.  The Latinos are all going to Spanish speaking missions, but they are still trying to learn as much English from us as they can. I actually have one of the best English speaking companions in the whole CCM, and he says that I am the best Spanish speaker out of all of the new American missionaries, so we have a much easier time communicating than most of the companionships.

I have an American companion as well for class and for teaching "investigators", but there is nothing new about working with a white guy who speaks English, so I don´t really have anything to say about him.

The food here is actually pretty good.  I haven´t been so adventurous as to eat everything in sight, but I have eaten a lot of semi-gross-looking things that I would have never tried in America. Most of these have been pretty good and the ones that weren´t good, I ate anyway.

My favorite time of the day by far is gym time.  Usually during this time, I play soccer with the Latinos, but I have also done basketball and volleyball. As expected, the Latinos are very good at futbol. I have been able to hold my own just fine though because while almost all of them have me beat in skill, I have them beat in speed, and for the first time ever in my life, I have the upper-hand in strength and height (by upper-hand I mean that I am average strength and height for a Latino, but compared to what I´m used to, I feel like a giant).

The Latinos have a suprisingly large knowledge of American culture. They frequently sing songs such as "We are the champions" and other American songs.  They also have knowlede of "Forest Gump", "The Avengers", "Rocky", "Tarzan", "The Karate Kid", and seemingly every major American movie.

We have so much more freedom here than at Provo.  They were so many people at Provo, and it was so self enclosed that it honestly felt like a prison. Here, although we are definately sheltered from the real South America that lies just outside the walls, it feels so much more open and free.  The windows here actually open, and we are actually allowed to leave the classroom and even go outside to study.  The weather here is also fantastic. It is suposedly winter here, so it is always between 60 and 75 degrees.

Sorry, I was gonna send some pictures home, but I forgot to bring my camera into the computer lab, so no pics till next week.