Getting Duped and Secular Songs

Hola everyone!

 

Another week done at the CCM (phew). It feels like I have been here a month.

 

So life in a trio is getting better and better. We are becoming friends and praying and working together more diligently. I'm actually starting to enjoy it!

 

Okay so I figured I would give a rundown of a day in the life of a missionary at the CCM.

 

6:30 get out of bed (ugh)

7:15 CLASS

8:15 Desayuno (breakfast)

8:45 CLASS

10:00 TALL (Technology Assisted Language Learning)

11:15 Sports and shower

12:45 Almuerzo (lunch)

1:30 CLASS ON CLASS ON CLASS

5:15 Cena (dinner)

6:00 MORE CLASS

8:00 Refaccion (Snack)

9:00 Planning

10:30 BED

 

Day in and day out! So much class, I think my brain is going to melt.

 

Tomorrow, EVERY SINGLE HERMANA IN THE CCM EXCEPT FOR MY COMPANIONSHIP IS LEAVING. Every. Single. One. The CCM is divided into three groups: The 0-2 weekers are Nuevos, the 2-4 weekers are Medios, and the 4-6 weekers are Viejos. The native speakers stay for 2 weeks. There are no medios at the CCM, only Nuevos and Viejos. The Viejos run everything. They have callings, make sure the Hnas are where they need to be, etc. etc. So tomorrow, my companionship turns into Medios, and we have to assume A L L the responsibilities of Viejos. Nooo! On Wednesday, we are getting 20 Norteamericanas: 4 hermanas and 16 elders. I'm excited for that, but I'm sad to watch my beloved Viejos leave.

 

So here in the CCM, songs get stuck in your head. A LOT. And more often than not, it is a secular song, like Taylor Swift or Beyoncé or 1D. So we have taken to spiritualizing the songs that get stuck in our heads: For instance, to the tune of Party in the USA,

So I put my scriptures up, they're playing my hymn, the pianists fingers fly away,

nodding my head like amen, moving my soul like amen...

Haha, you do what you have to do.

Last night, all the elders and sisters were gathered around the piano playing songs like "Halo" and a whole selection of Disney songs, so that was WAY nice. I got to break out my piano skills and play the first part of Don't Stop Believing (aka the only song I know on the piano other than Carol of the Bells). Also, my companera Hna Fisher LOVES Abba, so she nearly dies every time I play it, which is way more than I should be...

 

Yeah, it is straight up Religion Prison here. There are gates and guards and ahhhh I am just so excited to G E T O U T O F H E R E.

 

Sundays are awesome. I had to talk, AGAIN, but this time I got to talk in English, and with my companeras. We watched two movies, "The Testaments" and "Legacy". We were all laughing WAY too hard at Legacy. We seriously found every part where someone wasn't dying HILARIOUS. It's amazing how much your sense of humor changes here...you find everything funny.

 

So...I am emailing on the nurse's laptop (American keyboaaarrrddd), because I missed my original email time, which was 10am today. Why? I had to go the eye doctor! Guess who has spots in her vision. Yeah. Everywhere I look there are little grey blurs and spots dancing around in my field of vision. So I went across the city to the opthamologist today, and he dilated my eyes and shined about 20 DIFFERENT LIGHTS in my eye until I thought I had seriously gone blind, then told me that I was IMAGINING THE SPOTS. Ha, right. Anyways, apparently one of my eyes isn't quite 20/20, so the other eye is compensating, and I developed astigmatism. So tomorrow at Walmart, I have to pick up reading glasses to attempt to correct it. 19 years old, and I need reading glasses. Going through the city was crazy, though! The drivers here are insane. There are no regulations on the road, and you only get in trouble if you hit a physical person on the road. There are lots of American stores, like Payless, Little Caesars, Taco Bell, IHOP, McDonalandia (not a misspelling...), so on and so forth.

 

We get to go on a field trip tomorrow! We are going to the Stake Center to play sports, then to Walmart, then to the mall to eat American food (they have Subway!), and something else that I can't quite remember. So I will detail all of that in my email next week.

 

Oh, one time this week we walked out back to the basketball courts for sports time and there was an ambulance and a bunch of nuns just in the court. I still just don't even know why; it was so weird.

 

Also, SEND DEARELDERS. I loooooove them. :)

 

Love you all,

Hna Judd