A New Day, July 8th

Happy birthday to my T Scott! I can’t believe you are going to be home in jut 20 days! Where did the time go? Well…back to life in Peru. The party went well-the awkward part got over with at the beginning since that’s when the toast was made with the alcohol. Me and Rach enjoyed our Pepsi and I finally tried Inca Kola. There was lots of snacks and drinking and dancing. Oh my goodness, our mamita is a party animal/dance machine. No joke. She danced for so long and then she would pull us into the circle to dance. Good thing I feel oober confident when I try to dance here…HA! Not. Joao came to the party (aka the devil) and had a great time! What a womanizer he is! He definitely was in heaven-14 girls to 2 boys at this party. Too funny. Anyways he was definitely hitting on everyone but for some reason he tried hitting on me a lot. I got a picture with him-don’t you even worry about that. He definitely threw the following lines at me: “You’re the cutest girl here.” and “The more you hate me, the more I think I like you.” He also asked me to dance to which I replied “no” since he commented that it was a “sensual song.” Um, yeah, no thanks-count me out! I won’t lie-it felt good to be hit on by a boy after being called fat a few hours before. It was definitely a different experience-it makes me miss Bry but that’s life, right? Anyways, today has been a good one too. We went to class and hung out with Walter. Joao continued to hit on me when we said “See you on Tuesday!” He replied with, “Why not Monday?” We reminded him that we are leaving for Lake Titicaca tonight (Chailyn, feel free to laugh now), and won’t be back til early Monday morning. He decided it would be a good thing to say, “It’s cold there! Stay warm! Take care of that body for me!.” Um…wow. He is full of comments, seriously. Today’s class was great. Since the airport Walter has tried talking in a lot more Spanish with us. He was making us tell stories in the Indefinite and Imperfect tense to practice so Rachel started with a story in the Imperfect where she talked about hanging out with one of her really good friends when she lived in Utah and what they would do. Walter then assigned me to make up a story in the indefinite which is more like one event that has happened and is over with. Rach got this idea for me to talk about the day Bryant left on his mission so I did. I went up to our little white board and proceeded to write about when Bryant left and how I cried a lot. I said my family tried to make me happy by taking me to my favorite restaurant and eating a lot. I said I tried to forget about that day since it was the worst day of my life-so funny how when you don’t know any vocabulary in a language everything seems much more dramatic. It really wasn’t the worst day of my life but it definitely was hard saying goodbye. BUT, Bry I have to thank you for going on a mission so I could have opportunities to talk about missionary work here. I was able to try to explain to Walter in Spanish that we have churches and temples and how temples are very sacred places that not anyone can enter. He asked about the differences between the two so we explained that when we attend the temple we wear white to represent purity and when we go to church we wear our best clothes. Walter said the cutest thing to this statement. He said, “I think it is the best that we wear our best clothes when we go to church because it helps us remember what we’re learning there and doing at church. Sometimes when we wear our other clothes we walk out of the church and forget about all of the important things we’d learned that day.” I started to get a little emotional. I am so grateful for these experiences Rachel and I have had here. This is our mission-seriously. We feel such a love for Cusco, it’s so unexplainable. I can only think that when we have a prayer in our heart to do good the Lord provides the way.