Wesley's letter 9-26-11

So this week was crazy sauce right now. I’m in the heart of Merida writing on the most ghetto computer you can think of. I’m going to send this in like 3 different letters and I don’t have time to explain why, because that’s what I never have, is time. Trust me if I had time I would have written all of my friends 3 times over by now but honestly just to write this news letter, it’s a choice between writing my family and eating so you’re actually lucky to get this!

The reason why I don’t have any time is because we have like the biggest area in the mission I probably finish about 17 miles every day of just walking. All of our appointments, we have to spread out by at least an hour, because its just that far. But it’s really been helping my girlish figure. I am probably at about 3 percent body fat, and rockin a sweet six pack under my button up shirt. It turns out the perfect workout routine is just walking all day in 90 degree heat and 90 percent humidity, and then you can eat as much beans and rice with mondongo as you like.

So this Wednesday I woke up and there was a straight up iguana just chillin on the wall inside our house, I caught it, what ever. There’s also a vine from the jungle that always tries to grow into our house through the window. And it turns out those spiders I told you about can jump... really far, and best of all they’re everywhere.

Ya, also, it turns out after it rains hard here the mosquitoes come out from hiding to say “wad up”. I’ve probably gotten about 30 bites a day.

It’s pretty rough I’m not gonna lie. But I think that’s only because I really haven’t seen a single American for over a month and haven’t heard any English. (That’s understandable).

I think I’m finally accustomed to the weather. I went in a room with ac the other day and it said 81 degrees and I was actually cold.

The rainstorms here have literally been insane. The other day lightning was striking easily within a football field of us. Lighting really is the most horrifying thing when you’re the tallest thing in the entire country. And when it rains literally all of the streets become rivers.

Ya the clothes I bought in the missionary mall are supposed to last 2 years in any mission, but I don’t think they could have prepared for the Yucatan, most my clothes are already ruined in one way or another, haha but its chill

The reason why I never have time to write is because we have to hand wash all of our clothes, there’s a launder mat, but it costs about 3 dollars each and my comp doesn’t have extra money to spend. Its amazing how arrogant we Americans are with out even knowing it.

Welp I’m all out of time tsalma (Maya for later)

El Smith

After the rain.

Jungle

One advantage to having 3% body fat!

Statue of Elder's on bikes!

Elder Smith after a downpour.

Common mode of transportation.

Elder Smith is friendly to everyone.

The streets of Merida.

Elder Smith with his Mission President and wife.

Mmmmmm yummy!

Elder Smith this week at the baptism of Ignacio.

Wesley's letter 9-19-11

¿BI´yan ich´cetch´k? More Maya it’s whatever. Sorry but this will be a short letter because im going to try and upload as many photos as possible.

Here are but a few things

I’m doing fine, I’m learning more and more every day I decided I’m going to read the book of Mormon in Maya, I’m almost done in Spanish. Maya really is a crazy language. Y todavia no hablo español bueno pero, estoy mejorandola

So this week a lot happened like I got my first baptism with a nice 31 year old woman named Yasmin. Tomorrow we're having one more with a man named Ignacio. As it turns out Spanish was his second language and Maya was his first. His mom lives at his house with him and she’s about 80, 3 foot 8 and doesn’t speak any Spanish.
The standard I’ve started to go by is if someone is over 50 they are bi-lingual with Maya and Spanish, if they are over 70 they don’t speak any Spanish.

So one other cool thing is that I realized I haven’t seen a single white person in over a month or any one who can speak English fluently haha

If there are any ex-missionaries out there I would love to hear your stories of what was going on at this point on your mission and if you were as lost as I am with the language.

I really do love you all until next time! ¡Hasta luego!¡ek´i cu´va!

Tell Karch I know a bunch of guys that are going to his mission and I’ll give you the list next week but the computers are dirt slow here so I gotta try to upload these pictures.

Wesley's letter 9-12-11

¿Baax ka walik? That was Maya... what ever it’s no bigge. OK, I have a ton to write this week and like zero time to write it

Here’s some of what’s been happening.
So, it turns out the food here is kind of a coin toss sometimes we’ll get super deliciousness and others mondongo, a classic 3rd world dish of cow stomach. The crazy things I’ve eaten so far are mondongo, deer (I don’t know where they got a deer) and peacock. Peacock was the best but deer wasn’t bad. But good news, everyone here loves mondongo so I’m sure it won’t be the last time. The only consistently delicious things we can count on being good are the drinks. The drinks are all home made from new fruits I can’t even pronounce.

Yeah, so the language is going pretty horribly because my missionary companion doesn’t know any English and he speaks a lot of slang, none of which does he know how to explain. Everyone here speaks Maya and just loves to incorporate it into their Spanish so it really throws me curve balls when I kind of know what’s going on and then there’s some weird baax tin yanaj thrown in. So ya I’m pretty lost most the time, but I still think I’m getting the language better than most of the other gringos who showed up at the same time.

Oh ya, it turns out the missionary who said that Kulkucan was the top baptizing area was joking. It turns out our zone hasn’t baptized anyone in over a year and it is one of the hardest areas in the entire mission haha. Everyone’s super Catholic and your not legit in Kulkucan unless you have a Virgin of Guadalupe kiosk in front of your house for all to see. But trust me everyone here is super nice and I feel love everywhere we go, and we have a few people committed to baptism.


So these last weeks have been pretty crazy, its been raining every day pretty hard. I have a few photos of this Wednesday when all the streets got flooded and I was ankle deep in a river of heaven’s tears. Later that night it just kept on raining, so our walk home was about knee deep. It was pretty crazy! I saw a few cars get bogged down because their air filters were under water. Random puddles form in our house for no reason and last week one formed under my bed by all my beloved stuff. I didn’t know about it for what must have been some time because when I found out my beloved vans were all moldy! It was pretty rad.

I love taking showers with scorpions on the wall. Our house is pretty ghetto, we have to use a bucket to flush the toilet and the refrigerator door fell off so we kind of just suction it on now, so you don’t get something out of the fridge unless its really important!

As it stands I haven’t seen too many creepy animals, but there are centipedes everywhere, and I literally mean EVERYWHERE like almost every step I almost step on one. I still haven’t seen a tarantula yet. The biggest spider I’ve seen so far here was for sure the creepiest thing I’ve ever seen. We were chilling in the main room of our house when a wolf spider looking thing the size of a wrist watch comes flying under front door full sprint at us, and to make things worst it had about 300 demon spawn broodling children on its back so when my companion smashed it with his sandal all its spawnlings went everywhere and started running around. The parent’s front half was still running around trying to get us, so we had to raid them down. It was pretty dubstep. Which reminds me I really miss music.

Ok I’ll write more next week.

El Esmit

Wesley's 11th letter 8-29-11

¡Holy hot weather! Hey it’s officially my first full week in Mexico and it has been nutz!

So as it turns out, Merida is stupid hot all the time, but more than anything it’s ridiculously humid. If you get anything wet just know it’s not going to dry for at least a day and a half, which means as soon as you put any clothes on you start sweating up a storm. So pretty much all of my clothes are wet all the time. The only way to stop sweating is if you stand in front of a fan that is on high for literally 20 minutes.

So this is how the mornings go we get up at 6: 30 and exercise for a half an hour and then study until about 11:00. As soon as you step out of the door you know your clothes are toast because it’s about 90 degrees and the air itself is sweating. One thing that always happens is that around 3:00 it starts to rain and that goes on for about an hour. One of the things I’ve noticed is that the hotter it was in the morning the harder it’s going to rain.

The good news is that our house is one of the only ones with a swamp cooler and we have beds which means I don’t have to sleep in a hammock for the next 3 months! Whoooo, but it is probably one of the least comfy spring beds in the world and I don’t have a pillow haha.

Something about the culture here is that probably 1 in 3 people speak Mayan, so I’ve already learned a few words. Now all I need to do is learn Spanish because everyone here cuts their words and have super thick accents, so I hardly ever know what anyone’s saying haha.

It turns out the most popular form of transport is by trici-taxi which, if you want your own, all you need to do is cut off the front of a motorcycle or a scooter and weld a bench with a bicycle wheel on each side and there it is. There’s no way it would be street legal in the US. They’re pretty much the same thing that Nacho from Nacho Libre drove but with a wood seat in the front and it costs about 5 pesos to get anywhere around town.

Oh ya, the other way to roll phat is in a party bus. They are all stick shifts and the drivers always like to get to and go places faster than you have time to climb aboard or get off. It’s pretty funny, all the locals stand perfectly still and don’t act like anything is happening while the driver is driving like he’s on PCP going 60 mph with sudden stops over topes (speed bumps) and I’ll just be flailing around like one of those inflatable dancing advertising things. Tonto gringo.

It’s pretty funny every once in a while I’ll see a big tough looking Mayan guy and think “Oh crud that guys huge, I hope he doesn’t wanna mug us” and then I’ll remember I still have at least a foot over him hahaha.
But, I don’t think I’ll get mugged here, everyone is too nice.

Anyway I’ll finish writing more about the food and stuff next week I’m really out of time.

I love you all,
Esmit out