Hola Fambly!(it's pronounced Ho-la. There's an h.) 2-27-09
Hey! It's getting down to the end here and I am freaking out--just a little bit. We did phone-calls in Spanish this week for the first time. Some of them were really nice and spoke slowly--but there was one lady who yelled (in spanish) "I can't understand you!" and hung up on me. Triste.
I still don't really know how to clasify my abilities with the language. I can read in spanish GREAT, I've started doing a lot of my personal study with my Espanol escritores. I do pretty well with understanding spoken spanish too--we watched the Joseph Smith restoration movie in spanish for class (on-censor that, we're pretty sure our teacher "burrowed" it from a visitor's center, which you're really not supposed to do.) It was great though, I understood a lot, and Satan is about a thousand times scarier in spanish.
When I speak in spanish, it seems like people can understand me, but I think I sound like a 3 year old. Still--I can communicate. I feel pretty confident that you could toss me into any spanish speaking society and I could get along all right. Oh--and I'm more determined than ever to become a polyglot. I LOVE languages. I love being here and being exposed to so many different people from all over.
I met an Elder Rith a few weeks ago. He was born in Cambodia but he moved to Salt Lake when he was still pretty young. Still-he's been fluent in both English and Cambodian for years, and he was called to a Cambodian speaking mission in Boston. He taught me a couple of very cool Cambodian words.
"Dukmoke" which looks kind of like this ;it literally means "water face" or something, and is used for our word countenance, it implies looking into the water and seeing our reflection, so, to have someone else's countenance means to look into the water and see THEIR face.
"Rsmae" looks like this , this is a very popular girl's name that means indescribably beautiful, magnificent light. This word comes in very handy while reciting the 1st vision.
"Trust" "Dokejet", literally means to put your heart in something and know it will be taken care of. So, maybe I want to learn Cambodian? One day, one day, first I need to perfect Spanish, then Italian and French, then German, Russian, Finnish, Japanese...Togalog looks interesting...I've heard that it eventually gets to be pretty (not easy) but EASIER to pick up languages. They're all so beautiful.
Still, I'm greatful every day that my second language (the undisputed hardest #1 language to learn) is Spanish, the undisputed easiest and most logical language ever conceived of. And it's SO beautiful. I want to learn how to pick up the little accents in Spanish too. Our progressive investigator Beatrice has a very pretty "th" called the "theta" ingrained in her spanish. It sounds a little like a lisp when you're first trying to imitate it. Actually, there's a story that it came about in Espana (Ethspana) because the King had a lisp and ordered everyone to talk like he did so he wouldn't feel so awkward. I don't know if it's true, because I heard it here and I don't have the internet or a library or anything to check up on this story...still, I think I should learn "vosotros" conjugation, talk with "theta" dye my hair black again and pretend to be from Spain. Or--I'll just tell everyone I'm from Paranguiricutirimicauro. Lauren will talk cute too when she gets back, she's going to Argentina, they do a slight "Ja" or "sh" instead of the "ya" sound that goes with ll.Wow, that's weird, there really isn't much for me to talk about this week--it went by so fast--even faster than normal. It was a little rough getting back into our trio. We figured out that teaching with two people is about a million times easier than teaching with three, but everything is normal again. I'm a little sad I don't have an excuse to sit in on Hermanos Hadly and Richardons's class anymore, but I'm really glad that Hermana Fitches got to go to Spain at last, the MTC there sounds amazing, and I've seen pictures--it's utterly gorgeous, marble floors and big pretty, pretty gardens to take walks! Oh--I love Europe. I think the Lord knew that I needed to go state-side so I wouldn't just disappear into the ancient cities of Europe the night before I'm supposed to go back home. Chiste, I wouldn't do that --I miss you all too much. So--remember, any Dearelders that you send after like...probably the 6th of March, probably won't ever make it to me, and the mail-people here don't forward stuff on to the mission. I'm really looking forward to getting to my area in ..12 days?! Eeen.
KEA KAHA y paz y amour ustedes Hermana Lirioblanco
P.S. I saw my friend Vlad on Sunday! He is very bad you know, he just waltzed onto the MTC campus to chat in Russian with some of his friends. I don't approve of such a blatant disregard for the rules anymore (although 7 weeks ago, I probably would have thought it was cool) but still, it was nice to see him and chat for a minute and remember that there's this whole 'nother world outside. I especially feel weird when I see the BYU campus and think of my Ginagabobbin. Same city/different worlds. It is truly surreal, I love and miss you all con todo mi corazon.