Aug 27 2013

I don't have my journal with me so I might send another email with more stuff for you to send to everyone. By the way were are you posting that so I can tell people? because they keep asking and I don't know. I love the video of Logan he is moving a lot more than before. It looks like he is about to start doing push ups but then he just sits back down. This sunday Elder Castleton and Simonsen are going to be called as zone leaders which is good. he tries really hard but he just isn't a great leader. In other news I can solve my rubiks cube in about 2 minutes 30 seconds consistently, makes me feel like a total nerd but it is entertaining. The string on my yo-yo broke from use so If another one was in a package soon that would be great, but it' no big deal. I have gained 1 or 2 pounds since getting here it fluctuates daily. I have been playing a lot of basketball and my shins are so sore I have to take breaks and go play foursquare which is super intense but more skill than effort. So every Wednesday we do this thing called TRC where return missionaries or members volunteer to come in and you have to go teach/talk to them for twenty minutes and It is amazing how much I can understand of what they say. It is much harder for me to formulate a response, but I can understand so much more than I thought I would be able to. We have class for 9 to 12 hours a day and sometimes more so it makes sense I bet I have learned more Russian now than I know Spanish from two years of high school.
Another funny thing is that if I am trying to think of a word in Russian and I know the word in Spanish I will accidentally say the word in Spanish sometimes. So some sentences are a mix of three languages we have come to call Spanglishian. I love getting pictures of Logan, and I use him to my advantage in TRC whenever it is a lady I am teaching I will bring up that I have a 7 month old little brother and that he is extremely fat.

 Russian grammar is really hard to get used to. Like instead of saying I have... you say at me there is... even if it is a feeling. so oo menya yest schavstlivooye, means I am happy but the literal translation is at me there is happy. I typed tried my best to transliterate that into English that isn't quite how it is pronounced in Russian but English is missing key letters like backwards R backwards N the one that looks like a little building, the I refer to as the spider, the bl letter sometimes referred to as the 61 which makes a sound I can't even describe with text, and of course b called the soft sign which makes the letter before it sound different in a barely perceptible but apparently very important way. I will write more later if i get a chance to grab my journal and come back. Don't have too much fun without me.