August 6th 2014

The MTC is crazy, they shuffle you through a maze of people and buildings as soon as you arrive to get you all set up, and as soon as I walked into the classroom the teacher started speaking Russian to me. I waited until he finished and he was just staring at me waiting for a reply and I just said I got nothin' man. I thought i was going to have a couple days then we would start speaking only Russian, but he hasn't even said a full sentence in English yet. Learning Russian makes learning Spanish seem sooo easy, I have already learned the cyrillic alphabet and can read at probably like a first grade pace (which is so much more impressive than it sounds). The food here is alright you just have to know which meals to avoid, for example the waffles, the problem is that they offer like four different options at every meal so i end up eating two lunches and three dinners every day. We have a pull up bar outside our Dorm though so I'm using that a lot. and I saw another elder bracing himself between the walls horizontally, so he wasn't touching the floor at all and i have started practicing that, I went up and over a doorway yesterday! My companion is Elder Van Quill he's from Provo and he is pretty cool. We work pretty well together and share a lot of interests. We both study Russian more than anyone else, but he is struggling more than me. He is improving though and we will both get it down by the end of September which seems like it will never come. The days here are so packed with stuff it seems like they never end, but then you forget everything the next day so it goes by fast in hindsight. I'm almost too busy to even miss anybody, except hank and Logan I think about them a lot. Hope everyone is having fun,

Sincerely, Tanner

When we have gym We play soccer, b-ball, foursquare, or lift weights. I'm surprised at how well I do in all the above sports, and at how competitive foursquare gets. I will probably go pro when I get home cuz I ball hard. We aren't supposed to chew gum in public or say p-day instead of preparation day, or say guys or man or anything like that you have to call everyone elder. The guys in my class (called a district) are pretty cool, when we have study time and are alone in the classroom we play b-ball, we made a hoop out of a wire hanger and balls out of paper and tape, or just throw a roll of tape and try to get it to hang on one of the hooks on the wall.