Week 3

This week has gone by so quickly, though every day feels like an eternity. I'll tell you a bit more about my district, since I spend pretty much 24/7 with them. There are 11 elders. Five are in my room, six in the other. There are six beds and four closets in each room, so we have to share a bit, but it's not as crammed as I feared it might be. In my room, there is me, my companion, and a trio of elders going to Singapore, London South, and Brisbane. They are also our new zone leaders. It seems like everyone (but me) in the district is very smart. One of the elders in the other room was my favorite TA in computer science. One was waitlisted at Harvard, another was waitlisted at Stanford. One graduated high school a year early (he's a year younger than the rest of us, who are within 4 months in birth dates), one knows more Chinese than the rest of us. I'm impressed by all of them.

One interesting thing that happened this week was on Saturday, we did the TRC for the first time. We thought we'd be teaching people pretending to be investigators, but it was really just people who speak Chinese (most of them were Chinese) and want a spiritual lift for the day while helping missionaries practice Chinese. My companion and I weren't really prepared, but it was still a lot of fun and a good learning experience. We've been teaching two new progressing investigators (teachers who role play) this week, and we feel our teaching has improved significantly. However, we only teach for 20 minutes at a time, so sometimes we don't really even fit in a lesson.

We also got a new generation in this week, so our zone is over 100 people now. They are mostly going to Taiwan, but a few are going to three different missions in England. It's kind of nice not being the least familiar with Chinese anymore. The oldest generation is all leaving today and tomorrow, though, which is sad. I hope I can be as good at Chinese as they are by the time I leave. I've started doing flashcards and my words learned per day has significantly improved. Well, it's been a good week, and I'll write to you soon.