Week 6

This week was a good one, but I'm starting to get anxious to get to Singapore, so time is slowing down. Anyway, I got sick on Monday, and I developed a cough, so I got a pack of cough drops, and it was bad, so I ate them all in like a day and a half, and then I saw I wasn't supposed to eat them more than every 2 hours. Oops. :D

But I don't have what the MTC is infested with: intestinal flu. We can't shake hands or anything right now. And two of my roommates have had it bad. One spent three hours the other night puking (even when there was nothing left). Speaking of sicknesses, yesterday at priesthood, this guy gave a talk and told stories about him going to India to help eradicate Smallpox. I guess he had a pretty good reputation in the medical community. Pretty much all the MTC leadership has cool backgrounds. Like a ton of the branch presidents have been mission presidents and stuff. And tomorrow we get educated on another sickness: Malaria! It should be fun. I heard someone at yesterday's broadcast behind me in the choir talking about how he and a few other elders got to pass the Sacrament to the meeting where the First Presidency and mission presidents attended. Super cool!

You were at the devotional yesterday, but it was a good one. The choir messed up, though, and they didn't let us into the Marriott Center for a very long time after getting there. And some elders decided they needed to be the first ones there and ran there, which seems a bit not missionary-like. Oh, well.

Oh, I talked more to the teacher who served in Singapore, and he gave us some good advice. He told us the weirdest things he ate were dog (yum!) and fish that apparently live in the open sewers. He told us to imagine the taste of a porta-potty. The Malays are the ones who eat these things, though, so we won't have them often. He said he took airplanes, subways, and boats between transfers. And he also said if we are planning to lose weight on the mission, even in East Malaysia, we won't. And I guess he only ever cooked breakfast. It was cheaper to eat out everywhere in the mission! Which is a good thing. The main building has been under lockdown, so we eat in the gym every day. It's weird to think so many general authorities are here often, and the prophet has been here at some point or another.

Today was our last temple trip for two years, but we do get a 3.5 hour service assignment next week to help clean it. That should be fun. Also, the Skype TRC was good, but slightly terrifying. We'll do it every week from here on out. One of the people had a bad connection and she was kind of frustrated with us. The other one was super nice, but she did laugh at us a few times. Our first teacher has been assigned to another district, which is sad, but we still get our other main teacher. Her dad is a Chinese Malaysian! Oh, and we got a cleaning check unexpectedly today (they are every week), which is the day we clean it every week, and we failed every category. It is kind of funny, but who knows what our punishment will be. It's clean the other 6 days of the week!

One of the Mainland China missionaries taught some kids in our district (who taught us) some pretty cool stuff about some characters in Chinese that has gospel symbolism. The character for ark has the radical for "boat" and the radical for "eight" in it. And the character for justice has the radical for "me" and the radical for "Lamb" connected. The character for "forbidden" (I think) has two "tree" radicals and one "god" radical, I think. Radicals just are little symbols that make up characters. He's a really cool guy! We get another generation this week, including a Finnish kid and two Singapore-bound missionaries. And then only two weeks until we are great-grand parents! Super cool!

Love, Andrew

Oh, I may have neglected to tell you about names. They are assigned before we get there and won't change. I am Ge (pronounced "Guh" in the low third tone) Zhanglao, which is elder. It means barge, I think. I don't know what my character is.