Week 1 - Elder Quist Makes it to México City!

Hola from the Say-Say-Em-Ay (CCM)!

HEY MOM. I love it here! Not in a mean way, but I am not homesick at all. Like I miss y'all but I love it here. Ok so I'm gonna be all over the place so bear with me. The first day, well first few days, were crazy. I was like 5 rows behind first class so I got a super nice window seat. Yeah I flew here with like 40 other missionaries... It was kinda funny. So we get here and we load the busses with luggage and everyone gets in and we are about to leave the airport and then the Fedarale (the po po) shows up and gives all the buses a ticket and it took an hour and a half to figure out so instead of getting to the CCM at 5 we got there at about 7. 

So if you know me, I love the rain and I now know for a fact that God sent me here for a reason and that reason is it rains everyday. I can't think of a time when there weren't clouds above us. It's thee best, not many people like it but I love it. So the CCM used to be a rich private school thing so all the classes are in different buildings and the weather is so nice we nearly always keep the windows and doors open. But since everthing is in different buildings everything is super spread out so we walk a lot (I haven't weighed myself but I hope I haven't gained weight). Fun fact Elders at the CCM usually gain about 15lbs if they are here for 6 weeks. So. Don't judge me when I'm fat. 

So there are 2 dorms and then like 50 casas, I live in a casa. The casas have a living room and table and then there is a kitchen but the door to it is locked cause we never have to cook anything, then a laundry room. Down a hallway is 5 rooms with 2 bunkbeds, so 4 people in each room, but my comp and I got lucky and it's only the two of us in our room so we have more space to put stuff and we can sleep in later, I love it and thank the lord for this blessing everyday haha. So my companion, Elder Peterson, is from Idaho Falls. He went to Idaho Falls High School and we are going to the same mission. 

So yeah we have a room to ourselves and we wake up at 5:50 am every once in awhile to play basketball with a bunch of other Elders. We have 6 latino Elders in our casa and they are hilarious. We talk with them every night and it helps our spanish a ton. Um let's seeeeee. We have two teachers, a morning teacher and an afternoon teacher. Our afternoon teacher is always kind of a grump but he's cool, he is also our fake investigator, Omar. Our morning teacher is my homie, she is hilarious. My district is me and mi compañero, 2 other elders going to Chalco as well (we are the only 4 going to Chalco in the CCM), umm 2 hermanas going to Uruguay Montevideo as well as 3 elders, and then one elder going to Chile somewhere, it's a good district. The food here is so bland but I mean I'm still alive so I guess the food is good enough. 

Let's see.. OH OK GUYS, every, I don't know, 30 minutes? some loud explosion goes off outside the CCM and we can see the smoke from it and we asked our teachers about them and all they said was "crazy mexicans.. they'll celebrate anything and literally people (my district thinks it is just one guy doing it cause they all come from the same place) here just set off huge fireworks. No joke, these fireworks are enormous, but they don't look pretty or have colors or anything it's just like giant firecrackers. Y'all can't even comprehend these things, it is so weird. Oh I just realized I forgot to tell you about the bus ride from the airport. It was insane. I don't know how I am alive, there are traffic laws here (a fact I don't believe) but no one follows them and they don't really paint lines on the road so I THINK it was a 3 lane highway but I'm not sure. And people just stand on the side of the road and they don´t move when a car (or bus) comes and every car just cuts all the other cars off but everyone is so chill about it, it's liked organized chaos. It took us almost an hour and a half to go about 3 miles. Thankfully our bus driver is like a mexican NASCAR driver so I'm still alive.

Also general conference was amazing! One of the best. So one of the highlights so far is this guy I met at the airport, Elder Crook? but everyone knows him as Paraguy. He's going to Paraguay and he is hilarious, we love him. I took a pic with him, I'll try to attach it.

The spanish is going well. I love learning so it hasn't been bad yet. I love meeting new people. Every other morning or so Elder Peterson and I wake up at 5:50 and go play basketball with like 12 other guys so that is fun. Elder P is district leader too so technically I am too so that is fun. I don't know what else to say so I'll talk to y'all next week (which will be next Friday not Wednesday, idk why). Also I'm goin to the temple today and I'm gonna buy a bunch of ties. ANYWAY I LOVE YOU ALL!

Hasta luego, 

Elder Q.

Flying into México City

 General Conference Churros

 P-day at the Temple