習慣了

After thinking of how I should start this email off for a few minutes, I'm just not even going to try.

When we have temple days, the five days between emailing always seem to be less eventful for some reason. Unfortunately.

Last week, I sent pictures of our hike we did. I feel like I should restate how awesome that day was. We woke up and got right with it, expecting it to be a lot more difficult than expected to get ourselves across the river to the busstop that we didn't know where to go to get to it. But in the end it was super smooth and reminded me how tiny Taiwan truly is. "Far" here means more than 3 km away. Perception of distance here is much different.

Speaking Chinese all day everyday has its perks. It's fun, helps you feel more intune with the culture and people, and improves your language abilities of course. However, it's surprisingly easy to forget you are a foreigner. Besides the occasional struggles with the language, it like weirds me out in a sense now when I talk to people about America because I know I'm from there, but for some reason it has that same feeling of when I had just gotten home from a long trip and telling people about the place I just visited. Almost this subconscious feeling that I literally live in Taiwan and am going back to America for a "vacation" I guess. It's a hard feeling to describe but it literally turns your world upside down. I'm sure you RM's understand.

I can't think of any incredibly funny stories from this week.

The coolest experience I guess of the week, if you want to call it cool, was while in the Temple last Wednesday. I remember back during my first day in the MTC walking through the back rooms getting handed 100 books with Chinese language material and thinking the day would soon come when I could actually read all those scribbles. While we were sitting in the temple, I picked up a Bible and flipped its pages with ease, turned to the part I wanted to read and read it, not even hardly noticing what I was reading was Chinese. I mean of course I knew it was Chinese, lets be real, but it ALMOST felt natural!!! Super nuts. I had that moment where I officially realized the dream that I had that first day back in the MTC. A sense of accomplishment you could call it.

Chinese is a beautiful language. I love it. I'm so excited to show off to my family and friends. Best part is you'll all have no way of verifying whether I can actually read it or not, but I'll know. And that is satisfying.

I love telling people that one of my favorite activities back home is shooting skeet. They cannot grasp the concept of shooting guns for entertainment. A few of them tell me they are coming to find me in America once I'm home so I can take them out for the experience. I'm excited.

Love you all!

We realized we hadn't taken any new pictures to send.

So this is some last second posing last night. lol