New email from Qiao Jie Mei!

August 26, 2013

Hey Mom and Dad!

I finally figured out how to do pictures! Those are pretty much all the ones I've taken so far, but those are good! So just forward those to everyone cause I didn't send any of them to anyone else, haha. By the way, that red skirt I got for 15 dollars! And it's great! Haha I can definitely ride it on a bike anyways, haha.

My week's been great! Its weird though, Sunday-Tuesday feels like the weekend, because it's Sunday, then P-Day, then Tuesday (and on Tuesday at 3 we have gym, then just choir and devotional) so those days go by super fast. And then Thursday and Friday last the longest, haha, it's all switched around. I can't believe it's gonna be 3 weeks in a couple days. Like, I feel like it should, because I feel like I've been here forever, but the weeks really do just fly by.
 

Could you and Dad find a Chinese dictionary that has stroke order, so I can look up characters? The one I brought and the one they gave me just have the pinyin to English and vice-versa, so there's no way to look up all the traditional characters. And for cookies, I love chocolate chip (with chocolate chips and white chocolate) and snickerdoodles, haha :)

The new sisters in my room are super nice! They're going to the other mission in Taiwan, but we all get along really well so it works out good. It's a little cramped, but we really hardly spend time in the room except for sleeping and getting ready, and we've kind of got a system down for the getting ready thing, so that's good, haha. And for the pictures, I'm in a trio so the picture that has me and the 2 other girls at the temple is of my companions. And the first picture is me and my first original companion. Oh! And funny story, apparently Thomas Parker saw me on the TV screen singing at Devo and told someone he knew me from Shanghai and someone in my building told me! So he's here somewhere! I'm pretty sure he's on the west campus though. (Amie knew Thomas from our Branch in Shanghai and he has been in the MTC just alittle longer than she has) We have devotionals every Sunday and Tuesday. Tuesday's are generally when the general authorities come though, at least as far as I know.

The gospel and language study is going pretty good! I've finally hit kind of a balance I think between the two, and it's going good. And for the medical things, I haven't had to pay anything. I don't know if I will or anything, but they haven't even mentioned money about that.
 

Let's see, what else happened this week. Um, OH! We had this thing called TRC, and I'm not sure what it stands for exactly, but basically volunteers come into the MTC and we teach them, mostly they're returned missionaries, but one of the companionships in my district actually got a real 'mu dao you' (investigator.) My companions and I got a couple, the guy served in Taiwan and the wife was from Singapore, and we taught for 20 minutes, and besides being really, really nervous it went really well! I ended up having to teach most of the lesson, because neither of the other sisters wanted to pitch in, which I kind of feel bad about because I know sometimes I just start going off in Chinese and no one knows what I'm saying, but according to them they're really grateful I did. We had kind of a lesson planned, but since we just met them in that moment, it was hard to prepare anything, I just started talking about recieving revelation at church, so hopefully it made sense, haha. That was probably the coolest experience this week. And I bought a Book of Mormon stories in traditional characters! Hence why I need the dictionary, I can pick up most of them, but I think the ones that I can't pick up are the main idea, so a dictionary would be great.

Well, yeah that's about it. Classes are still going good, I'm still exhausted, but I'm getting used to that. I still absolutely love my district, I seriously don't think I could've asked for a better one to start off with haha. And my companions and I still get along great! And I don't know if I've mentioned this but I've been the Senior Companion thus far, so for almost 3 weeks. It's not a big deal because it's not really different, but it's kinda cool.

Anyways, I love you! Tell everyone I say hi and I'm doing great :)

And again, thanks for all the packages :)

Love you!

-Amie/Sister George/Qiao Jie Mei

It feels weird just to put Sister George, so I'll just do all of them, haha

(Pictures posted soon!)