Week 2 = Donezo. 7/18/17

We were able to walk around the temple on Sunday, which was pretty cool.
(L-R) - Elder Petterson, Elder Pool, Elder Ference, Me (Elder Ridd), and Elder Todd.

Elder Petterson, Elder Pool, Elder Ference, Elder Jorgensen, Me (Elder Ridd),
Elder Todd, and Elder Byers

Hellooooo Everybody,

This week has been a roller coaster - hahaha. My MTC district is awesome and the teachers I have are really cool, but Thai is sooooooooooo difficult and I don't really like how every single day is the exact same as the day before. 

Last Wednesday we got soooo many new people in the MTC it was insane. The best part was annoying them by saying, "Welcome to the MTC" to everybody who had an orange dot on the name tag, which indicates that they're new. Literally everybody in the MTC says it to them, so they get super annoyed by it and it's great.

Faa, our investigator, revealed herself to be our main teacher and she's from Thailand - so she's reeeaaally good at Thai and speaks super fast. I can understand the gist of what she says but I miss words here and there. Thai is literally insane. We have started to learn the 44 consonants of the script and need to know them by tomorrow, because the teachers aren't going to write in the Romanized form anymore. 

The way the language and words are set up is very strange. In the Romanized version, c's are pronounced as j's and x's sound like you're trying to pronounce a u but you're smiling. It kinda sounds like the "UH" sound you make when you're punched in the gut. It's super easy to accidentally say a u when you meant an x. There's tons of other weird differences too, but let me talk about the tones real quick...

Tones are the worst - hahaha. So, chxa is the word for believe, chua is the word for evil, and chua with an uptone is the word for a bacteria. Also: mxa means when, but mua is the word for chaotic, or someone who's just a total mess haha. 

You can make a sentence by saying khaw khaaw khaw khaw khaaw khaw. One of those means rice, one means he or she, one means to enter, one means white, and one means knee. All different tones, of course, which is suuuuper fun (not really).

But yeah, there are times when you feel super good about your Thai and then the next day you feel like you'll never be able to speak it, because your teacher goes off and tells a story and you only pick up like three words, hahahaha.

It's all good though! Not too much happened this week really. Lots of studying, class, studying, working out, class, and then collapsing into bed, haha. So far, no devotionals from any apostles, sadly. My companions and district are still all super cool so that awesome! I'm super pumped to actually go to Thailand though!

I hope you all are doing great! 

Love and miss you all!

Elder Ridd