About Budge and my apartment

Hola!                                                                                                   November 11, 2013

Its been a long week. It started out all good! I went on exchanges with Elder Whetten, he is from Arizona and has been on his mission for 3 months. He doesn’t speak very good Spanish, but I was finally able to speak English with someone! We had a pretty adventurous day, and between the two of us we were able to get by with the Spanish we knew.

Two days after that though I woke up sick. You probably don’t want to know what with... Just know that I was in bed all day Thursday and without TV or anything.  It was a pretty long day! Friday we went to see a doctor and they said I was fine, just change my diet for a few days. So I´m in the process of doing that right now. Luckily I felt well enough to work Saturday and Sunday. 

We have been working with a woman who’s name is Adriana, and we aren’t the first missionaries to talk to her. She has been seeing the missionaries consistently for the past 4 years? She hasn’t been baptized because she refuses to follow certain commandments, but finally, this week, she said that she’ll just do it, because she knows she needs to. Finally!

Funny Cultural note: Many people ask if we want a carmelo or a hard candy. Sometimes it’s actually a piece of candy, but more often than not, it’s a cough drop. For some reason they love them here. They eat cough drops all the time, and apparently if you´re sick and take some to church all the members ask if they can have one as well. So now whenever I´m asked if I want a carmelo, I still say yes, but I kinda know what to expect.

Love you and miss you all!

Elder Chipman

map of our area

 



Me and my pumpkin (birthday) cake.  The apartment only has a kitchen, a bedroom, and a bathroom.  The kitchen area has our desks & laundry stuff (we do ours by hand, I'm learning how to do this little by little)

  Our bedroom 

Hi Mom!

You are right, I haven’t described a lot about Argentina, so I hope to do that a little now!

We are in the city of Budge. Its only about a 30 minute drive south of the capital. There aren’t any big buildings or anything, just houses and shops, occasionally a park or a field. Literally every square inch is covered up, there is a person living in every corner of every block of road. People build their own houses, and so they can form it to anything they have to. The governments roads are paved with cement, the roads made by the residents are all dirt.

There literally is garbage everywhere. Seriously. People carry their garbage out and light it up with fire, and that’s that. 

We take buses where ever we go. I’m glad I don’t have to drive because they have speed bumps randomly everywhere, no signs, lines, or laws in general. Motor bikes and horse carts are also very popular forms of transportation. 

I am in a poorer area, but they seem to get by, and honestly, they seem to live very comfortably. Outside their houses is filth and dirt and grim, but then you walk in and they have flowers and granite countertops and tile floors. It just depends.

Thanks for everything, hope all is well!

Love you

Elder Chipman