Brazil backwards starts with Liza!

^a bunch of random stuff that highlighted my week. you aren´t supposed to have your nails painted any bright colors and you aren't supposed to wear open toed shoes but this week both of those things brought me a lot of alegria (joy). also a few weeks ago they had persimmons and i could NOT think of the word for them and I FINALLY DID TWO NIGHTS AGO. finally,  i heard the song valerie by amy winehouse when i was studying outside and then the people blasting their music continued to play a ton of beatles songs and i have never seen a happier group of missionaries studying outside in my life.  also, this is hilarious. we have to learn phrases to say about each lesson and we practice them in competitions during class to make it "fun."  so we were learning the law of chastity phrases and imagine random white people learning your language and who can say "a lei da castidade significa abster-se de relaçoes sexuaís antes de casamento" as fast and loud as they can....

So apparently there´s a difference between avô and avó, and you´re supposed to audibly hear the difference and you guys i am telling you THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE. I can´t hang. it means grandma and grandpa tho so i am not too worried about that.  my teacher was explaining past tense one class and he drew a conjugation chart on the board. he started to explain how the "shart" showed us all the conjugations and me and this other girl in my district could not keep it in. we were the only ones that couldn´t handle ourselves. we told him how to pronounce chart after our class and the next time we talked about conjugations he called it a table. oops. poor guy.  yesterday, i spoke somente (only) portuguese and it was pretty rough. it involved a lot of hand motions and pointing but we got through it. i guess i have to get used to it though bc i might need to speak portuguese, at least that's what they tell me.  on p day i bought popcorn kernels so i can make popcorn in ...

Hello Again All~ One small translation help that has nothing to do with Portuguese--for those of us who are too old/out of the loop to be well versed in texting style language.  rn=right now.  Liza uses it often.  If you didn't know, now you know. ;) (Also remember that bc=because.) Cheers. Onto the main event: ________________ i am officially halfway done with my time at the CTM. so i have been here for 3 weeks and i have 3 more. Some of my friends left this morning and i realized that one day i am actually going to make it out of this place because i actually feel like i was born here and i WILL DIE HERE. it feels like forever but also like last time i emailed was yesterday. but i still don´t feel like i am ever going to leave. so that's my crisis i guess. haha last week we went to a different temple in campinas which is like an hour and a half away and it was so nice because we didn't have to do anything on the bus and we could fall asleep which basically a...

Hello All~ Here is Liza's first group email from Brazil!  And it is SO her!  I'm just going to be sending it just like it is.  For example, she hardly ever writes out what isn't absolutely necessary (bc= because),  and you'll also notice that she hardly capitalizes anything or adds punctuation at the end of a sentence.  I've decided that for Liza's mission emails, I'm just sending them exactly as she writes them.  And I def can't translate the Portuguese any better than Google translate can, so I'll leave that up to you, mostly.   Now, onto the main event!  Liza, unedited by me.  Enjoy! She makes me happy. Hope she makes you happy too. Love,  Amy/Liza's mamae ;) ______________________________ Oi!  Apparently I am in Brazil, but really I am just in a big building with a bunch of other missionaries and a lot of feelings. We get to go to the temple every p day and it is so nice to leave the CTM and it is supe...