The Importance of Eating Avocado

Alo family and friends!

I ate completos for the first time this week. And I felt like I could eat five more completos. They're super good. A completo is basically a hot dog in a bun, and then you had mayo, ketchup, mustard, hot sauce if you want, but most importantly, you have to add avocado. It is not a completo if it does not have avocado on it, it is just a regular hot dog.

So far, from what I've seen of Chile, it is not a country without the Avocado. They eat avocadoes as often as they can. A typical salad here (which I have had many) has lettuce with avocado, maybe some tomatoes, with lemon and salt. The more avocado, the more Chilean it is. They use it for anything possible: cus cus, burritos, fajitas, palta reina, chicken, salmon, ham with avocado, etc. If you want a Chilean dish, you better have some avocado with you. And just to let you know, in regular Spanish, avocado is 'avocate,' but in Chilean its 'palta.'

Which reminds me of one thing I've had to learn since I've been here. They told us in the CCM that we are going to learn two languages, Spanish and Chilean. While Chile uses the same grammar as Spanish, they substitute a lot of the words for other words. 

For example, avocado is palta; lazy in Spanish: 'perezosos' but in Chilean: 'flojos.' How are you in Spanish is '¿como estas?' but in Chilean it's '¿como tai?'. And they also say 'po' in everything. It's like the Canadian 'eh.' For example: "¿Como tai, po? No po, ¡usas todo la palta! ¡Es necesario en un completo, po!" Slowly and surely I have been learning Chilean. 

Be safe and make good choices!

Hermana Reed

Fall

Hello friends and family, 

We have been walking a lot this past week. Some citas have fallen through so we have in turn called people and explored our boundaries a bit more. And we have had more adventures trying to find people's homes! The maps we have don't have all the names of the streets, and all the streets have names that range from names to astrology signs. So we have been slowly filling up our maps with missing streets

The nice thing about it is they are usually grouped together. I now know where the streets with famous old literature is and authors names (Dante, Inferno, Hans Cristen Andersen, Hamlet) dancing streets (Macarena!) and I have seen some others in other sectors that have names of states in the USA (Oklahoma, Missouri, but sadly not Hawaii and Utah). Also a major freeway in our area has the name of President Kennedy. People really like him in Latin America. Other names are probably other famous people in other countries. 

And there has been a lot of rain since winter is coming closer! It started to rain on Friday and didn't stop until Monday. It hasn't been very strong but it has affected the city. One of the big rivers here, Rio Mapocho, overflooded which caused most of the city to shut off the water. My companion and I thought we weren't going to have water so we filled up every container we had with water to prepare for the worst!...but it turns out that our building had a tank and we were fine. But it flooded in other parts of the city and some other people in other sectors didn't have water (I don't know if they still don't). My sector is a little more prepared so I think everybody in my ward was ok.

For P-day we had a zone activity were we went to the president's house, ate food that we had all prepared and played some games! It was pretty fun. We shaved balloons and also put shaving cream on our faces and threw trix cereal at our companions. Actually my companion threw it at me and I was the one with the shaving cream. 

Love you lots from Santiago!!

Your sister,

Hermana Reed

Alo! One Month in Chile

Dear Family, 

I hope this letter works and gets to all of you as Mom has informed me that no one has heard from me. But here I am! Alive and well. 

I went on exchanges this week with a couple of sisters from Apoquindo on Friday which was fun! We had some citas set up (lessons) but all of them fell through, so we contacted the whole day! Yay! Talking to people is fun and its interesting with some of the people you meet. A lot of people assume we're Jehovah's Witnesses but we try our best to assure them that we are not. But it was a good day and productive. And Apoquindo is higher up in the mountains so we had a nice view of Santiago. 

Yesterday we had to get vaccines for the flu. I was so sure that I was safe, being new in the field and recently vaccinated, but it was not meant to be. I had to get vaccines too because apparently its a different kind of sickness down here. It was nice seeing everybody from the mission, because they also had to do the same thing. 

Last Tuesday it rained, which cleaned out the air for a day or two and made everything so clear and pretty. We could also see snow on the mountaintops! My companion says its just a sign that winter is coming, because apparently it rains every day during the winter and is really cold. And it has been really cold every morning. It warms up around 11ish to noon, if it's not too cloudy. I usually leave the apartment with a coat because most of the time its cold. 

We are having more lessons which is good, and we had family home evening with the family Mabel yesterday, which was really fun! We talked about what the prophet said in General Conference, how decisions determine the rest of your life and after this life. It was a good lesson and they are an awesome family!

Also this past week has been my one month mark in Chile. Its so weird to think I've been here for a month because it feels like its flown by. 

I hope that everybody's week is going great! Choose the right and know what you stand for!!!

Hermana Reed

Primero Semana en el Campo (Week 1 in the mission field)

Hello family!!!

Hope everything is going well where ever you are and whatever you are doing. First things first. I am safe and well. Also my preparation day is on Tuesday and I don't have a set time to write so if you want to write me you should probably do it Sunday orMonday because I don't know when I am going to get to a computer. 

It has been a week out in the mission field for me and a week of a lot of walking and trying to find where we are. My companion, Hna. Velasco (from Colombia) and I are in a whitewash area, which means to those of you who don't know, that the area is both new to us. We have been studying the area book a lot and meeting investigators and getting to know them. My area is called Cristobal Colon and its big, according to my companion. I don't know much about other parts of my mission yet so I'll take her word for it. 

The people here are so awesome and really nice once you start talking to them. Because I'm in the city, they usually keep to themselves. They also love to talk, and once you ask them a question you are sure to get a pretty long answer because they want to tell you exactly what they think about it. 

Its really nice, at least for me. There's a metro and a milgro (or a subway system and a bus system) that is just down the street from our apartment. There are a lot of trees and parks and a lot of tall office buildings and apartment buildings. I'll add a photo when I can, to give you an idea. A lot of the houses are really nice and a lot have grass and beautiful flowers. It reminds me a lot of home, except everything is in Spanish, the streets are a little narrower or wider, there's more buses, and there is actually a lot more towering buildings here than in Salt Lake. Our church building is nestled in the midst of these huge buildings, its little spire trying hard to reach as high as it can go. 

Today for p-day my companion, two other sisters in our apartment, and I went to an interactive museum and it was really fun! I understood most of it, expecially since science words in Spanish are very similar to ones in English, like 'celebro' means 'brain', 'mineros' means 'minerals' and so on and so forth. They had a earthquake simulator so we got to feel what it would be like in an earthquake. They also taught how Chile is very prone to earthquakes and what to do if you felt one. So I am ready just in case a big one happens. They also showed how their buildings are built to resist earthquakes, so I got to learn more of that. 

General Conference was this past weekend, as many of you probably know, and it was the best! I got to listen to it in English, which was great because not all areas in my mission have that opportunity. There were too many good things that were shared and I really liked all the talks so I can't really say who was my favorite. 

Hope everybody is doing great! I love you all!

Hermana Reed