Cooper is so excited to be in Argentina now that he's floating in air! Here's his first letter since arriving on June 14, 2008:
Hola familia!,
Estoy aquí en Argentina y acabo de lluegar en Paraná. I hope this doesn't go to your junk mail because they gave me a new email address to use from now on. And the old one is going to be deleted soon.
Sooo, yeah I´m in Argentina now! And I got here safely and everything is going well. On Friday I left Baltimore and I landed in Buenos Aires about 8 am the next morning. And PS it was great to be able to call home! It sure makes you appreciate it.
So we spent about 2 days in the mission home in Rosario, which is really nice actually. Apparently it´s like the nicest house that I´ll ever see here. Staying at the mission home was a lot like ¨staying at Grandma´s house¨. When we got there we had some pizza (Argentine style) and played volleyball in the backyard for a few minutes. Then we slept out back in the bunk house. We didn´t do all that much, mostly just learned about what to do here, and it´s a good thing I´m out of there now because I would have gotten fat if I was in there much longer. The Hermana ( the mission president´s wife) is a really good cook and she fed us a lot. I did love the mission president though, and it´s sad that I probably won´t get to see him again. (Editor's note: a new mission president will be arriving in July.)
So just this morning I took a bus up to Paraná. It´s a cool little city, and I met my trainer. He´s from California also. I just went and put my stuff in our pinch (apartment). And guess what, it´s awesome! haha it makes the one in Baltimore look way nice. None of the pinches here have carpets. I´ll have to take some pictures, I wasn´t really sure what to expect. Wow there´s so much that´s different here. I guess I´ll just start listing things that come to mind.
Let´s see, the sewer system is usually above ground, just a ditch next to the sidewalk. The shower is a little tank of water that you fill up and you plug it in to make the water hot. Showers aren´t so great here. The villas (pronounced Veeshas here) are pretty crazy, you don´t see anything like that in the states for sure. The villas are pretty much the poorest of the poor, although some are nicer than others. There´s lots of dogs that roam around.
The hermana (Mission Presiden'ts wife) took in a villa dog about a year ago, pretty funny, it´s the mission pet I guess. Oh and people keep dogs on their roofs. Because of the dogs, people don´t have trash cans. You hang it on a tree or put it on a little stand thing out front. But the trash dissapears within a few minutes anyway. Pretty much anything will be gone within about 20 mins because the people who live in the villas will come and get it.
There´s trash everywhere, because they empty it out and take what they want, and then just leave it or burn it. Theres always people burning trash. Oh and the food strike deal is still going on. We saw it when we were going down the highways. The farmers will set up somewhere on the highway with their tractors and stuff and they don´t let food go by. They don´t let fruits, vegetables, milk, meat, or gas through. So everythings pretty messed up.
And gas stations are ridiculous. When we were driving down here we saw a huge line of trucks filled with gas on the side of the highway. You can only get about 20 pesos of gas from the station, and we´ve seen a few that are out of gas. I guess I´ll just have to see how this whole strike turns out.
The language is cool and it takes getting used to. Way different than Mexican spanish for sure. But fun to listen to. Oh so on Sunday we went out contacting for just a little bit. We went to Rosario city and they were having a big celebration for some communist guy that was born in Argentina. (Che or something). I can´t remember his name right now. But there were some Cuban bands playing music and stuff and so we set up and started talking to people. Probably not the best time to contact but it was fun. One Elder who was in my MTC group totally reminded me of the guy in the movie "The Best Two Years". He wears glasses and can barely speak in spanish, and the first person he started talking to happened to be English. Pretty funny. It was cool though because he had accidentally grabbed an English folleto (pamphlet) and says he swore he picked up a spanish one before he started talking to her. There´s no accidents in this work.
Oh and I just remembered I need to give you the mission home address. That's where you mail everything to me. The hermana actually said she emailed something to you about mail so I´m hoping the address is in there. It talks about sending packages and everything too. If not let me know and I´ll get the address for you. And could you forward the address to Lauren? If you haven´t already? Thank You!
Ok well, I should get going. I need to go figure out how to mail stuff home! Oh and today is my P Day. We have P day on Mondays I guess. But who knows what it will be 3 weeks from now when we get our new Mission President. Well, I love you all. Let me know what´s going on at home! Talk to you again in a week. And I hope everything is going well.
Love,
Elder Boice
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