From the Land of sticky pics and many languages

something food:

i ate durian (lauh lihn) for the first time ever this last week and it will definitely be the last. blgh!!!! make me want to hurl!...but you should all try it just for the experience....:)

something linguistic:

so, here in Hong Kong we have missionaries teaching in many different languages: cantonese, mandarin, english, tagaloc, indonesion, etc.... this can make it confusing sometimes, especially when you are trying to figure out what a person's mother tongue is. sister mander and i found out this week that two of our investigator's mother tongue is actually mandarin, so we will be giving them to the mandarin missionaries. sad day, as they are wonderful and we love them so much. BUT, it is much better that they get taught in their first langauge, as they will understand so much more. i am trying to learn a little bit of mandarin while here in Hong Kong, but it's kind of hard. i can understand a lot, but not say a lot. i will save that for after the mission i think....:)

something australian:

my companion sister mander is from australia. she says things funny and it makes me laugh hysterically. for example, she pronounces australia as "australier." it's a pattern actually, any word then ends in "A" has an "er" sound and anything that ends in "er" has an "a" sound. so weird. so her name is actually said as "manda." it's really funny, especially when she says things like, "you forgot to buy some bananers." or " i don't think we'lll be needing our embrellers for today." oh the joys of accents and such. i love it and it gives me something to smile about.

something japanese:

so, although we are in china, the people, well, i should say the youth of china love to do something called sticky pics....it comes from japan. they are like fashion photos you can take and then print off and you keep in your wallet or give and trade with friends. pretty ridiculous actually, but i have done it now twice! so not like me, but chinese friends always convince me to do it. you can even decorate them and stuff. ha! so girly and kind of funny. and no, i'm not showing you any of the pictures...:)