McDonalds, big spider and more

Bohol Quality mall has McDonalds, photo from tourism.bohol.gov.ph

You won't believe where I went last Monday, I went to McDonalds! It is in the big city here called Tagbilarin, or Tagbi for short. It was so weird, I didn't think that I would get to eat at McDonalds while I am in Jagna. It was amazing.

huntsman spider consuming a small beetle, from wikipedia

I thought I would tell you about some fun things this week.  Like this morning I found a spider on our wall about as big as the palm of my hand. Trying to kill it I quickly found out it was a huntsman spider because of how fast it moved, I would say that it is a blessing that we don't have those in America. I have decided that fast big spiders are not my favorite thing in the world.

Lets see, I think the highlight of my week is learning about the different folk stories of the Philippines, some of them are crazy, and some are just funny. There are a few of my favorite monsters in the Philippines, 1st the wak-wak, most likely inspired off of the spiders like the one this morning, basta the wak-wak is a witch like creature that jumps out from the trees of the forest at night, and then drinks your blood. 2nd The santilmo is a floating fireball thing that shoots lightning or fire, only comes out at night. 3rd The dwinda is a dwarf with elf ears that hide in the rocks until you come by I think in English we should call it a dwelf (a dwarf-elf) and my favorite that agta/kapray is a 7-9 foot black man that climbs to the top of the trees and ... smokes a cigarette, not sure why that one is scary.

As for the language, its going pretty good. Some days are better than others but overall they are getting better. I am getting better at understanding the people I see often. Like the family of our Branch President and his neighbors, where I can understand them most of the time. Like on Friday night, we were over at their house and I was understanding all of what they were saying, and talking to them too, They told me that I was much farther in the language then other missionaries that had started in Jagna. It made me pretty happy, but then Sunday I was humbled again, and understood very little of what people were saying, but overall I am still happy with the progress I am making, I am told by most people I will be fluent by my 6th month out here, not sure about that, but maybe so.

They don't ask a lot about Colorado, specifically, but they ask questions about America in general, our schooling system, how many hours do we work a week, what the culture is like, what the different trees and plants and mountains look like, as in there language mountain is the same word as jungle, because here the jungle is is hill like areas, so they don't really know what a real mountain looks like.

Good lessons this week, I was able to go on splits with Elder Orton, an american missionary who goes home in January, it was cool to teach with him, and teach different people while we tract, at the end of the day we went to a members home to teach a recent convert. The member gave us Lamow to have, it was coconut milk, with coconut slices, and crackers in it. It was the best thing I have ever had, it was so good.