Possibly the last e-mail from this continent!!! (week 8 from the MTC)

Hello all,

One of the highlights of this week was that Elder McGowan (my companion) needed to go to the doctor. Not for anything serious just a skin thing. So we got to get out of class and ESCAPE THE GATES!!! After 8 weeks of not leaving the gates save to go to the temple we got the opportunity to leave. A strange horseless carriage picked us up and the driver was using a rectangle of curious workman ship. It had two pointers one that pointed weather we should go and one that pointed weather we should go to obtain McDonald's It worked according to the head we gave unto it. However our faith did not affect it at all which was strange. If you don't get that reference read the first few chapters of the Book of Mormon. It was really nice to be around normal people again. Everyone was very nice to us, though that is probably because we were still in Provo. While I was waiting in the lobby I was able to read a normal magazine it was a businesses magazine so it was cool to get some financial news. My name tag is also in Chinese so that was a cool way that I had to start conversations with people. That was as good day.

In other news Sister Haxer's mom lives down the road and owns a shirt printing company so she made us all really cool China Hong Kong shirts. I will attach pictures. They are awesome and they make all of the Spanish missionaries jealous so that's a plus haha. For those of you who are members you know that in the Church we use a lot of abbreviations ex: BOM, WOW, and BYC etc.. There is one that we have created that is floating around our branch that is go Ham (Hard as A Missionary) just something fun to break the tension.

As far as a culture update we learned that in Hong Kong you can just call an old person Grandma or Grandpa. They can't be middle aged though they have to be as our native teacher put it "The Chinese 1,000 year old people". They love it. Apparently it has something to do with how important family and respecting old people. Our teacher said that they especially love it if you are white. She said that even if our Chinese isn't very good but we are trying then they like us a lot and are very nice to us. We were then asking about milk in Hong Kong. Turns out most people there are lactose intolerant so they drink almond milk. Some one then brought up the story that she told us where she drank some of the BYU creamery "cookies and cream" milk. To which she then very loudly said that she can eat cheese and ice cream, then even louder she said that when she had cookies and cream milk "I have diarrhea 11 times!" so that was hilarious!!!

In other news we never met the Cantos. (Cantonese speaking missionaries) that were before us, however the new Cantos are coming this Wednesday so we will get to meet them. However we agreed that when we are in the class building we can't speak to them in English. Our RM teacher (Baak Hingdai) is sad because there are 8 sisters and 2 elders replacing our district. He is upset because he can not hug them. Because they are almost all sisters our native teacher, Sister Lau, will be their starting teacher. The problem with this is that she can not wright pingyham (Romanized Chinese so us white people can learn). So we had to teacher her how.

We have also strarted taking a few extra spoons from the cafeteria and reverse pick pocketing them into peoples pockets. It is a lot of fun but very difficult to pull off with them not noticing. So that has been our game for this week.

However the best news is that WE GOT OUR FLIGHT PLANS!!! I will attach a picture so that you can see. All of the times of the arrivals and stuff are in local time. We leave here at 6am, drive to Salt Lake, fly to Seattle and then to Hong Kong. We should get there 8:30 ish Hong Kong time. That is awesome because then all we have to do is not sleep on the 16 hour flight to Hong Kong and stay up for three hours and then pass out. We are also very excited because we will be driven through the city at night so that way we will be able to see the lights. Our first night will be spent in Patron Housing in the temple. So we are very excited for that. Also the layover in Seattle will only be about two or three hours so we don't have an awful wait. It is also the closest I will be to home for the rest of my mission. It is going to be crazy waking up Monday morning in the middle of Utah then sitting on a plane then going to sleep in the temple... In Hong Kong! we might get an extra p-day on Saturday so we can wash our clothes before we go. I am not sure if we will be allowed to email though. So this might be my only letter for the next two weeks. We also got haircuts today because they are free and we wanted one last one before we left.

There are going to be a bunch of pictures this week.

The big temporary escape!