Email received October 3, 2012

We officially had our one month anniversary! Haha I sent pics to mom so hopefully Mama you can forward them to others.

This has been a super crazy week. And because of that I think everyone in my district is getting stressed out, which means people are cracking! Fridays, our schedule is set up so that we have basically nine hours of class in a row with just a break for dinner, where other days we have gym and other stuff in between. So I'm not joking when I say prayers are much appreciated on Friday. Like morning, afternoon, night, whenever you feel like saying a little prayer for us, its much appreciated. All of the sisters decided to wear red or pink on Fridays as a superficial pick me up. It feels like a scene out of Mean Girls or something. But we'll keep working hard! It feels like I'm climbing a mountain at times, so I just have to remind myself, one step at a time! 

The biggest thing this week was the older group of Russian missionaries left Monday and Tuesday. Its hard to explain, but since we come in every six weeks, you really do look up to those who speak the language better than you. And now, when the new group comes in next week, we are expected to be that example! Which I'm not sure we're ready for, but all the olders said that this week was a huge growing week for them in the language so I'm hoping for that. It was so sad to see them all go, including our roommates who have been so awesome, but they were all so excited so its good. Our roommates weren't very on top of packing though and they got up at 3 to leave, so I got about 4 hours of sleep that night. Which wasn't good because Monday morning was....SYL!!! (Speak Your Language) It was our first SYL day since being here which means you have to speak the whole day in your language! By the end of the day, we all had headaches from the Russian and 4 hours of sleep didn't help. But i'll admit it was kinda of awesome to realize how much we've actually learned! Some conversations though, you just make a mental note to bring up later because you don't want to attempt it in Russia. Also, this was the first day we had Sister Fairbanks in our companionship becuase hers left for Russia and we hadn't talked about schedule at all. So sister christensen just knocked on her door at 6:30am and said "food now?" which is her way of trying to explain that because we had gym in the morning, we were getting food first before getting ready. You can see why we're getting so good at charades! 

Well thats gonna have to be it for this week, sorry its so short but I love you all!

Sister allison