From: "Rebecca Pennock" <MissWiggle@myldsmail.net>
To: Calicocool1@msn.com
Subject: Don't eat the chicken.
Date: Mon, 27 Aug 2007 15:55:57 +0000
>I finally got access to email! I hope you guys received the messages I sent earlier. They were really all I could write given the time constraints. They didn't want me to write you unless it was p-day anyway, so that really cut my opportunities down.
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>Everything seems to be going fine here. People moan and groan about the heat down here but I love it. It's just a different kind of heat. It's not all that bad. Utah doesn't have clouds or trees. This place has real trees and makes clouds. I miss the mountains, but there are other things down here to gawk at, so it's not all that bad.
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>When I thought of Louisiana, I imagined a lot of forests scattered with trailer homes and old sheds with half crazed hicks sitting on their porches with shotguns. Not quite right. I got the trailer homes part right, though. Basically, it makes central Ogden look like the Hilton. This place is a ghetto. The whole state is a ghetto. There's a whole history about how the acadians came down and settled then proceeded to inbreed because no one else was around. This place is decades in the past and the ghettos are vast and everything is really very dirty.
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>The whole place seems to suffer from a curse of complacency. It's like with everything they have, they tend to just neglect it. Their roads were built but never really kept up. Their homes are just fine, but they simply don't take care of them. Their religions suffer from the same complacency. Most people think that if they simply profess Jesus a couple times in their lives all their sins will be forgiven them. One of the favorite rebuttles at doorsteps is the phrase "i'm catholic." It doesn't mean anything; they could have gone to church a couple of times in their whole lives and that's how they justify everything.
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>This state is the obesity capital of the nation and it shows. There are waffle houses and Ihops all over the place. You could pretty well judge the general population off of how many ihops are in one town. People here neglect themselves physically too (this includes church members). It's really quite sad. It's like the people are as stagnant as the swamp water.
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>In any case, I'm just trying to adjust. The MTC teaches you some incredibly basic of basics. You think you're ready, then you get out here and figure out that everything you learn in the MTC you pretty much have to re-learn out here.
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>I am a missionary infant. I cannot speak properly, I cannot go anywhere without help, my mind is only able to be focussed on the immediate present, and I feel like a bliss ninny. I'm not stressing out about it, I'm just doing the work that people tell me too. I'm sure many missionaries feel this and they are used to dealing with it, so if I just do what they say and work as hard as I can, what more can I do?
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>Food here is fattening. I saw a woman eating a piece of fried chicken for dinner with a side of cooked hamburger and this greasy green stuff. The smell was quite overpowering. It could have been the cigarette smoke...i dont know. It was just a little icky.
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>I don't ride a bike, I ride in a car. Our area is too dangerous for sisters to really rely on bikes. We are supposed to be out until 9pm, but we stop as the sun goes down and work on other things because it's dangerous after dark.
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>It's hard to sleep. I am in a ghetto hobo apartment on the side of a highway behind a gas station. I thought sean's apartment was ghetto, but this one is wayyyyyy more ghetto. I could rake the hair up from the carpet. The place smells of cigarrettes and playdough. The fan swings wildly on the ceiling, our oven is broken, we don't have a dishwasher and our mattresses are on the floor. I like it...with the exception of the hair in the carpet and the smell...and the noise. It's hard to sleep at night. Cars, people, highway, etc. I'm just glad I brought earplugs.
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>That's all I can type for now. Adios!
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Now you can see trouble…before he arrives
