March 23, 2008 EMAIL

well today is my last day at the MTC! I leave tonight at 6pm to head to the airport. I am so excited I can not even tell you. I have worked hard here to prepare to get out ther. It is so much fun to see something that you have strived for happen.

The MTC has been awesome. It has been heck of fun, it has also been hecka hard. There are times when you just want to scream because you are so frustrated with the language, and then other times when you can just rattle off for 30 minutes in chinese. Its truly amazing. I never would have that that learning a language would have been so much fun, but it is.

Today is my last preparation day here. We have a lot of stuff to do before we leave. I need to do my laundry, which is what we are doing right now. Then we have to pack. I already started packing all my books and stuff that I don't need access to right away. Obviously, there are the weight limits on luggage on airplanes so we have to be really careful not to exceed that.

I have a ton of journals of people that i need to write in. We are all writing just brief notes in eachothers journals, its fun. It feels like the last day of school, when everybody is running around trying to get everybody to sign their yearbook. Its much more sentinmental than that though. These are people that I have struggled with for the past 3 months. I have grown really close to some of them. And I hope i get to see them after I get home.

Well on Saturday, we had our final teaching practice. We taught an older Taiwanese lady. I could not understand her. There is a word in chinese that is pronounced like choo. And she said it, but when she said it she kept saying tsoo. It was so strange. It really threw me off. In these rooms that we teach in our teachers watch us from another room. There are cameras and mics in the room so that the teachers don't have to sit in and interupt our lessons. Anyways, after the lesson we went back and found our teacher. We found him and he just started laughing. We didn't know what was going on. So he told us that I guess Taiwanese people, especially older ones, have really strong accents and they mix some of the Taiwanese language noises with Chinese, so all of this lady's "ch" came out as "tss." He said very very few people do that now days, but there are a couple. That made me feel a lot better because I could not understand her much.

It still doesn't seem real that I am leaving today for Taiwan. I won't get there until tomorrow sometime, but hey who cares I am going to Taiwan!

Well I had better go, but I just want to tell you all that I love you and that I appreciate your support. You have all been so nice with your emails and letters and packages, it has really kept me sane here. Before I sign off I just want to tell you all that I know that what I am doing is what God wants me to do, I know that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is true and that through him we can all find the greatest happiness. I love you all so much!


Elder Anderson

p.s.-Next time you here from me i will be in Taiwan :)