August 5

Hello! It is pday and I am in my first city. Its called Reggio Calabria and it is on the toe of the mainland. My trainer is Anziano Teran and he is pretty cool we will do good things. The flights were all great and we talked to lots of people on them and all in all it went quite well. Italy is interesting. Everybody smokes and people joke alot and it is defiantly not the same as America...there aren’t really traffic rules so people drive pretty crazy and everything goes.. you just have to yield to what ever is in front of you and not hit anything in front of you, basically it makes for very interesting drives needless to say. Well last night on the way back to the mission home the moon was amazing! Full moon and we were driving on a road that was parallel to the beach and the moon was reflecting off the water right at us and it was really cool. Then this morning we took a bus to Messina and from there we took a boat to our city which only took 20 min, it was pretty cool and fast. Millions of firsts for me in the last few days it’s pretty cool. Our house is interesting but good. It’s not too small and the ceiling is really high and the shower head is actually higher then my head. I have already got a few comments on how tall I am and an elder who went home six weeks ago knew that a tall elder was coming and left me his shoes which are the same exact things that I have so now I have three pairs of them which is perfect cause Sorella (sister) Toronto said that all the missionaries go through at least 3 pair. My hiking backpack is awesome and has already been put to good use. hmm what else. Food is good. Life is good. I’m happy. I’m half way around the world. and I’m in Italy. cool. My trainer is from Utah the south salt lake area. hmmm...we get around 200 euro a month and we get reimbursed for all things like travel and stuff. But our area is massive, if you take a train, it takes like an hour and a half to get to the other side and 4 missionaries cover it. Wow. But mt etna is in our zone along with another really cool mountain.. Somehow or another we are going to hike it on one of these pdays which will be awesome! Well I love you all and hope that you have a great week and you will hear more from me next week :)