I ate KFC too!

Nate!!! Way to be! Guess what? I'm learning to pantomime here, and I think I might be getting good. I might not even have to learn the language. Thanks again so much, Davidsons for the wonderful letters and cookies in the MTC! Ya'll are amazing. Kim, I wondered if I'd feel like swimming home when I saw my apartment here, but I think I've got it a lot better. If I lived like most of the people we teach, it might be a different story.
By the way, Cyrano de Bergerac would have had the life here. Big noses are considered "pogi" or "guwapo", which means handsome. I get complimented all the time for my nose.
I love you all, I hope you're mission prep and summer prep are comin' along, Nate. Ingat for now!

Chris and Loren:
How's the food?
The food for the most part has been delicious. Most often we eat, well, rice. I think the hardest thing about living in the Philippines would be trying to come up with interesting new things to put on your rice. The most common is ulam, and it's tasty, at least the 4 or 5 varieties that I've had. There are endless types. Adobo is even better, but it takes us too long to cook it. I'm not sure how it's made, I just put it on my rice and eat it. Meat, veggies, sauce, the works. About half the time at the apartment we eat Pancit Canton, which means, you guessed it -- an Asian brand of Ramen. It's got soy sauce, and even I can make it. Pasta is good, but the very best things I've had here are mangoes and fried bananas. You can eat unripe mangoes like apples, and ripe mangoes more like pears in a bowl. Either way, I love them to death. I don't know why we don't eat fried banana in the States. After you fry em' just roll them in some brown sugar, and dig in. Mmmmm, masarap iyen! I'm still pretty naive, I'll update you on the food, but I haven't tried anything. .. weird. At the meat shop they had everything, and on one tray was an entire skinned pig leg, foot attached, and I thought of you, Sarah.

Tell us more about your companion.
He's Filipino, and tall for a Filipino. I've got about a foot on him. He is amazing, and I'm learning a ton from him. I'll have to write more later, but we are getting along very well.

Are you understanding the lingo yet?
I'm understanding my companion during the lessons now, but he practices his English on my at the apartment. And I practice my Tagalog. It's an interesting thing. I hardly understand anyone else at all, unless they are calling me tall or asking if I know how to speak Tagalog. I've heard those two things a lot. Most of the time I still have absolutely no idea what is going on around me.

Also, we need to hear more about your
area. How large a city?
I'm ... .not really sure. I'm still getting used to the area, but the actual city, commercially, is just along the main road from Angeles to Tarlac. The places we visit are most of the time extremely humble, just bamboo and cinder-block. If you look on Google Earth in Manilla, Angeles, Capas, or any cities you'll be able to see the neighborhoods, and outside of them, crowds of huts - squatters - hundreds and hundreds of people living in an open-sewer type of environment, with concrete channels where trash, and other things mixed with water, sit stagnant. The people come out with bamboo poles that have a stick attached to the end and throw the contents of the channels on the street.

How much English do you hear?
There is so much Taglish here! English is the thing to do, but it's mixed in with so much Tagalog that it doesn't help me most of the time. In most places we teach, it is mostly pure Tagalog, though. The kids all like to practice their English on me, and I hear "Hey Joe", "What your height?" "What's your name?" "And "You play basketball?" A LOT. It's kind of awkward, sometimes.

Ward or branch?
Where you are?
Ward, there are over 500 members, but guess how many come to church. About 85. Sad, huh? We have a nice building, it's two stories, and white tile is everywhere in these churches. No carpet.

Do you have a scripture you want on your plaque? We need to
get that up?
Rats! I left my scriptures, but I'll for sure get that next week. You can all draw a picture and tape it up there if you want. : )

Do you teach all day, or do you also tract?
We teach most of the day, when appointments fall through, we tract. And we don't knock on doors, we stand at the gates or outside the house and shout "tao po!" (people!) It's way exciting, really, I love it, and I can't wait until I can help out more, most of the time the load is on my companion because I can't understand them.
Thanks so much Dad, I love you.

My big brothers,
right now I'm making ice-cream, Loren, how does that sound?
WAY good. The closest thing here is called halo-halo, and it's tasty, or it would've been tasty, if someone had only told me before I ate it what those colorful chunks were floating around in that fast-melting ice and colored water. Turns out it was just coconut stringy things and Those chunks were gummy things, I think. Of different textures. I hope.

It's what, about a hundred degrees there right now?
I have no idea, but it feels like it. It is SO humid, I sweat all the time.

Yesterday we went to Old Main, ate KFC, and rolled our eggs down the hill; nailed some
seagulls with them, (well, Riley did). And...Makail and I got bombed, by the seagulls, (super duper gross), all over Makails new shirt. I only recently found out that some people actually ate their Easter eggs! Yuuch! After they've been dyed and the color seeps through! Although, people eat rotten duck eggs so I guess the strange acts of the rest of human-kind
shouldn't surprise me anymore.
Yeah, I'm not going to try Balut. But guess what? We got to watch conference again here (in english) and on Saturday, we went to -- KFC!!! for lunch. Wow, that's quite a coincidence. What I thought were biscuits was wrapped rice, and there aren't any potatoes. Would you like some chicken with that rice, sir? That was in Tarlac, there's no Kapag Fried Chicken here. (seriously, not Kentucky, Kapag.)
Thanks for the news Sarah! Love ya'.

Hi, says Maddy! How are you I'm great! Love ya! Bye!
Love you Maddy, love you all! Have a great week.
Elder Peck

Oh, Yeah. . .
I saw my first baptism this week -- April Pascua. I only visited her 3 times before her baptism. She is amazing and her testimony was strong. I was on the program, as pianist, and I played based on requests, which is the way prelude works here, I guess, and everybody sang along. It was very masaya (happy). We have more baptisms scheduled for the 16th of May, 3 children that are being helped a ton by their grandmother, strong in the gospel. Hopefully all goes well. Ages 13, 11, and 9.