I Always Wanted a Canopy Bed

Canopy beds are super legitimate.  They remind me of princesses and medieval times, so ever since I was a child I always wanted one.  But sometimes dreams are realized a little differently than what you expect.  I'm pretty happy with what I think of as my mosquito - preventing princess canopy bed I now have.  Srsly, I don't know why I didn't get a mosquito net sooner.  Now the mosquitoes can eat the other three sisters and not feast on my apparently gourmet blood all the time.

So I encountered another temptation last week.  We were walking to a less active member's house and when we rounded the corner to walk down the alley where they live... DISCO LIGHT.  DANCE PARTY.  There were like 20 small children of various ages dancing to "Oppa Gangam Style" (one of the best dance songs in recent times) with this sweet disco light set up.  WE HAD TO WALK RIGHT THROUGH THE MIDDLE OF THEM.  They were all saying to me "Dance!!!" in Tagalog and English and it was SO HARD for those 15 seconds... and then when we left we had to go through the ordeal again.  I don't think Sister Ordiz understood how that was actually a real temptation for me to ignore that innate desire to just dance, but yet again, as with not petting the kittens previously - somehow, I managed to maintain those missionary standards.

I also ate a straight chunk of raw ginger this week because Sister Mechum dared me to and said she'd give me a whole mango if I did.  It was super gross and spicy and - not what you would expect based off of gingerbread cookies.  But now I get to have a free delicious mango.

I also realized that this whole time, after eating a meal, I've been saying "Pusok ako" meaning "I'm full."  However, after hearing Sister Mechum (the other American in our apartment) pronounce it, I realized that I've been pronouncing it wrong this whole time.  Sometimes (or a lot of times) people pronounce things way differently than they're written or what I would expect, so then I over pronounce things incorrectly after learning them wrong from hearing.  What it SHOULD have been is "Busog ako" for full.  "Pusok ako" means "I'm aggressive."  People must have thought I really felt passionately about their food, hahaha.

My speaking ability with Tagalog is even or better than it was in Spanish before I left.  Which means - not that great, but something to go off of.  HOwever, my understanding of Tagalog when others speak it is still pretty significantly lower than it was for Spanish.  Mostly because... they speak really fast and there's not similar roots to English like there is with Spanish.  So, still struggling with that, but it will come... eventually.  I pray all the time for the gift of tongues, cuz I need that the most right now.

Here, ice cream sandwiches are literally ice cream stuck in between slices of bread.  Delicious, but weird.  I plan to never eat ice cream another way.

At a ward missionary activity, I taught everyone how to play "duck duck goose" or for the, "pato pato gonza."  They loved it.  There's a lot of games they don't have here, seems like, so they appreciated the new one.  They also have a lot of games that are way cooler than American ones, haha.