First week done!
Sawubona igama lami nguelder Cottrell.
That's what duolingo has taught me so far lol. It says hello my name is Elder Cottrell in Zulu. Zulu isn't even my mission language but the teachers here at the Johannesburg MTC say that if you're going street contacting, the people will start speaking Zulu to avoid having to talk to you, so I guess it's time for me to learn a language maybe. I'm gonna start at the beginning of my week.
The flight, holy crap was this the longest flight of my life. I thought it was never going to end. I was sitting by this old dude and he would get up every two seconds and it was so annoying, like bro learn to hold it. Traveling in a full on suit was also really ✨️comfortable✨️
Once we landed In Africa, we got through customs no problem and it was all good until we went to get picked up and taken to the MTC. In our mission instructions, it specifically said do not be tricked by anyone in the airport trying to drive you. They must have a sign saying south Africa MTC. So we're walking through the airport and this dude in just Normal clothes says you're coming with me elders and we were like uh the freak were not going with you, you don't have the sign, and this dude after like 20 minutes of talking to us finally went and got his stupid sign and we're like was that really that difficult for you to have done 20 minutes ago.
Anyway he loads our suitcases up in this sketchy looking homemade trailer and we all were thinking like is this dude actually our driver or are we getting kidnapped. Luckily he was the right dude and took all of us to McDonald's where he ordered an 80 count nugget. The workers were not happy. It was like 11:30 at night and then they get an order for 80 nuggets like that would actually suck.
Our driver was running a little bit late I think because someone was yapping at him on his phone while he was driving and he was going well above that freeway speed limit. We didn't really care until he didn't stop at stoplights, then we were like yo maybe if we could not die before we even start our mission that would be cool.
We did make it safely and we all got a call to home before going to bed. I'm writing this email like a week later than all this stuff happened, so it's hard to remember that far back but I'll try and get some details in. I have 3 other guys in my room, Elder Tejana from the Philippines, Elder Chapindura from Zimbabwe, (he's My companion), and Elder Rigby from Utah, who I vibe with the most out of the kids in my room. The beds in our room are actually straight garbage tho, so a mix of that and the jet lag, I haven't been sleeping. The food though is so fricken good. I heard the Provo MTC has crap food and the Mexico MTC's food makes you crap, so I think I got a pretty good deal over here in Joburg.
The next days were just orientation and classes, a lot of the classes repeat and it's kinda annoying, even the teachers don't like it. Also the teachers are pretty funny here especially the accent that they have.
Elder Rigby brought some hair clippers and he was going to Line up Elder Love and his razor just like caught on fire. It was the funniest thing.
I don't have much to write about this week. It was pretty boring lol.