Mean people and cockroaches

Here's some crazy, typical pictures of Collin -reading "Le Liahona"( hmmm, he must really like that magazine!)

  And another of him  as a half-dressed, proud American (note the tiny American flag in the background)

The third one, the one with a bunch of graffiti around him, prompted me to write "please tell me that's not your apartment!"  Collin says, " About the graffiti... it's everywhere. That wasn't my apartment, but basically anything that doesn't move, anywhere in Noumea, has graffiti even thicker than that. But it's not scary like LA or NYC, people just see graffiti in movies and think that's what you do."

  Here's some more news from yesterday's email:

"I did get transferred to Vallee du Tir, so it was more or less like  starting over completely. We have no car, so we take the bus and walk. It's actually not so bad. And as it turns out, we get to keep all the members, so we still eat chez les membres (at members houses) most every night. And we get to get picked up by the magic Elder Ammundsen (his MTC companion) for church and activities. He's so rad! I see him most every day.

  We started out with NO investigators, no leads, and... nothing. We started going through our Area Book and found some "ancien amis" ...old investigators? and called the promising looking ones.  We have 5 rendezvous for next week! We're very excited!  We're teaching a lady named Madame Tokyo, and she's basically like Isma from " Emperor's New Groove".  She is like a million years old. Except for she is nice and she is black.

 We also did a porte a porte and found a new ami.  AND I had my first experience with getting yelled at by a French person. We went to go knock on this door and this lady looks over at us and yells, "Not this door, not even in your dreams!" i didn't understand exactly what this meant at first, but my comp explained it to me and I was kinda sad. But then right after that we found our new ami (investigator BTW) so all is well!

Our apartment was INFESTED 

with cockroaches at first. It was nasty and dirty and I immediately got to work cleaning. Before I think I wouldn't have cared, but after living in super nice super clean Paita, I about went freakin crazy. So I've cleaned and cleaned and cleaned. Elder Manarani was excited to have a clean freak companion. Also I fixed the ceiling fans, and the cold water in the shower. So our apartment is a million times better. But even though it was much cleaner, we still had a ridiculous number of cockroaches. So this morning I got down and dirty and super cleaned the kitchen. And I found their...NEST.  had a bad feeling about moving the frige, but ever since the first day in there I knew they must be back there. So I moved the frige, and they all started pouring out from behind. Hundreds, I swear! So I got out the poison and started spraying profusely. Those buggers are IMPOSSIBLE to kill. Any other bug dies instantly with that poison, but with them you have to drench them in it and it only slows them down. Nasty! So I swept and mopped everywhere, and killed all the cockroaches, and everything is sparkly clean."

Mom's note: "Eeeeeeeewwwwwwwww!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

(cringe and shudder...)