Week 9

Hey everyone! 
Hope your new year has been awesome so far! Mine definitely has. This last week has been pretty great because I've been able to help other missionaries a lot, especially with their Chinese, which in turn helps mine and it just feels good to help haha. 

Let's see this past week we had a little stomach bug going around so a good amount of missionaries in the zone were sick but it's passed now so that's good. While it was here it was pretty crazy though, so I was running back and forth fetching them their meals (bananas, crackers and jell-o). Yesterday I got new teachers and they're pretty awesome! Basically, everything is awesome. For the specifics, yesterday I got a hole in my pants so I took them down to the Byu tailor just a block down the street and man did it feel good to just walk outside of the Mtc, if only for 30 minutes. I've never felt so free haha. It's still good here though, and I'm getting closer and closer to going to Taiwan! I leave in exactly 2 weeks, on January 22nd. We expect to get our flight itinerary this weekend so in my next email I'll let you all know! I'll be able to call home from the airport so I'll try and figure out around what time that will be as well. Man am I excited to go! Just talking to people on the street and having no idea what they're saying but smiling anyway cause I'm a dork! Oh man will it be so fun. Goodness I am so excited! 

Anyway, we've had some exciting times the past week. From the pictures you saw Elder Price and Elder Collard locked in a duel lasting about 12 minutes. It was intense. 12 minutes neither of them blinked! Crazy. And then it's been freezing lately here in Provo and our builiding must be built wrong or something but our rooms are so cold! I sleep in sweatpants, with socks (I hate that by the way) 2 t-shirts and a fleece sweater. It's cold trust me. 

But it's all an adventure and kind of fun so you don't need to worry about me. Studying everyday about the Gospel and Chinese has been awesome. I've really started to love Chinese. It's such an awesome, logical and beautiful language and there's so much more to learn and I'm so excited to learn all of it. I've started to really love the Gospel too and realize how amazing it really is. Not only is it true and why we're all here but it's just so cool! You can really get some aweseome stuff out of the scriptures. Anyway, I'm loving it here and being happy is good. Be happy! I love you all very much. 

Love, Elder Hagedorn

Pictures:

Staring contest. This is about 5 minutes in. I think it lasted 12 minutes total. Elder Price's record is 15 minutes he said. Elder Collard just has pure will. 

Our room window. It's been freezing lately and our rooms have also been very cold... But we have a fridge now!