Tongan Beach

Tongan Beach

Saturday, January 23, 2016

Week 15: Office- Averagely Awesome!

Dear friends and family,

 Thanks for writing me this week! My week was average, which is to say, averagely awesome. It's never really boring here, especially with learning a new language. It’s really fun to be able to talk to people and learn new things. I'm doing better and better each week. I ran to the blowholes this morning, which is right over by a little town called Houma. (home-muh) The blowholes are sweet and the tide pools are wicked cool. We got totally soaked because I was standing over one of the holes and the wave came up and it was way bigger than I thought and pretty much engulfed me head to toe. I was like crap; it looks like we went swimming! But we dried off and everything was good. I saw this sweet snake; it's called a banded sea krait. It went and hid under a rock before I could get a picture though and they’re really poisonous so I didn't want to grab it if you know what I mean. 
In the office life has been going good! Always busy, I’m taking on more and more responsibilities. I'm even learning how to do the financial stuff when I have extra time. This week I accidentally broke the printer. Well I didn't do it, but it broke while I was operating it and we got a new printer for a couple days until it's fixed. The new printer is huge!!!! Its on wheels and it's the size of medium file cabinet. It can do so many cool things! It’s weird to be excited about this, but now that I’m office staff these things are a big deal to me. Without the printer I’m a dead fish in the water. Ain’t nothing happening.
So I had a cool thing this week. I was finally able to meet the prince of Tonga who just got baptized. There is a family in my ward who live way in the back and they have a big farmyard and the prince and his buddies are friends with them, so they come over to shoot guns. We came over after one of these hangouts and kind of just talked. Our time was limited but I got to shake his hand and talk to him about missionary work and stuff like that. After meeting him, I decided one important thing. I really like the Ford Raptor he drives and I want one when I grown up. Man that thing is sweet! But nah, it was cool to meet him. He was thinking about bringing his older brother the crown prince, and we were really excited because we might be able to teach him, but he didn't come. Maybe next time?
Lastly, lets go through some Tongan culture. First off, tattoos are super cheap, lots of times completely free; everyone had tattoos. So the word, yo, like YO what up bro? I think it started here in Tonga. The word io, (ee-oh, ee like in key, oh like oh no!) You say it together, eeoh, it means yes in Tonga. When you pass someone on the street, you say it really fast and it turn into yo! And every time almost always when you pass someone you say YO! It’s not a joke or anything but pure culture. That's how Yo started I think. Tongans went to America and said yo to everyone. The other thing is Tongan standard time. This means when someone says they will be there at 6pm, you should expect them at 8 or so. There is no rush in Tonga, you can be as late as you want and it's fine pretty much. If someone say's "oh I’m already on my way" it means they haven't left yet and won't for like half an hour. If they say "I’m fifteen minutes away" usually they just left their house and it will be an hour. It was really frustrating at first but I’ve learned to plan with it, and now I am able to stay busy and it works out really well. That's all I got today, I’ll send a picture of some scenic stuff.


Ofa atu


Elder Sitake










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