Barrett's email - January 1, 2012

Happy New Year!

Christmas morning opening presents 

Christmas tree

Happy Birthday Ana

Skyping home

Seniors singing at the Christmas party

Okay, so I'm here in the "Dungeon". It's this dark, scary internet place in the basement of an electronics store that a lot of missionaries use because it's close to the church. Usually we go to the post office or the library, but today our library is not providing internet for whatever reason, so we had to come to the dungeon. Now it wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that the computers here do not give you a count down as you near the end of your time. At the post office, you get a timer in the corner, so you can write literally to the last second (which I usually do), but here it will tell me I have 5 minutes left, and then I'm on my own. It could happen at any moment. It makes emailing even more stressful than it already is.

What a week! Happy New Year!!! Holy cow, it's 2012! Only 354 days left til the end of the world. Japanese New year sounds like it was the funnest ever. I see a new tradition in our future.

In celebration of New Years, President approved the viewing of secular movies for one night only, so on new years eve we (our district and another) went over to a senior couples house and slept over and watched a ton of movies. It was a lot of fun. We watched Harry Potter 7.2, Kung Fu Panda 2, Letters to Juliette (twice), Old Dogs, and Flykids (or Flyboys, I'm not sure how it would translate back into English) then I went to bed, but some stayed up even later. Oh, man it was so much fun. All night there were people setting of fireworks, and I don't mean bottle rockets, I mean full-fledged, 4th of July fireworks right in the streets, out of their windows, everywhere. I'm not sure it was the safest activity (especially since I'm sure most of them were drunk) but it was way cool. We were on the 14th floor, so a lot of them would explode right at our level. It did get a little annoying after a couple hours and they were still going. At midnight we even got to watch a little tv to see the russian celebrations. It was a good night.

Then on Sunday, we had a bunch of bliny for breakfast. The perfect way to start off the year. Church was only one hour long (last week we had the full 3 hours. New Years is the big holiday here), and afterwards we went over to a member's house for dinner and had more bliny. What a day.

And today, in honor of Ana's birthday, which also happens to coincide with Free Museum Day, we went to the museum Kuskova. It was incredible. I guess it used to be this really fancy estate, and now it's a whole bunch of museums. Tons of old paintings and sculptures and ceramics and china. It was fun.

Did I mention that I got the package with all the christmas cards. Thank you so much! It was a ton of fun to read them all.

Well, I got the warning, so from here on out I'm not exactly sure how much time is left, so I guess I'll start wrapping up. Thank you so much for everything. Thank for the updates and the pictures. I'm not sure how important the brand or the size is for the underarmor. It's always under, so it doesn't really matter. Have a great week. I love you all so much.

Love

Elder Hamp