Oh Puerto Rico!

September 22, 2010

Doing service at an elementary school.
 It reminded of my grade school in Chile, San Lorenzo

Puerto Rico is a funny place.  Sister Krout and I were brainstorming all of the crazy things they do and this is the list that we came up with.

1. Puerto Ricans clean their house with a hose—on the inside too.  They can just move out the furniture and spray everything down (Some couches they can even leave inside too)  They use mistolin and a broom to clean everything.  Walls, showers, patios, I have even seen people scrubbing down their cars with a big ole broom.
2. No body ever goes to the doctor.  It is straight to the hospital.  I don’t know how many times I have heard people say “I had a cold, or I was dizzy, so I went to the hospital.”
3. All Puerto Rican Parties include elaborate and ridiculously overpriced cakes, bizcochos, that taste awful.
4. Red lights are more like guidelines, even for the police.
5. We live right by a funeral home and the funeral processions are a huge ordeal. There are forever long lines of traffic, but it’s great because the hearse is usually blaring loud sappy Latino ballads.
6. For the typical Puerto Rican male, Mohawks, rat-tails, or “duck butt” hairstyles are very popular.
7. Puerto Ricans do not function in the rain.  You would think that since they live on a tropical island they would have learned how to get used to it by now.  But now we know that even in the slightest of showers we can expect all of our appointments to call and cancel because of the rain.
8. There is no regulation or licensing for construction.  Anyone can pick a spot and build whatever they want.  As a result all of the houses are very poorly designed.  For instance our house that only has 4 outlets.  All in extremely inconvenient locations.
9. And my favorite of all, the Puerto Rican pride.  Very few Puerto Ricans hold a job.  Almost all receive money from the government or some sort of medications.  My favorite is our across the street neighbor who is an extreme advocate for Puerto Rico to break away from the states. I don’t think he realizes that if that were to happen his magical social security funds would stop and he would actually have to find employment.

I love and miss you all.  I just got a pack of letters that were sent to me in July and it was good to get letters from the roomies and family.  Better late than never.

I miss you all and pray that all goes well in these next weeks. 

Hermana Palmer

Hello Sis. Palmer,

Young Women in Juncos Ward

Hna Palmer asked that I send this to you, I wrote it to my mother and I am sending it on to you.

So we played a joke on our district and zone leaders this last week, I thought it was pretty funny. We have this thing called “Foundation” which basically means that you get 140 contacts and 20 lessons. Sis. Palmer and I could really care less about numbers, we work hard but numbers aren't everything. But our leaders kept saying we need to reach foundation we need to reach foundation. So we decided that the only thing that would really be worth working for would be to play a trick on our zone leader who we don’t really work well with. So we do 20 lessons and 139 contacts!!!!!! OH MY GOSH WE ARE CRAZY SISTERS ON THE LOOSE!!! So Sunday night they call asking for our numbers and we tell them we only have 139 contacts, we say we feel good with what we have achieved and need to go home. They beg and plead “please get one more contact just one more!!!!” We say we’ll think about it” Then we went and did 3 more. So we had 142! We thought it was pretty funny. They were so stressed that we wouldn’t do it and that we were just being rebellious. It gave us some pretty good motivation this week.

Hna Krout