I talk in my sleep

Ni hao, (Sounds like “knee how”)



Things are still going great here. We taught the first lesson in Chinese at the TRC (I think it means the place where they practice teaching to volunteers) on Saturday and it was cake. Previous to the lesson on Thursday, I got a little bit of cabin fever. It was the longest day ever. I kept getting frustrated over little things that usually I would never even notice. I think part of it had to do with passing the half way point in my stay at the MTC. I started thinking about how soon I will be in Taiwan, yet how much language I still have to learn.



The hardest part right now is for me to understand what my teachers are saying when they speak in class. They throw out so many words that I haven’t learned yet and they speak so fast. Often, I get caught in the middle of their sentence, wondering what one of the words they said was, and as I do that I close my mind to the rest of the sentence. It gets pretty frustrating when people speak to you and you only understand half of the things they say. The reason I have this problem is because in my mind, I’m still translating the words they speak into English as they say them. The problem with that is, the Chinese grammar is completely different from English grammar and a lot of the words that they use in Chinese don’t transfer into English, and that was a lot of the reason for my frustration and cabin fever on Thursday.



I said a lot of prayers that day and I feel like I’ve pretty much found a solution to this problem that works for me. When you listen, OR speak like a Chinaman you have to think like a Chinaman. If you force yourself to think in Chinese, then you can understand things better. If you listen to the context of the sentence rather then the individual words, it’s a lot easier. It’s just like reading. When you read, you don’t think about the meaning of each word, you think about the sentence. And that’s what I’ve started working harder on.



At this point in time it’s worthless to translate phrases to English, mostly because words like “zou” can have 10 different meanings, therefore context is the way to go. This grammar will take a long time to get down, but I am starting to think more in Chinese, and that has been very helpful. Every night I count to 500 in my head in Chinese and that has helped me a lot, haha, it’s so weird going to bed. When I lay in my bed every night, Chinese conversation and vocabulary and numbers fly through my head like sheep. It’s pretty cool, actually. Apparently I talk in my sleep a lot, too. The elders in my room are pretty light sleepers and they say I always shout Chinese phrases in my sleep, hahaha, my bad. (Jonathan has always talked in his sleep!)



TRC members tell me that my Chinese is amazing. It makes me feel pretty good because I work pretty hard at it. I got a really great compliment the other day. One of the native members who came to the TRC to listen to our lesson asked me if I had relatives from mainland China, hahaha. I kind of looked at her like she was crazy, seeing I’m white as a biscuit with blonde hair and blue eyes. Then she told me that my tones sounded like they were mainland tones and I have really good consonants, which is a really great thing to have because rumor has it that the Mandarin dialect in Taiwan sounds kind of girly… whatever that means. So it made me feel real good that my Chinese sounded non-girly, I guess. Hahaha. It made my week so, so, so, so, so much better after that terrible day I had on Thursday, and it helped me to realize how much Chinese I have learned in so little time.



The People at the TRC are always amazed at how much Chinese we can learn here at the MTC. To me it seems like so little because there is so much more to learn, but I have come so far since week one. I love it here, being a missionary is so awesome.



Seeing how we’ve been here for 6 weeks, most of us have just about lost our minds, hahaha. Seriously, I remember my third day here, I talked to this Elder going to serve in Mongolia. He looked at Me with huge eyes and said, “I’ve been here six weeks and I’ve lost my mind." I now understand what he was saying, hahahaha. It’s so crazy how close we are to the world, yet so far from it at the same time. It’s kinda nice actually, but I am so ready to go to Taiwan



To pass time here and start interesting conversation at lunch, we do weird things, like, throwing salt in each others face, to see who is man enough to keep their eyes open the whole time. Haha, I wouldn’t recommend it, it burns. Eventually we might graduate to pepper…maybe. Hahahaha, just kidding mom, I’ll stop.



I’ve said it multiple times, but I really do love being a missionary, even when it’s difficult like it was last Thursday. I never forget my purpose, to invite others to come unto Christ.



Last week a crazy thing happened. We were practicing the second lesson in Chinese and I was teaching about the celestial kingdom. I read from D&C 137 and I started crying because I thought about Grandma Barrett and the opportunity I would have to be with her again and the rest of my family. I don’t cry that often but it was a really awesome experience. I love the Plan of Salvation and I love you, family, and I am so thankful for Jesus Christ and His Atonement. Thank you for raising me up good….



Love you,

Elder Daniels