THIRD email from Nicholas received Jan 8th.


Good morning everyone! Life here at the MTC goes on exactly the same every day. The days really do seem to  run together though. I did the math and out of the nine weeks that I spend here I spend a total of three weeks in the same classroom. When you realize that sleeping takes up the majority of the remaining time outside then that is quite a significant time. The French is still coming along, we just got a new French teacher for our evening class and I think that she'll help a lot in learning more French because of her teaching style. She's also incredibly funny, she looks exactly like the girl from Girls Just Want to Have Fun. It's crazy. It's funny, the second thing she said in the entire class was to ask me if I knew who the kid from Boy Meets World is. This morning was pretty exciting, I had to wait outside for about fifteen minutes because the fire alarm went off for some reason. I hope that they explain it later today. I came up with a new goal for me, I want to read the Book of Mormon in French completely before I leave the MTC. I did the math and yesterday I had 42 days left and 619 pages to go. That means I have to read 15 pages a day. That'll be tough but goals are good so I figured it would help me learn and grow. I met a few sister missionaries headed for Eugene Oregon. It was pretty interesting. I didn't get their names though but I thought it was cool they were headed there. I also met a girl who recognized me from Eugene. She didn't look familiar but her name was familiar kind of. Her name is Sister Sarah Green but I can't think of where I know that. I talked to a guy who got back from Lyon a few months ago a little bit about Lyon. He said that he absolutely loved it. I've been afraid that the people where going to be really mean there because they don't like Americans or they don't like missionaries but he said that really it's the same as it is here. Some people are nice to you and some are mean. There are people who wag their finger at you and make "tisk" noises and then others who just put their hand up to shoo you away. He said that the entire two years he just wanted to give them a high five when they did that so he waited until his last day to do it and as he went up with the high five they put their hand down before he could hit it without even noticing what he tried to do. He was pretty disappointed so he advised us to not wait and just go for it. I think that sounds like fun. The teacher that I like (different from the one earlier) was telling us the other day that there's a sister missionary that he couldn't recognize if she passed him in the hall gave him a card. The front said "Good things come to those who wait." She was just about to head out and wrote down when she should get off her mission and for him to remember her in eighteen months. I know it's bad but we all about died of laughter. I feel bad because she was serious and took a huge chance with that but it was just so funny. As a joke we convinced one of the sister missionaries to write a card like that to him too. San Fransisco was abolutely beautiful! Clear blue skies, mid seventies. It felt like the morning in the summer. Certainly not the beginning of January. One of the elders who went with us who is from California, when I told him that he responded with "No, it feels like January." While at the same time in Utah it was going into the single digits. There was an elderly couple who went with us who said that when they woke up in the morning the news said it was in the negatives. It was really nice to go somewhere warm and eat real food that wasn't the MTC food. Everyone always says that the food here is really good and on the right day they're right, quite a lot of the other time they're wrong. My companion before he came out was a little hooked on Mountain Dew and so lately he's been getting some in the mail. He almost traded some of his super nice ties for some from a guy who had some plus a refridgorator (I can't spell if you haven't noticed) because his companion is diabetic so they were cold but it wasn't worth the amount that he was offering. No matter, he has them now. So far it is only me and him in our room but that's going to change soon. I hear they're putting in more bunk beds so there's six to a room. That will be interesting. My half hour is running out so I've got to go. Put my address on Facebook and tell people to write me. I love you all.

-Elder Davis