Early, early, sorry!‏

Hola!
So, today was kind of like our pday. Long story. All of the old N. americans and latinos are gone. Some left yesterday and the rest this morning. Whenever that happens (every 3 weeks) the president and his wife take us out on a chartered bus and we get to go into the city to a GIANT relief map of guatemala, a market, a museum, and a mall. We just got back, and now is our time to email. We will go to the temple tomorrow, still, but that is the only part of pday for tomorrow. Sorry if you were planning on trying to email tonight! Today was incredible. It is always soo amazing and such a blast to be able to get away from the CCM (trust me, I LOVE it here, but I love seeing Guatemala). The relief map was incredible. I bet you could look it up online. It is seriously gigantic. There are two watch towers you can go up on. It was made over 100 years ago! It took around a year to build it. It took 16 years to actually go around Guat and survey the whole whole country (by horseback, no less). I had no idea how mountainous Guat is!!! Crazy. It is seriously so beautiful here. I cannot wait until I can get out of the city and actually walk around this place! I am in love with it. I know I will always be in love with this place, and I haven{t even seen that much of it!!! I am so grateful to be in a place with so many trees!! Plus, the culture is amazing. There are so many colors everywhere. There{s also a lot of poverty, and we are definitely in the nicer part of Guatemala and the city. We have been told that the air is too dirty here and that they advise not wearing contacts... well, I wasn{t really prepared for that. I have been wearing my glasses tons more, but I still wear my contacts every once in a while. Mom, if you could look into that a little bit (I{m sure you were planning on it now that I mentioned it anyhow). Everyone thinks I am BLONDE here!! My hair is a little lighter bc of the sun, but still! Haha... oh well. I know it will just keep getting lighter too. I am so grateful that I got a perm. It is a heaven send, I don{t know what I will do when it wears off. The market today was amazing. I didn{t buy much at all, but definitely will in 16-ish months and bringing home lots of things and presents! Plus, everything is riduculously cheap. I bought two woven headband things and a small pouch camera holder for 30 quetzales (about four dollars). We also got some pretty good food - I have no idea what it was actually, something with tortilla and meat and goodness :) It was interesting trying to barter in spanish, my comps and the other two sisters are pretty rockin though. The museum was cool, apparently Guat city is built on top of a huge Mayan city or something. Pretty crazy. There is a huge mound, grassy hill next to the museum and apparently there is a pyramid right beneath it. I guess there are big mounds with ancient buildings beneath all over, but I don{t know why they won{t excavate them. The traffic here is psycho. I{m grateful that I{ll probs never have to drive. The mall was huge and super modern and nice. The pres said he wanted to show us the other side of Guat, bc for most of our missions we will see the super, super poverished side. While we were there, we only had time to eat at the food court. Guess what... they have taco bell. Everywhere. Weird. We ate dominos. Let me just tell you how funny/weird it was to be in a MALL, not proselyte, and be a missionary AND american. Everyone was looking at us. A guy inside of Dominos was taking pictures of us with his iphone. Interesting. We have two "blondes" and a redhead in our little 5-hna group, so I{m sure that didn{t help :) Mom, Ruth Sosa is going to add me on fb! She is one of my most favorite people here in Guat - my teacher of course. About 5 days ago, it started getting so COLD at night. A couple days before that we were hot and sleeping with the window open. It was so cold, I had to bust out my calf-high fuzzy sock/slippers! Está bien! I have received Dad{s, Mom{s, and Grandma{s letters. One from each. They each took about 2 weeks. I{m supposed to ask you to start sending things to the mission home. Mission Office address:

Sister Jenna Marie Marin
Guatemala Guatemala City Central Mission
Apartado 921-A Zona 9
01009 Guatemala City
Guatemala

Gracias gracias!
Con amor,
Hermana Marin!