we just got an email after her first week in the MTC! 

Hola!!

this week has been great! my companion is hermana olsen from utah and she's awesome. we both dance and took french and we have the same bag so pretty much we were meant to be companions. haha the food is just what we thought, lots of rice and beans and meat and fruit, especially for lunch but its really good! we had brownies this morning which really confirmed for me that i love this place! we had hamburgers on the 4th of july for lunch and then a big thanksgiving like dinner and they decorated it all red white and blue for us. it was so sweet.

this country is SO beautiful, i can't get over it. i've only seen the airport and then the mtc (ccm in spanish) and the temple grounds but its gorgeous. we can see the ocean out of our hallway window and we are all hoping we get to have an area on the coast at least once so that we can see it and maybe run along it in the mornings. that would be wonderful! the trees and plants and everything is so pretty. i cant send pictures because i somehow don't have my camera chord that plugs into the computer... maybe you could send one? or i can look for one at the store. we get to go next week but who knows if they'll have one.

the flight here wasn't too bad. there were a lot of missionaries from salt lake to dallas but most of them went to the mexico mtc from there. 6 of us stayed to go on to miami and then we met up with some there. there were 20 missionaries total coming here and we almost doubled the missionaries already here. there are 38 of us right now which is much different from provo im sure! it's great though! i love getting to know everyone. everyone that came with our group is either going to the east or west mission and then most of the ones who were already here and going to puerto rico. there are 3 haitian sisters who we room with actually and they are SO funny! they dance around and sing jennifer lopez songs and the other day they said a pretty bad word and wanted to know what it meant. we were a little shocked. didn't think we'd be hearing that at the mtc! hermana olsen and i get to use our little bit of french so that we can communicate with them! my languages are getting all mixed up though. spanish is coming along faster than i though it would but i still pretty much don't know anything. i can pray and testify and roughly teach a lesson...using notes. hermano nunez is one of our teachers and hes crazy! hes from here and served in my mission. he quoted bob the builder the other day. he was like "instead of can we fix it? yes we can, it will be can we do it? yes we can." he tells us about his dreams where he lives in candy land and lives in a licorice house too. again...hes crazy, but we all love him.

presidente freestone is great. the interview with him was awesome and he told us how missionaries and foreordained to be missionaries but God leaves us the choice to serve or not. we went to the temple this morning and did sealings and an endowment session. that was awesome!

i wish i could tell you every experience i've had so far but i don't have enough time! pday is thursday so ill be emailing then.

i love you all! thank you for everything.

love,

hermana allen