Elder Alec Martschenko: First Week At The MTC

Hey guys,

Yup, it's been a whole week--even though it feels more like a month. The first three or four days just seemed really, really long. Everyone always says just make it to the first Sunday, and after that things would start to speed up. I definitely think that's been true. Even though the days still seem pretty long, the last four days have seemed to go by fairly quickly.

I definitely appreciate the update on real life. That's the weirdest part about being here, the total seclusion from the outside world. I also heard something from another missionary about some bombings in NYC?

Ukrainian is pretty difficult. We spend at least nine hours a day working on it, but it's still not making a lot of sense. The hardest part so far has been the alphabet. So many of the letters are just similar enough to English that it's very difficult to read. We basically have to learn how to read all over again. Once I can read more easily I'm sure things will go better.

I'm really doing fine I think. Honestly we're just way too busy to be sad about missing home. The schedules are pretty busy, but only 3 of the 9 classroom hours are with an actual teacher, so we have a pretty good time talking and hanging out while we're studying. There's 13 elders and no sisters in my district, which is apparently a pretty big district. We're all kind of crammed into a small room but it's usually pretty fun, just difficult.

I attached a picture of my MTC nametag.

Alec's MTC nametag. Translates to "Elder Martschenko. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints."

It's pronounced "Stareeshena Martschenko." A couple weeks before we leave here we'll get nametags that have our names spelled out with the cyrillic alphabet. Hopefully they spell Martschenko right.

It's not like we're starving here but parents always send a bunch of food. So unless it's something awesome like mom's cookies or some good candy or something I don't really need it.

I've also attached a picture of the temple.

Every Sunday we walk up to the temple and spend a bit of time there. Our zone brings hymnals up there and sings some hymns. The only problem is that the rest of our zone is Russian-speaking, so all of the hymns are in Russian. It's the same alphabet though, so maybe in a week or so we'll be able to read well enough to sing along.

Here I am standing in front of one of the TV boards they have throughout the MTC. Whenever there's a problem, they put your name up there so you know to go to the front desk. If you don't come during the day, then right before bed time they announce everyone's name over the loudspeaker (people call it "the reaping") that's still on the list and make them walk up to the main building to figure it out. So the reason my name was on the board: After exercise time, everyone has to take a shower and get ready for the next classroom session. Somehow, all six people in the room next to us went to take a shower at the same time, and none of them thought to bring their room key with them. The doors here lock automatically, so all six of them were stuck standing outside their door in nothing but a towel. Sooo, I and a couple other missionaries had to walk all the way across campus to go to the front desk to get them a spare key. I gave the key to them, but when they turned it back in, the people at the front desk put it down under another name, so they thought I never returned it. So I had to make yet another trip across campus at 10:20 pm to straighten that out.

These are a few pictures my companion took.

This first one is me trying to toast a bagel with an iron. If we're not dressed in a shirt and tie we can't go into the dining hall so we just get sack lunches/breakfasts to go. It didn't really work very well.