Happy Early Halloween & Birthday!

Our last emails from Alec before he turns 22 years old on Tuesday!

Yes, my birthday is still up there in the corner of the whiteboard, so everyone knows it's coming. Haha!

The World Series sounds pretty exciting. I'm gonna have to write to my friends from Chapel Hill that were from Chicago to see how excited they are. I wonder if either of them will fly home for the last couple games. I appreciate the game updates in the mail. 

There's not really much we can do here for Halloween. We can't wear costumes during the day, obviously. Some people switch nametags with their companions, but that's about it. At night time, though, in the dorms we might be able to do a bit of something. Maybe I'll make a costume out of those glow sticks y'all sent or something. I don't know, everyone has so much candy and food in their rooms that I'm sure there will be some kind of makeshift trick or treating. I'll put up all of those decorations, too - the door cover will be super awesome. We'll probably just all hang out and eat a bunch of food that night. 

Thank you for the package. That was super nice. I haven't tried the Cheerwine fudge yet, but I'm sure it's super good. The guy I met from Chapel Hill lives a couple floors above me and he told me he'd trade me some Cheerwine for a little bit of Cheerwine fudge, so I'll have to make that trade soon. Also, between the shoelaces in the package, and the shoelaces dad sent, and the shoelaces I bought in the store (I couldn't find them at first,) I now have a total of 9 pairs of shoelaces for my one pair of shoes. At least i'll never run out. I've already used some of the shoelaces to hang up some of the halloween decorations y'all sent. 

The first couple weeks we were all very ready to get out of here, and then the next 4/5 weeks I think I was pretty content just chilling here and being fed three meals a day. But at this point I think we're all just about ready to get out of here, even though things are going to be much much harder over there, it'll be nice to not be doing the same thing every single day. We were looking at some Ukrainian towns in Google Street View the other day so that was pretty cool to see just to know what to expect. We have a little less than 3 weeks until we fly out. Some of the other Russian speakers left earlier this week, so now we're the oldest group here, which is kind of strange to realize. 

The American-serving missionaries don't seem to handle much more than 3 weeks. After being here for so long, we've all gotten very tired of them. Every time a group of them leaves, they go around and put shaving cream on all of the doors. It's kind of annoying. 

  

As for my birthday, I really can't think of much else I need, except maybe some pistachios. Someone else got a bag and I realized how great of an idea that is. Other than that I don't think I can really think of anything, unless you happen to be able to find maybe a Ukrainian/English dictionary, but I think everyone says it's just easier to get one of those in Ukraine so I can probably just hold off on that.

We had a little party yesterday for our teacher, Sister H. It was the 14th anniversiary of her baptism day which is pretty special to her. 

There wasn't much we could do for her, but we gathered a basket of food from our rooms and got her a card and a journal from the store. It's obviously not much, but I think she appreciated the gesture a lot. 

We also somehow found hats and balloons in the colors of the Ukrainian flag ​​.

I figured out a way to hang up the hammock, if you balance it right you can set it up between two bunk beds. Elder Mangum actually spent the night in the hammock cause his room has six people in it and he just wanted a quiet night's sleep. Apparently it was pretty comfortable for him. 

By the way, Donny Osmond's nephew is here at the MTC. I wonder if it's the son of the one that asked you out, mom. Let me know when Abbie's Mormon Message is published, so I can check it out.

I have to head off now, but I love you guys and I'll talk to you next week!

Alec