First Letter!!!

Bonjour!

Hey everyone. So FYI my P-day is Tuesday so that's when you'll get my emails. It's been a good week at the MTC. It's a lot to take in when you first get here but you catch on fairly quickly. There are a lot of elders that i know from school. I think I've seen between 15-20 people i know, and run into more every day. Any way there are 3 sets of elders and 1 set of sisters in my district  3 are going to Paris but the rest of us are going to Lyon  My companion is Elder Gonzalez. He is from Spain. He is an awesome guy. my favorite thing is hearing all of the american quotes and pop-culture references that he says in his accent. Pretty great. I've taken a few pictures but i don't know if i'll be able to send them on the MTC computers. Apparently you used to be able to send pictures on certain computers but i couldn't get that to work. I'll ask around to see if there is a way to do that. It's nice to have a P-day  because i feel like there is never time to relax here. This is mostly because we have to teach lessons to this investigator in french, and it's kind of hard and frustrating to teach in a language that you don't know. We've taught 3 lessons so far. Not only do i have a limited vocabulary but i have no idea what they are saying when they respond back. But i'm sure the language will come eventually. I thought there would be a lot more language classes here but instead they pretty much just turn you loose with a dictionary and some french gospel phrases and expect you to teach yourself. We only have a teacher for like 2 maybe 3 hours and the rest of the time we just sit there trying to prepare lessons and write talks and such. The food here is good but does strange things to your insides. especially the potatoes. Sunday we got to watch a video of a talk that Elder Bednar gave at the MTC on Christmas  It was so good. I love how blunt they can be when they are just talking to the missionaries. He does a pretty good cookie monster impression by the way. I'm pretty stoked that we get to hear an apostle on Thursday  Any way all is going well. I did get those shirts and a few letters so thanks for all those who wrote. I will try to write some letters but i need to pick up some envelopes and stamps from the books store first. Or maybe i can just mooch some off of one of the other elders. Any way the timer at the top just turned red and is scaring me so i'm going to end this letter. If you have any questions for me just ask.

L'amour, Elder Swenson

P.S. Costa Rica! That is awesome  Congrats Madison.