Ashling is at Oakland first week

Mom!!

Yep, made it through my first week in the field. It was quite okay, easier than the MTC in fact. Mostly because I am serving in the Berkeley University ward, so a lot of students went back to home for the summer. There is less people here. I'm not in the San Francisco zone, so I can't go there. I am in the Oakland zone, so I can go around here.

Got your two letters today, and read your third letter in the email. What did people say on facebook and blog?

P-days are going to be on Monday at least until 7/22. 23rd is the transfer day, so I'll find out later what happens. I might stay in the Berkeley since my companion, Sister Sampaio, is actually leaving on that day.

So my companion is actually from Brazil, English speaking mission. I don't use Mandarin much this six weeks, maybe next transfer. She is really cute, I'm her first trainee. She likes to cook her pastas so I had to go to Chinatown this morning. If you see my bank account, you'll find out what happened. I had to stock up everything, so I had to buy everything.

Food, well, everything is so much more expensive in CA. Milk is more than 3 dollars and such. We get some food from the mission home, but the rest we buy. We get 150 dollars every month, which is what I spent just this week.  I can't go to Chinatown except on Monday, because it's out of the way.

Dear elders arrive here on time, but I can only get it on Mondays, so if you want me to have something to read in my apt, continue sending it to dear elder. If not, you can send me emails now. :)
I hope you got the package already, and the card :) plus everything in it.

I don't need the small pot, we actually got a rice cooker and we have a full kitchen to cook, so it's all good. We just cook whatever, sometimes we cook together, sometimes not, depend on what our time is like.
Mission is pretty good so far. I'm less busy than I was in the MTC, surprisingly, and I stopped having the headaches. I miss the devotionals and firesides at MTC. Things are quite different here.

We do tract sometimes, but less than the full proselyting missionaries because we are at visitor center half of the time. Most people aren't home, then there are those who are not interested but take a card, then there are those who don't even want a card. We had nothing more dramatic than that yet. We got a Chinese investigator from Taiwan. She wants to learn English so wan ts all the lessons in English. Hopefully she'll be interested about the gospel rather than just English.

We don't really have much people to teach because most of the people are not here. They go to school in University of California in Berkeley, which is one of the top schools in the U.S. Lots of smart people.

Our mission president, President Wade, picked us up at airport. He worked in the church missionary dept. He is nice. We got to each lunch at this really nice buffet restaurant, they had fish eggs and everything. I was quite happy.

Visitor center is really quiet most of the time, we don't get a lot of visitors, but enough that we have 3 companionships here most of the time. Friday was the busiest. There is a lot of good stuff here though. It's always the best to see the spirit touches people. We don't know what happens to them after, but hopefully they'll change their lives.

Hmm... I'm good. Not getting sick, eating well.

Well, I'm gonna be here until six, so write back before that and I'll try to reply. If can't catch you, then lots of loves, Mom, and write you next week :)
Meng