Update from the CTM

It costs .50 per page to print stuff out and since you all were so loving and sent me so many emails I decided not to take Sister Barker's advice about printing everything to read later and I read everything you sent before I started to write. Now I don't have that much time to write.
I sent out letters today. One to the family, one to Amy and one to my friend Craig in Provo.
That's excellent about the St. George house (Amy's note: see www.revivingthegilchresthouse.blogspot.com)and the snow and everything. Sounds like you guys are having a good time. The letter I wrote on the bus was 3 little pages front and back so you'll have to wait for that, I don't have much to add in this email. Sorry...
Last night we had a ceremonial lighting of the MTC thing where everyone got to take pictures and everything. So at night now the CTM (Centro de Treinamento de Missionarios (sp?)) looks awesome. They had people working on the lights for like a week.
My Portuguese sucks, but it is improving. Again, the Spanish thing has helped immensely. I can almost sort of communicate with people, but it's hard. There are a lot of weird rules that make it difficult to transition from Spanish like j's are pronounced like the g in "geez" and r's are pronounced like "hs" and rr sounds like "rh" and... I don't know. It gets confusing.
I hope you're saving my letters for my posterity. The emails aren't as important. My goal is to write a real letter every week though.
There have been lots of great talks and devotionals since I've been here. The best one so far was actually by my mission president, President Santos. He served in Brazil but speaks great English. He's amazing.
Every Tuesday and Sunday night devotional is either translated into English or Portuguese, depending on the speaker, so it takes twice as long for the message to get across. It's great for note taking, but it gets tedious and sometimes I zone. When I understand Portuguese better I bet it'll actually help a ton to really listen to the translations.
I've been studying like mad. I wrote in the letter that it feels like there's not enough time in the day to do all the studying and reading and everything that I want to do, even in a 16 hour day.
I have been waking up at 6:15 every day, because my roommates are ridiculous. So actually 16.25 hour days. Reason #457 why Elder Markowski and I are perfect together: he also hates waking up any earlier than we have to.
Today our roommates woke up at 5:40 to get to the bus by 6:30 for our P-day temple trip. Needless to say, there was some contention. Everyone was ready to go at 6:10. This will not happen next week.
Every Monday night before an American district leaves, they stand in the center of the CTM outside (it's built like a U, 6 stories high so everyone on the inside can look out their window and see into the courtyard and everyone on the other side can look out and see the city. We have the courtyard view. If you look straight the view is of a gray wall. I'll send pictures if I can. It's great. The other side of the hall has a view of the 2nd largest city in the world and we get a gray wall. Anyway.) and they sing hymns in English. The spirit is strong even 4 stories away.. I can't wait until that's us! My district is amazing. Have a mentioned this?
We went to the candy store today and I bought crackers and tried to buy chocolate covered cherries and the cashier pointed to them and said "não, elder" because on the box it says "licor." I laughed and thanked her and then my companion walked over and said his first complete Portuguese sentence; "óbrigado por ajuder meu companheiro." Thanks for helping my companion. It was brilliant.
Okay, I think my internet time might be up.
I love you all
-Elder Sisco