Elder Tyler Grigor : Carnival was crazy around here

Hey Fam,

Well this week was pretty fun. Starting on Thursday is when the big party started for Carnival here in Bolivia. We live by a big hotel called the Hotel Regina and there are always tons of people there. They threw a huge party but only for girls so literally like 3 huge buses and tons and tons of taxis came just full of girls and partied all afternoon, luckily we weren’t really by our house much and we could avoid all of that and the party ended at like 10 o clock so that was good. Starting that day is when they just started to go crazy with water and parties and such. The worst days were Monday and Tuesday and that’s why we couldn’t leave the house except for when we went to go and eat.

On Monday we don’t eat with the pensionista for lunch so we had to go find something to eat near the center of Tiquipaya and we knew we were going to get drenched so we went prepared with tiny water guns and some water balloons but it wasn’t enough. The streets were just lined with people. I wish I could have taken a video or something but I was scared to wreck my camera so we didn’t bring it but it was crazy. We went to eat some fried chicken and while leaving the people who ran the chicken place dumped water all over us. Then we went to the sister’s house because they live close and knocked on the door, they came to the door and we soaked them with water balloons and then they helped us get others. On the way home we walked by one part where they had a huge water truck, like the one they use to water trees in the city and they were getting everyone wet. We walked by and everyone saw gringo’s so they grabbed their water and ran after us. I just accepted it and stood in the middle while they drenched us and everyone loved it because I started dancing in the water and everyone started laughing. It was really fun. Then we just went and rested the rest of the afternoon and got things done in the house that we needed to, like washing clothes and cleaning the house and just getting things ready.

What really got me upset though was the next day when we were walking home. We had gotten in a huge water fight with the sisters and our pensionistas family in the house. When we were walking home we were almost at our house and a group of like 15 teenagers came over and sprayed us and threw water. Some of them threw mud at us, that’s when I almost lost it. Then they came to our house and tried to get us again which was the last straw so we took out some water balloons and got them pretty bad. We were pretty upset. But overall it was pretty fun. We got lots of things done in the house. For us it wasn’t much of a lock down because we had to walk almost half an hour to get to our pensionistas house. No one would take us in their cars because we were always wet so we just got destroyed on the way. If we would have been proselyting I have no idea what would have happened.

Well, that was a little about these couple crazy days, now we have to go over to our district meeting and then go work in the afternoon. Hope you guys have a great week and we will be talking on Monday!!

Elder Grigor