Week 1

Hello Everyone!
I recently finished my first week in the MTC and I love it here. Spanish is hard, but it's coming slowly and surely. My companion and district are great, and I'm the district leader at the moment, which basically means I conduct meetings, pick up the mail, and briefly interview senior companions once a week. I'm really excited right now, because my email actually works this week!
Since last Friday, we've been teaching an "investigator named Matrín. He's really receptive and he came into our class yesterday and introduced himself as Hermano (brother) Papenfuss, who will be teaching us Spanish alongside Hermano McClellan. He had some great principles to teach us, and it was a really neat class period. Next week we get two new "investigators," so we'll have plenty of practice. It's interesting, because they teach language with complete immersion. The first day of class, the teacher came in speaking nothing but Spanish, and two days later, we started teaching our first investigator. It's hard, but I can tell that it really is helping.
My companion, Elder Corrigan, is pretty cool. He's from West Jordan, and he and I share a lot of common interests. We both know a lot about computers (and therefore we're both a little disoncerted with how locked down everything is on the computers here), we both play the piano, and several other things. We can almost always find something to talk about that we both know something about! He's also going to the Guatemala City Central Mission. The rest of the district is going to Atlanta, GA, except for one Elder who is going to Colorado Springs. All are speaking Spanish.
I'm actually enjoying gym time here. At the moment, Elder Corrigan and I like the same types of exercise, but you don't have to be with your companion during gym. I've been using some of the exercise machines they have here (but probably won't in Guatemala) and it feels really good to exercise.
The food usually tastes good here, but for our service assignment we helped clean the kitchen and I saw all the oil and liquid margarine they use. You can tell when you eat it, and I'm just trying to be careful and stay healthy.
So far, outside of the letters from you family, I've received letters from the MTC President, Gordon D. Brown (about being a district leader), Estée Arts, and Brad Wilcox, my mission prep instructor. His son just entered the MTC the week before I did. Thank you everyone for writing, and I hope to hear from you more! Remember, you can use dearelder.com to write to me both here in the MTC and in the mission field!
I've also seen Elder Crowther, Elder Monson, and Elder Claiborne here in the MTC. That was cool.
I love you everyone! You're the best!
Sincerely,
Elder Nicholas Banks