Week 41
It was Mardi Gras this past Tuesday. For those who don't know, my family used to live in New Orleans, Louisiana, and celebrating Mardi Gras is a favorite family tradition. Which is ironic... because I totally forgot about it until the day after. While my family was celebrating the holiday and no doubt missing me, I was totally unaffected and passed the holiday in blissful ignorance.
Coincidentally though (or not??) that same day we had dinner with Sister Baker from the Black Canyon Ward. Sister Baker volunteers to feed us every Tuesday, and she'll let us pick any restaurant we want and meet us there. She usually doesn't stick around afterwards because she doesn't like eating out, but if we go somewhere with a wait time we get some time to talk to her. She's a very interesting person, she was an English professor (she worked at BYU-Hawaii for a while) and her whole house is full of books. The first time she took us out to eat we had a really fun conversation about medieval English history. She loves JRR Tolkien and she told us about how her son and his friend got in trouble once for passing notes in class but the teacher couldn't read them aloud because they wrote everything in Elvish.
Anyway, she asked us where we would like to go and the inspiration struck me that we should go get wings. She obliged and we went to Wingstop. My companion got two of the mildest flavors (he "can't do spice" which to me obviously means weakness since he doesn't enjoy pain in the same way I do). I got Louisiana Rub and Mango Habenero. The Mango Habenero is so delicious, but it's the second hottest thing on the menu (the hottest was 'Ultimate'or something like that but I was too afraid to get it. I guess you could say I chickened out). Every bite is heavenly but you pay for each one. It was bad, I was sweating and tearing up, my nose was running and my face was totally red. My companion took some pictures of my suffering which he thought was amusing (attached below). I personally regret nothing and would do it again.
I thought it was kind of cool that, even though I didn't know it was Mardi Gras, I still celebrated it to an extent by getting some spicy Louisiana-esque food. The day after, I went on exchanges with the Zone Leaders and I was back with the mighty Elder McMullin. We saw this one house completely decked out with Mardi Gras decorations while we were visiting people and it was a nice reminder of home.
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Most are probably familiar with the Cajuns, a small french-speaking minority in southern Louisiana. They are the descendants of French colonists who settled there when that area was controlled by the kingdom of France, and have left a big impact on the regional dialect, culture and cuisine. What a lot of people don't know is that most of those French settlers didn't actually come from France.
After the Seven Years War, Great Britain gained control over French Canada. There were some eastern parts of Canada that were less densely populated by the French Quebecois, known as French Acadia (or today New Brunswick and Nova Scotia). The British, in an effort to secure their control over the area, deported the French settlers living there (called "Acadians") and forced them to leave, thereafter resettling it with colonial American veterans of the war.
The Acadians didn't want to go back to France so they arranged to travel to the nearest French colony in North America, which happened to be Louisiana. The term 'Acadian' became corrupted over time as the accent and speech of Louisiana French diverged farther from mainland France. So Acadian became 'Cadiun became Cajun. So next time you wonder about why some people from Louisiana talk so funny, just remember it's because they're Canadians.
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Thanks for your emails and your prayers. I definitely would have crashed the car a long time ago if it weren't for your pleadings on my behalf. Until next week, I am
Faithfully Yours,
Elder C. Calder
Bring on the pain.
District photo. We moved districts so we're with the Zone Leaders now which is interesting. It's a good group from what I've seen so far
We went to ZLC (Zone Leadership Council) with all the district leaders in the zone since Elder Moyes is our district leader. I, as the 'district monkey,' was privileged to come along. I felt very important being there so that was cool
Someone tried to recreate that famous Arnold Freiburg painting of Captain Moroni in the Young Women's room. I thought it was really funny how they recreated him with a strange lack of eyes, just like the original
The Mardi Gras house. They had a 'Cajun' liscense plate too which means they are probably either native Louisianans or they take their Mardi Gras decorations a little too seriously.
Thousand-yard stare after eating 5 Mango Habenero wings.
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