August 15, 2023 WEEK 1 Napakanakakapagpabaabag 🤨

"Napakanakakapagpabaabag" is a Tagalog word that means "worrisome" which is exactly how I was feeling when I learned this word on my first day of Tagalog 😂

*I'm going to try and attach a video of us trying to pronounce this haha

It has been a great week! I got to meet my companion and district and they are all amazing, we all have a great time on calls together and learning together. My companion is a lot like me and we have a lot of fun talking to each other :) We are also the only girls in our two districts combined so that has been interesting too!

I have learned so much about the Tagalog language this week and Filipino culture. The things that are hard for me with Tagalog are the weird sentence structures and the fact that all the words sound like pig latin. I think it will be really cool when I am able to speak it fluently though. 

Something that I thought was cool this week was at the end of one of our devotionals they randomly called out my name to say the closing prayer. These devotionals are with all of the incoming missionaries and consist of 750 people, so usually they ask for a volunteer to say the prayer but this time they just asked if Sister Fillmore would be willing to say it! I was so caught off guard as I was half asleep but luckily I was able to make it through the prayer 😅

Some things about Filipino culture:
- They eat lots of weird foods like: huge cooked pigs (like the ones you see on cartoons with apples in their mouth), pork blood stew (pork cooked in pork blood served in pork blood), and of course balut (cooked baby ducks boiled in their egg) 
- They have very big spiders and bugs (the hunstman spider gets as big as your face and runs super fast and will jump on people) big cockroaches are also commonly found in apartments. We also learned about lots of mosquitos and snakes.
- They point with their lips and answer yes or no questions with their eyebrows
- They are super friendly and love to have fun!

It has been a great week but I am ready to head to Provo tomorrow!
"Lets not worry about what to do, lets worry about what to be"
- Steve Young


Pictures and Videos :)
- (You have to turn up your volume for the videos) Us trying to pronounce "Napakanakakapagpabaabag"
- The elders making a flag on our notes
- Elder Lauaki "serenading" us on breaks
- The chats haha
- pigs, ducks, and spiders
- my new girl boss pants
- and the district 💕









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