April 27, 2015

So this week we saw a guy riding a bike while wearing roller blades.  I guess more wheels make you faster?  Anyway, he was going up this hill and he wasn't able to make it to the top and so he had to do this awkward straddle-the-bike-roller-blade-up-the-hill thing and it was sooo funny.  But that makes you think, are there times when I'm trying to ride my bike while wearing roller blades?  Maybe we're just trying to do too many things at once and really one of them is just superfluous and we would just be better off with just one.

It's pretty fun being in a new city and getting to know all the new people here.  It almost doesn't feel like I only have a month left on the mission.  It kind of feels like it's just starting again.

So we went to this tower museum today and it had a pretty cool view from the top.  All you see in the pictures is Chisinau.  It's pretty huge:

April 20, 2015

So this week was pretty fun with getting transferred and whatnot.  The thing about doing transfers from Chisinau is that the phones don't work in Romania, so you kind of just have to go with the flow and hope everything works out because no one can contact you at all.  Well, on the day we were supposed to go back to Chisinau the guys I was supposed to go back with weren't at the train station, so I wondered if they knew when the train was.  I had the tickets so I wasn't too worried.

They finally show up an hour before the train is supposed to leave, which is plenty of time.  But then they go, "so where are our bags?"  And that was when we knew we were going to have trouble.  The office has been doing some weird stuff recently by not helping people out at all like they used to, so for this transfer day, they made all of the new trainees carry their bags all around town to the train station which is a huge pain.  There was a reason the office elders used to just take all the bags to the train station for them.  But anyway, the trainer thought that they would bring the trainee's bags to the train station like they always did in the past, but this time they didn't.  And this was happening at rush hour so it was highly improbable that they would be able to make it to the office and back with the bags before the train left.  They called the office elders to see if they could help them out, but then nope of course not.  Oh and another thing is that there is only one train that goes to Chisinau and it only comes to Bucuresti every other day.  So if we miss the train, we'd have to stay in Bucuresti for another 2 days, and I had already been there for 2 days, so that would mean 4 days in Bucuresti.

Anyway, they take off to get the bags while I just waited at the train station hoping that they'd make it in time.  With 5 minutes to spare, they made it and it turned out that they had to take a sister's bags as well because for whatever reason the office decided it was a good idea to fly her to Chisinau but have us take the train with all of our stuff PLUS hers.  Anyway, we got all the missionaries at the train station to help us carry all the junk and we just took off running.  I show the tickets to the guy at the train and of course, he tells us that our wagon is the one at the exact opposite end of the train.  So we take off again trailing all the stuff for everyone going up, and when we made it about halfway up the train, the conductor blows the whistle and the train lurches forward.  We just opened the first door we found and threw all the bags up into the train and climbed in ourselves, with the train moving.  It was definitely an adventure.

Then I figured when we got to chisinau we would just go home, but instead we went to the other elders apartment to drop off them off with all their stuff and then I got to travel the whole city the rest of the day in just my slippers.  And the senior couple that picked us up and took all my stuff with them went to orhei that day and didn't get back till that night so I didn't have any clothes or anything at all until that night.  But you know we still went to the youth activities and all the other stuff that happened that day.  It definitely was an adventure.  So lessons learned from the story: Don't micromanage things.  It doesn't work out.  And then when things don't work out your way, you've got to just go with the flow and things will work out.
Have a great week!

April 13, 2015

Well, this week was Easter here and it was pretty good.  Everything exciting happened in the weekend.  First of all, I'm getting transferred for my last transfer, which kind of sucks because I was really hoping to stay here but alas, I guess I'm needed elsewhere.  What's interesting is that I'm getting transferred back to Chisinau.  Remember when I served there a year and a half ago for 2 weeks?  Yep, so I'm going back now, which I think has to be some kind of joke because what are the chances for that to happen?  But yeah I'm excited to go back it'll be good.  I'm still really sad about leaving my pretty Timi right as it's starting to get really nice.  And our English classes were just starting to take off really well as well.  We were just so set here and now I have to go.  It's too bad but oh well.

For our last English class, we had a big old barbeque and we figured not that many people would come because it was right before Easter and a ton of people usually go out of town but a ton of people showed up.  We were even a little bit cramped because we had more people show up than we originally guessed.  It was awesome because we really just got to destroy the teacher/student relationship and make it more of a friendly thing to show them that we're just normal dudes.  That's the reason why our English classes are successful, not because we offer some great english program or because we know all the grammar and whatnot.  So I was really glad that we were able to have such a great turnout.

Also, we got invited over to one of our English students' house out in the country for Easter and they served us the biggest meal ever.  It was like 5 or 6 courses.  Ridiculous.  We had soup, bread with some spread, deer sarmale, lamb leg, turkey breast, and this stuff called drob which is like a meatloaf made from lamb organs.  Apparently it's traditional Easter food.  It's actually not too bad.  But the meal in general was really great and their family is super awesome.

Also, random thing, we stumbled upon the most venomous snake in Europe the other day, the horned viper.  My companion kept telling me to pick it up but then after we looked it up I'm glad I didn't.

April 6, 2015

It's not quite easter here yet, but Romanians are definitely prepared for it this week.  They've got the huge Easter market out in centru here where they sell all kinds of stuff.  One thing they have that's really cool are those hollowed out painted eggs.  When I saw them, I decided that they couldn't be that hard to make, so I went home and tried hollowing out my own egg.  Turns out, it's really hard and takes forever to do.  I spent probably half an hour milking the egg with a toothpick to get all the egg out of the shell.  So tedious.  I decided that the eggs are worth buying after all.

We went with the branch president this week to buy some groceries for a member and it went pretty well at first, but then she wanted to buy some lightbulbs.  The problem was that she didn't know what size her lightbulb sockets were at home, so she just guessed.  She bought a ton of stuff so it took forever at the checkout counter and everyone was getting kind of fed up behind us.  Then once we finished checking everything out, the lightbulbs came up and she asked the guy who was checking us out if they would fit a normal light bulb socket.  He said no, so she decided that she didn't need the light bulbs anymore and to un-check them out.  That was when total mayhem broke loose.  No one could figure out how to un-check them out, so they just struggled for about 5 minutes until they got the manager to come do it.  She had no problem figuring it out, but either she got told wrong or heard wrong or had no common sense at all because instead of un-checking the light bulbs, she unchecked everything EXCEPT the light bulbs.  So then we had to go back and recheck EVERYTHING all over again.  It was definitely the most stressful trip to the grocery store of my life.  But we got the job done and we helped out a member and that's what's important.

It's supposed to be in the high 60's by the end of the week here and we're incredibly excited.

March 30, 2015

This week was pretty good.  We visited a less active member with our branch president and he insisted on showing us The Other Side of Heaven, which I think made the branch president kind of uncomfortable for whatever reason.  Eventually we were able to get him to turn it off and we were able to talk a bit.

Another piece of exciting news is that my Austrian trainer came back to Romania with his whole family and I got to see him today which was really cool.


Oh and I guess I'll explain the pictures.  We were in centru the other day and saw this lady fire dancing.  Some of them are leftovers from a while back when I was in Bucuresti.  Also, around this time people start doing their spring cleaning and they just kind of throw their stuff out on the streets in front of their houses so there's a ton of trash all over in the neighborhood the church is in.  It's also just been really pretty here because all the trees are in bloom, which is nice.  There are a ton of pigeons that hang out around centru.  Also, we went into the giant Orthodox cathedral so there are some pretty cool pictures of the stuff inside.  It's HUGE if you can't tell from the pictures.  It kind of reminds me of the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, but obviously not that huge.  The orthodox priests sing their church service, and it sounds a lot like the call to prayer at the mosques.  Also, the hollow-domed architecture is very eastern looking, so it's kind of like a merging of the two cultures.  Pretty neat.  Anyway, have a great week guys!