WEEK 40

What's orange and sounds like a parrot?

A carrot.

LUNI 17 APRILIE
So after emailing last week we just went home and didn't really do anything because it was raining a ton and freezing cold soooooo we just chilled at home. At 7 we had to run to the gara to pick up the STLs because they trained in from Buch for exchanges. It was super fun to have them for a day, even if they ate all our pasta :)

MARTI 18 APRILIE
Our STLs are crazy. It was raining and freezing but they decided that since they were in Constanta, they wanted to go for a run on the beach for exercise in the morning. And they decided that we had to go with them. It was pretty miserable. For anyone who knows me, y'all know that I do NOT like to run. Especially in the pouring rain and wind at 8 in the morning! Ha. But it's over now thank goodness. 

I went on my exchange with Sora Roberts. She's from Oregon and she's only 6 weeks ahead of me in the mission. First thing we ran to the church because I needed to print our train tickets. Then to Sora Rosu's house! While we were there, the district president and his family show up and Sora Roberts was like, did you know they were coming? And I was like lol nope. So that's okay! We just shared our message with 6 people instead of 2. We also got fed sarmale. I  love sarmale but S Roberts doesn't, so I got to eat hers too :) no complaints there. We shared President Monson's talk with them (I think the title in English is Power of the Book of Mormon??). It was good. Then we went to the mall for lunch and companion study. It was good. In the middle of companion study though I looked at Sora Roberts and was like oh my goodness this is my last day as a teenager. And she looks at me and says you're right. We have to do something stupid. So we took a bus to Mamaia and put our feet in the Black Sea. Yes, I know, this isn't actually super stupid. It's not illegal and it's not even against missionary rules. But it was the only thing we could think of that wasn't a) lame b) illegal c) breaking any rules. Soooo we did it. 

It was fun and then we had to take a cab to our next appointment but it was totallyyyy worth the 7 lei taxi fare. So we get to our appointment with a less active member who's a million years old and we ask her to say the opening prayer and so she does and then in the middle of her prayer I think she forgot she was praying. So she starts asking us questions and talking to us and we're just like uhhh is this still a prayer? Finally we realized that she didn't think it was a prayer anymore so I said a quiet "amen" and then we just moved on into the lesson. It was fun. After that we had our train to Bucuresti for Sisters' Conference! We met a super cool lady on the train. She showed us pictures of her vacation to Thailand and Malaysia and now we all want to go there because #beautiful. Then we got to Buch and met up with a ton of sisters at the mall and had dinner together. Then off to the STLs' apartment for the night. 

MIERCURI 19 APRILIE
I'M NOT A TEENAGER ANYMORE WHOO-HOO. So we go to the chapel in the morning and I got to see Sora Vann! She brought me the teddy bear I left in Cluj AND my English scriptures were done being bound so she brought those too! They're so pretty. 

It was really awesome to be able to see everyone! I saw Sora Anderson (my MTC comp) for the first time since the week we got to Romania. It was great :) Conference was really good. At lunch, Claire (she's 18 and is a friend of the Ivories staying with them right now) made me a cake!!! It was super good. President Ivory got pictures.  

It was such a fun day. Then after lunch we had more conference, and then we were off to tour Cotroceni, which is the palace where the Romanian president works. It was pretty but a photo pass was 20 lei soooo I have no pictures. Oh well. After Cotroceni we were off to the Marriot in Buch (which according to the Ivories, is the nicest hotel in all of Romania) because that's where we stayed for the night. THAT'S RIGHT. I GOT TO STAY IN A MARRIOT ON MY BIRTHDAY. We had dinner there and it was this super fancy weird stuff honestly I have no idea what I ate but it was good. 

Then more conference stuff. President Ivory got me all emotional when he said they only have one zone conference after this and then they go home. I like the Ivories. I'm gonna miss them. Anyway so then we went back to our room (S Castaneda and I) and I still had leftover cake so I called room service and had them send up two forks so we could eat my cake.

 It was great. Sora Lee and Sora Selander came by for a little bit too and Sora Lee had a present for me! I love Sora Lee so much honestly. I hope we get to be companions for more than two days at some point. Her and Sora Selander are so cute. That was basically the whole day :) It was definitely a birthday to remember.

JOI 20 APRILIE
Thursday we had breakfast at the hotel and it was great. I got Romanianed though. Usually we get Englished (people just assume we only speak English so they only speak broken English to us) but I guess this one waiter thought I was Romanian whoo-hoo. Except when I asked for milk (lapte) he brought me a cappuccino (which sounds nothing like lapte!!) so that was a fail. After breakfast we headed back to the church for more conference. It was super great. Then lunch. Lunch was NOT great. It was weird organic vegan food. Uh. Where's the beef. But then we got to go to the Romanian Parliament building. It's SO PRETTY. I took some pictures but not a ton.

Google it. It's GORGEOUS. Then off to the gara to catch our train home. We got home around 8 so that was all for Thursday. It was also my HALFWAY MARK! And it was super cool because me and my MTC sisters were all together. 

VINERI 21 APRILIE
So on Friday we went to pick up Sora Castaneda's visa! Yay it's finally dooooone. Then we did some language study, and then we went out to Pizza Hut with the elders to celebrate my birthday. It was fun. It was delicious. I love Pizza Hut. Then Sora and I did some comp study and then headed over to Sora Popescu's house. They have such a cute cat. She showed us wedding pictures and we ended up talking to her and her husband for wayyyy longer than we planned about Easter and Christ and what not so we had to take a cab to get to Games Night on time. But it was only 7 lei so again #worthit. Then Games night. It was a ton of fun. Then we went to the store with Jesse and he bought us orange juice (I don't know why) and then we headed home. It was a good day. 

SAMBATA 22 APRILIE
English! We learned some tenses and then I taught them about corny jokes and puns. They didn't think they were very funny but I was seriously DYING while I was teaching. Then we had lunch and then we rented bikes with Jesse and the elders and went for a bikeride. It was a ton of fun; we're definitely going to do that again. Then we visited Mercy! Except she forgot we were coming.  So then we did weekly planning because we couldn't on Thursday and we forgot on Friday. Whoops. Then I fell asleep at like 8 after we finished planning and I stayed asleep until 6:30 the next morning. 

DUMINICA 23 APRILIE
Church! I had to translate sacrament meeting because Elder Farnsworth was speaking and conducting the meeting. I did fine until the second speaker Mihaela started talking. If y'all remember from a few weeks ago, I had to translate for her in RS and just couldn't because THE WOMAN DOESN'T EVER BREATHE AND SHE TALKS FASTER THAN I CAN THINK EVEN IN ENGLISH. So for her talk I just said into the translating headset after a few minutes of getting NOTHING "sorry I literally can't" and then turned it off. It was rough. Ahh. But then in RS I translated for her and actually did better that time because she was teaching a lesson that I had had to translate before while I was in Cluj so I already knew what she was going to talk about and could fill in the gaps a little bit better. After church we came home and realized we had no food. So we had rice for lunch. That's it. We were meeting with the elders in the afternoon to do some district area book contacting so they said they would make us pizza and bring it if we brought them toilet paper. Fair trade. So we got pizza :) Then we were supposed to meet with Zenaida but she called us and was like hey I'm at a different church right now soooo. We didn't get to meet with her. 

And that's my week!


Sora Lucy Gleason
România/Moldova Mission
July 2016-January 2018

WEEK 39

Hristos a-nviat, I got 68 emails this week, and it's my Birthday. Wooohoo!

LUNI 10 APRILIE
So last Monday after we finished emailing, we went grocery shopping and had lunch and then went to the beach. It was pretty chill.

MARTI 11 APRILIE
Tuesday we went to the church in the morning to plan English and then headed to a donut shop to do language study. I think I said this last week, but this donut shop has really good music so I enjoy that quite a bit.

 Then we headed home for lunch and companion study. Then to our million-year-old member, Sora Nitica! I swear she's a million. Anyway so her and her son who's also probably a million had a friend over who had driven them to church on Sunday. We were like hey, cool, free lesson whoohoo. Not really, but he did sit in on our lesson with Sora Nitica. We read a chapter in Alma and talked about it and somehow we got onto the topic of service, so I shared that one verse in Mosiah and then asked Ionut (nonmember friend) if he had a Book of Mormon and he went on this RANT about how we don't need a book to teach us how to live and how he's reached a level above books and he doesn't even need the Bible anymore because all you need is love and how maybe someday I'd be able to reach that level too but until then I should be grateful for my parents who do everything for me and then he starts ranting about how sometimes he wishes he was a woman so that he could spend more time with his children or something like that. It was... interesting. Sora Nitica thought it was funny. Then we had English. We taught about some of the differences between American english and British english. Did you know that they call a diaper a nappy? How weird. No one showed up for advanced English, which was really disappointing because we had planned a bomb lesson of analyzing song lyrics. What a shame.

MIERCURI 12 APRILIE
We went to the mall and did some companionship study while we waited for a friend to get there. She never actually showed up and hasn't answered our calls/texts since. That's sad. Then since we slacked this morning and didn't set a backup plan because we were SO SURE that we weren't going to get bunged, we were like, okay, now what do we do? So we went mall contacting. Which ended up just me buying a birthday present for my dear friend Maria in Cluj who turned 18 on Thursday. She doesn't have it yet so I'm not going to say what it is in case she reads my blog. Hi Maria 😘😘 Anyway, so after that we had lunch and then met with a girl named Ana. She's super great except our meeting was way awkward. Ah. Then we limba studied and then we did splits with some members. Sora Castaneda went to visit Zenaida and I stayed and taught seminary via the internet with Mariana. It was a ton of fun. I got to talk to Elder Perrett for like five seconds because a member in his city was a student. He's great. I miss him. Then me and Mariana and Sora Castaneda went to visit a less active. Her cat got really attached to me and sat on my lap the whole time we were there and then wouldn't let me leave. 'Twas great. 

JOI 13 APRILIE
We went to check if Sora Castaneda's visa was done yet. It is, but it's still in Bucharest. They said come back next week. Then we went to see Sora Rosu. If you don't remember, she's the one with Alzheimer's. She's really sweet even if she asks the same questions fifty times in a row. Then we weekly planned. Then we had to be at the church because the district president had a package being delivered so we went to the church but surprise surprise the delivery guy was an hour late. We language studied. I fell asleep on the couch. It was glorious. Then we finished weekly planning and that was about it.

VINERI 14 APRILIE
No district meeting today because the elders had conference on Thursday so it was cancelled. We met with a recent convert Mihaela and talked about keeping the Sabbath day holy. It was great... until she invited us out for lunch on a Sunday. We were like uhhhh, okay, let's back up a little bit. Then we went to lunch and then rushed back to the church because we had interviews with the President at 2. We had to teach him the restoration lesson in five minutes in Romanian. He said it was the best he'd seen so far :'), then interviews. It went well. Then we had to rush home to meet with our landlord because our gas and  hot water randomly stopped working Thursday night in the middle of making dinner. That sucked. But anyway he fixed it and we were all good. Games night. It was good. Lacra came and no one else but it was still fun. 

SAMBATA 15 APRILIE
Oh my goodness, this was a good day. SO! We went to a BASEBALL GAME. I didn't think that sport existed in Romania but it does. It was on the US Military base (idk what kinda military but something) against Romania's national team. We went with Lacra and the elders. A 12 year old boy sang the national anthems and he actually killed it. First the Romanian one, and then he started the star spangled banner and instantly Farnsworth and Hansen and I stand and salute the flag and Lacra and my companion (from Mexico) think we're ridiculous but no, #merica. 

The Romanian team really beat up on us. It was horrible. BUT, they played Sweet Caroline and Elder Hansen and I both sang along (he's also a Red Sox fan how great is that?) ((also he's from Afton and he said he knows Shaun and Amber. Can someone look into that please? I don't have their email addresses.)) Anyway so it was just a great day. Then we went to KFC. Sora and I had an appointment there at 2 and the elders decided that they wanted chicken so they came with us. We got bunged. It sucked. It was good that the elders came with us though because then we were going to see a member with them that we'd never been to see before but they had, so they knew how to get there. She fed us SO MUCH FOOD and Elder Hansen was a butt and refused to eat any of it. Seriously it was actually pretty good. He was just being lame. 

Then after that we ran to the store to buy something to bring to church for the Easter potluck, and then went home for language study.

DUMINICA 16 APRILIE
Hristos a-nviat! That means Christ resurrected, and it's their version of He Is Risen. It's also how they say Happy Easter, and then you're supposed to reply with "Adevarat, a inviat!" which means True, he resurrected. It's a cool little tradition. Church was just one hour, and then there was a branch activity with food and stuff. Another cool Easter tradition here is their eggs. So most of them are red, and then they play a game with them. Two people have an egg, and then they say Hristos anviat and the other one says adevarat a inviat and then they smash the eggs together and whoevers' doesn't crack, wins. It's fun. I lost. After church we came home and had lunch and then I fell asleep.... and then so did sora.... and then we accidentally napped for two and a half hours... we woke up when the STLs called and were like HEYY WHAT HAVE YOU GUYS DONE TODAY? and we were like uhhh..... oops. Then we went to see Zenaida. She fed us SO MUCH FOOD and most of it was good but some of it wasn't. The sarmale was great. The chicken was not. The rahat was not. Fun fact about rahat. it means Turkish delight, but it also means bullcrap, and that's about what it tastes like too. Then after Zenaida we language studied and I finally finished unpacking.

Now it's Monday and it's raining and it's suuuper windy and about 98% humidity... joy. So we just stayed inside all day. Around 7 the STLs are coming in for exchanges tomorrow, and then on Wednesday and Thursday we have a conference with all the sisters in the mission down in Bucuresti. Should be fun. Happy Easter!

Sora Lucy Gleason
România/Moldova Mission
July 2016-January 2018
p.s. My birthday is on Wednesday for everyone that forgot! 😂😊😏

WEEK 38

The Email to end all Emails

Okay so I'm going to try to do a quick catch up of everything that I've missed, which might mean that this email is going to be suuuuuper long because I haven't done a group email in three weeks. Whoops.
SO.

THE WEEK I TOOK THREE SLEEPER TRAINS

MARTI 21 MARTIE
On Tuesday we went to go see Erika so I could say goodbye to them because I was like 100 percent sure that I was leaving Cluj. It was a good visit. Isabella was in such a good mood and we got some cute pictures. 

 Then we spent the night at the other sisters' apartment because we were doing exchanges with them on Wednesday.

MIERCURI 22 MARTIE
Exchanges! I went with Sora Falkenberg. We visited a less active and then had lunch with Teo and the other sisters. Then we all went to ice cream and did language study together. Then Sora Falkenberg and I went to one of their friend's houses to teach her English. It went OK. Nothing special. Then we switched back companions and Sora Vann and I went home to eat dinner and sleep a little bit before we had to get on a sleeper train at 1 in the morning to go to zone conference in Timisoara. I hate sleeper trains.

JOI 23 MARTIE
Zone conference! Our train was over an our late so we were over an hour late to zone conference. I also caught Sora Simmons' head cold so I was nottttt feeling well. Zone conference was okay. Nothing special--until the end, when President Ivory pulls me aside and tells me that he's sending me to Constanta and I'm going to finish training a new missionary because her first trainer is going home. I was like um what? Okay. If you say so. He told me not to tell anyone yet.... Sora Vann knew within an hour. I'm not good at secrets. I also got a packakge from my mom :) thanks for the cheetos. Then it was off to the train station to catch another sleeper train. We got into Cluj at 2 in the morning and took a cab home and basically just died. I was so tired. Sleepers suck.

VINERI 24 MARTIE
Friday we went to see Laurentiu, the book man and I got two of my books back and put in my English scriptures so those should be done soon :) Then we went out for ice cream with Carla and her family and the other sisters and then rushed to the church for games night. I was still not feeling good at all and it kind of hurt to breathe. Basically to make a long story short, I couldn't breathe, which made me all panicky, which sent me into a panic attack, which made me not breathe more. So Sora Vann called Sora Ivory and they made me go to the hospital. But by the time we actually went to the hospital I was fine. Romanian hospitals are gross, but this one wasn't too bad. Don't worry; I'm seriously fine. 

SAMBATA 25 MARTIE
We taught English. Transfer boards came out. I already knew where I was going. Sora Vann and Sora Simmons are staying together. I'm sad. I wanted to stay in Cluj. Eh. Then we went to a member's house for lunch. It was okay. Then I packed for several hours and then we went to the mall for dinner with Maria and Cristi.  It was just really sad. Maria is really sad that I'm leaving. ughhhhhhhh!

Don't we look sad?

DUMINICA 26 MARTIE
We forgot it was Daylight Savings Time so we had to take a cab to church. We were ten minutes late whoops. So church was ehhh. Basically I just said bye to everyone.

I was supposed to take a sleeper train with just Sora Falkenberg on Sunday night but then we find out that Sora Roberts is coming down to Cluj from Arad and then taking a train with us down to Buch. Anyway, so Sora Roberts is there now. We went to lunch at a members house. Then home to finish packing. Then off to the train station. Maria and Cristi and Robert came.


It was sad. So sad. Anyway so the three of us go to get on the train and the train guy is like hold up this ticket is for TOMORROW night. uh. So when the office went to switch our tickets to include Sora Roberts, they picked the wrong day. Sora Falkenberg still had our old ticket for just the two of us that had been refunded so the two of us used that to get on the train because we needed to be in Buch on Monday. The guy yelled at us a lot. He knew our ticket was refunded. So as the train is pulling away, Sora Vann and Sora Roberts give us money through the train window (because we had like no cash) so we could pay the guy for our ticket. Anyway we paid the dude and then things were fine. But that was stressful.

THE WEEK I BECAME A MOTHER

Sister Castaneda

LUNI 27 MARTIE
We got to Buch and then to the mission office. Not a very exciting day. I was with Sora Lee and my new comp, Sora Castaneda all day. We went to lunch and hung out with the dying missionaries and then emailed blah blah it was boring.

MARTI 28 MARTIE
Training meetings all day. That was about it. The food was good. 

MIERCURI 29 MARTIE
Run at 630 in the morning, ugh, then more training meetings. Then a train to Constanta. We went to kfc for dinner because there was zero food at the apartment. It's the ghetto-ist apartment I've ever seen. Thank goodness we're moving soon.

JOI 30 MARTIE
We went grocery shopping and met with our realtor and new landlord to sign apartment contracts. We're moving on May first. Hallelujah. Nothing else really happened on Thursday.

VINERI 31 MARTIE
We had a conference call with all the sisters in the mission about a sisters conference that's coming up. It's going to be on my birthday. I'm not excited. I get to spend my only birthday as a missionary sitting in a conference room in Bucharest NOT doing missionary work. How freaking lame. Then district meeting. I miss Elder Oak and Elder Broberg.... the new elders are cool but like... idk. there's a very different vibe. We went to visit a less active.  We had games night. It was lame. Three people came. I miss Cluj.

SAMBATA 1 APRILIE
We did, I don't really remember until 3, and then we went to the church to watch the women's session of conference. It was good. Then we had dinner and then we watched the Saturday morning session of conference with the elders. It was also good. 

DUMINICA 2 APRILIE
Shout out to my parents for being married for 24 years. Y'all are old. So for sacrament meeting we just watched the women's session of conference in Romanian. It was weird. Then lunch. Then contacting in the park. People here are mean. Seriously NO ONE would talk to us AT ALL. It was laaaaame. So we just sat on a bench and limba studied. Then we went over to an American member's house to watch the Sunday morning session of conference. She made us pasta. It was yum.

THE WEEK THAT LITERALLY NOTHING SPECIAL HAPPENED

LUNI 3 APRILIE
Boring PDay. Except we went to the beach with the elders and a member and played Frisbee. I made ciorba. We finished contract stuff. Whooooooo.

MARTI 4 APRILIE
We went to the church because the Winders (senior couple) were randomly in Constanta for a day and we had to give them our apartment contracts to take back to the office in Buch. Then we did language study with Kate (American member). She's trying to learn Romanian. Ha. It's a really freaking hard language. We went to visit a really old member. She's like a million but really sweet. Then English. Our class is medium, but they're really all closer to the advanced level. Nothing in our curriculum is helpful for them. So we're making a new curriculum. Fun. No one came for advanced so we played ping pong.

MIERCURI 5 APRILIE
We did limba study at a donut shop. They have good donuts and good music. Contacting. A crazy lady grabbed Sora Castaneda and I literally had to drag her away. That was fun. We went less active finding. Zero success. Then branch scripture study. 

JOI 6 APRILIE
We went to go see a member named Sora Rosu. She has Alzeimers (I have no idea how to spell that) and she asked us the same questions fifty times but she's REALLY sweet. I like her. Then we had limba and comp study at Starbucks. Cool thing about SBucks in Romania: they specify on the menu what has coffee in it and what doesn't. So that's nice. Then more less active finding. More zero success. Then dinner with the Constantinescu family :) They're awesome and the food was yum. 

VINERI 7 APRILIE
District meeting. Then lunch at KFC. Then we weekly planned and did some stuff for our old landlord to move. Then games night. NO ONE showed up. So we just played baseball with a stuffed fabric ball and a ping pong paddle for an hour and then we gave up and realized that no one would be that late so we all went home. Lame.

SAMBATA 8 APRILIE
Our landlord came over. She's like a scary librarian. The elders who used to live in our apartment seriously screwed things up. Ugh. Then English. It sucked less this time. Then lunch and language study and then we went to see Mercy :) She's a member from Nigeria and I LOVE HER. She is SO SWEET. Just being around her made me happy. She made us Nigerian food and it was  the best thing I've eaten in a long time. #whywasnticalledtoafrica? Then we met with a deaf guy named Bogdan who supposedly wasn't creepy the last time the sisters met with him but this time he was totally creepy. That was Saturday.

DUMINCA 9 APRILIE
Church. I was asked to translate RS for our American member. Translating is usually a piece of cake but the teacher was talking SO FREAKING FAST I DON'T KNOW HOW SHE DIDN'T PASS OUT so I couldn't do it. So a member (who speaks perfect English) did it instead. We met with two members after and then went home for lunch. Then we went to visit our only investigator Zenaida.  She ranted for 40 minutes about how our church can't be true because our members all dress like concubines and the pastor likes to look at their butts. So. Um. Yeah idk where to go from there. She also said she had a vision just like Joseph Smith except God told her that every church is true. Idk.  So then we tried to go visit someone else but she wasn't home so we did some language study in the park and then headed home.

LUNI 10 APRILIE
It's like 12 noon here so I haven't done anything today. 

Sora Lucy Gleason
România/Moldova Mission
July 2016-January 2018

WEEK 37

Just pictures this week because n-am chef?

(I--Lucy's mom, decided to leave that as is because I couldn't figure out what it meant or what it was a typo for!)

Constanta is right on the Black Sea

Maybe from the Train on the way to Zone Conf.?

A dog to love in every area

Remembering where I come from 209 Area code