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