First Week in Romania
Monday, April 19, 2010 by Sora Jay
Hey everyone,
I'm here in Romania. It took a long time to get here and we were all really tired on the first day. If you got the letter from my mission president you probably saw how awesome the humidity made my hair be. Now it has settled down.
My first area is Arad. You guys can look it up on google earth and probably see the entire city. I'm not sure exactly where we live otherwise I would tell you so that you could look for it. The city isn't very big but there are a ton of 'blocks' which are apartment buildings so there are a lot of people. We call tracting block-knocking because that's what it usually live. The people who don't live in blocks live in vilas which aren't very nice usually. The church is a vila though and it is pretty nice. I did my first street contacting in Bucharest and it was cool. I could understand a lot of what people said to me but not enough to be able to communicate with them, but I had my senior companion Sister Staley with me. She had me start the discussion, or stop the people, and then she would talk more to them. It's pretty much still like that now when we go block-knocking.
My first area is the farthest area from Bucharest that there is in the mission so we spent some of the day street contacting in Bucharest after we bought our train tickets. We took a sleeper train that left at about midnight and we slept most of the way to Arad. There was an elder with us, Elder Bigu, who was going to Timisoara so he needed someone to at least part of the way with him. He is actually Romanian though, even though he speaks perfect English because he lived in the United States for a long time, so he was probably the missionary that would be best off traveling by himself in case anything happened (except he's crazy).
I definitely don't look like anyone else here. People can spot me as foreign from pretty far away but usually they think I'm from Sweden or somewhere in Europe until I tell them that I'm from the US. Our first day here we had to get a little medical exam where all they did was weigh us and measure our height. The doctor asked me if I was a model and she said that I could have a really good career as a model in Europe. Then later when we were at the mission office there was a member there who was getting ready to go on his mission and he stared at me a lot and then asked if he could take a picture of me. He said he didn't believe that I was a missionary because he thought that I looked like a model. It was pretty awkward. But I guess it shows that I stand out here.
Church was cool. The branch is really little but it's a good one. We had carbonated water for sacrament and really good bread.
We don't have a lot of time to write right now because the internet wasn't working here at this internet cafe and it is the only one in the city that we know of so we had to come back and try again and now we don't have much time. I'll try to write more next week.
-Love Sora Jay
I'm here in Romania. It took a long time to get here and we were all really tired on the first day. If you got the letter from my mission president you probably saw how awesome the humidity made my hair be. Now it has settled down.
My first area is Arad. You guys can look it up on google earth and probably see the entire city. I'm not sure exactly where we live otherwise I would tell you so that you could look for it. The city isn't very big but there are a ton of 'blocks' which are apartment buildings so there are a lot of people. We call tracting block-knocking because that's what it usually live. The people who don't live in blocks live in vilas which aren't very nice usually. The church is a vila though and it is pretty nice. I did my first street contacting in Bucharest and it was cool. I could understand a lot of what people said to me but not enough to be able to communicate with them, but I had my senior companion Sister Staley with me. She had me start the discussion, or stop the people, and then she would talk more to them. It's pretty much still like that now when we go block-knocking.
My first area is the farthest area from Bucharest that there is in the mission so we spent some of the day street contacting in Bucharest after we bought our train tickets. We took a sleeper train that left at about midnight and we slept most of the way to Arad. There was an elder with us, Elder Bigu, who was going to Timisoara so he needed someone to at least part of the way with him. He is actually Romanian though, even though he speaks perfect English because he lived in the United States for a long time, so he was probably the missionary that would be best off traveling by himself in case anything happened (except he's crazy).
I definitely don't look like anyone else here. People can spot me as foreign from pretty far away but usually they think I'm from Sweden or somewhere in Europe until I tell them that I'm from the US. Our first day here we had to get a little medical exam where all they did was weigh us and measure our height. The doctor asked me if I was a model and she said that I could have a really good career as a model in Europe. Then later when we were at the mission office there was a member there who was getting ready to go on his mission and he stared at me a lot and then asked if he could take a picture of me. He said he didn't believe that I was a missionary because he thought that I looked like a model. It was pretty awkward. But I guess it shows that I stand out here.
Church was cool. The branch is really little but it's a good one. We had carbonated water for sacrament and really good bread.
We don't have a lot of time to write right now because the internet wasn't working here at this internet cafe and it is the only one in the city that we know of so we had to come back and try again and now we don't have much time. I'll try to write more next week.
-Love Sora Jay
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