Week 2 in the second transfer, or something like that
Monday, June 7, 2010 by Sora Jay
Hey Everybody,
Pete asked me some questions about what things are like here. Our apartment is really nice compared to anywhere that I've ever lived before, I think. It's little but pretty nice. I would send you some pictures if the internet place here was able. Here we have two different kinds of milk, normal milk and shelf milk. We ran out of normal milk this week so we had to use some of the shelf milk and it is disgusting. When we get water from the tap we have to use a three-level filter to make sure we don't get all sorts of parasites and things. In fact, my companion has been saying that maybe she has a parasite now.
In Romania the lawnmowers are tiny and crappy so usually people use weedwhackers for everything. I have seen people using scythes to cut the grass by the sidewalks. There isn't really such a thing as a front lawn here though, unless you're really rich and you have a massive gate to keep people off it.
People here in Romania are pretty racist against the gypsies. When a little kid is misbehaving a lot of times his parents will call him 'tsiganule,' which is the vocative form of 'gypsy', as an insult, and a joke. But the people in the branch aren't racist like that. They accept anyone and everyone that comes into the church. There is one girl who lives close to the church who can't read or write or tell time so she doesn't know when to come to church. So, we just ask some of the other girls to run and get her before church starts and they all jump up and run off together to do it.
I don't know what it was like in the places where you guys all served missions but here in Romania, and especially in Arad the area is super religious. The elders told us about one time when they were knocking on doors out where the vilas are and they had just been rejected. They had been walking through mud all down that street so after they knocked that last door they stopped to scrape the mud from their shoes. The lady in the house they had just left came out to do something and saw. She was shocked and then she invited them to come back to her house and come tell her their message. And it was because there is a scripture in the bible that she remembered about "shaking off the dust of your feet" after being rejected (I think it's in Matthew 10). So then she let them into her house because she didn't want the bad consequences. People here know the bible pretty well, or at least the verses that are most commonly used in their church. As missionaries we kind of learn to quote them because we hear them so often, and people always know the quotes and can finish them with you.
I got a lot of emails today. It's cool to hear about everything that has been going on for you guys. It feels like I have stepped out of time here, because I totally forgot that school was ending for everybody and stuff, and that it was the time of year for the Nestle 5K. Here we rarely go running. It takes too long to get ready and then go out of the apartment and down in the tiny elevator and then go outside and run somewhere and then come back that I don't think it's worth it. We don't get to run very far because it takes so much time to get outside and get back inside because everything is pretty securely locked up. So I just do situps and crunches and pushups and stuff like that every morning. I'm pretty ripped now. All of the sisters say that elders lose weight in this mission but the sisters gain weight. I haven't kept track of my weight but I don't think I've gained any. I can see how it could happen though because there are delicious smelling pastry shops on every busy street. My first companion and I only stopped to get things if it was lunchtime so I never got into the habit of going to them.
I haven't tried a lot of Romanian food. We mostly just eat at home for lunch like, sandwiches and soups, and we always just eat cereal or eggs for breakfast. We have eaten at restaurants on P-days with the Elders but they are all themed from different countries like Germany or Italy, and one is Japanese. Today we are planning on eating at a real Romanian place though.
I did eat stomach soup one time. It was the greasiest thing I have ever tried. I only took like two bites. There were rubbery stomach strips floating around inside.
When I was in the MTC the main thing that I tried to accomplish with the language, besides learning the vocab and grammar, was to preserve the accent that I had picked up from the internet programs that I had looked at before. It turned out pretty well for me and the rest of my district followed my example. The teacher that was Romanian said that we spoke better than any other group when we left. Sometimes people think that I've been in the country longer than my companion (who has been out for seven months) and that I speak better than her because I have tried to learn the accent. Now I'm trying to learn the voice of Romanian. There are certain inflections that everybody uses when the say a certain phrase. I picked up on the one's we hear all the time really quickly: "Nu ma intereseaza" which means "I'm not interested." Everybody always says it the same way.
Thanks for writing me everybody, and good luck to Tom.
Good luck with everything, and read your scriptures.
Love,
Sora Jay
P.S. It's funny that you found those folders that I had written names on. I remember when I did it, and then I used them all that semester and kids would give me weird looks. It was awesome.
Pete asked me some questions about what things are like here. Our apartment is really nice compared to anywhere that I've ever lived before, I think. It's little but pretty nice. I would send you some pictures if the internet place here was able. Here we have two different kinds of milk, normal milk and shelf milk. We ran out of normal milk this week so we had to use some of the shelf milk and it is disgusting. When we get water from the tap we have to use a three-level filter to make sure we don't get all sorts of parasites and things. In fact, my companion has been saying that maybe she has a parasite now.
In Romania the lawnmowers are tiny and crappy so usually people use weedwhackers for everything. I have seen people using scythes to cut the grass by the sidewalks. There isn't really such a thing as a front lawn here though, unless you're really rich and you have a massive gate to keep people off it.
People here in Romania are pretty racist against the gypsies. When a little kid is misbehaving a lot of times his parents will call him 'tsiganule,' which is the vocative form of 'gypsy', as an insult, and a joke. But the people in the branch aren't racist like that. They accept anyone and everyone that comes into the church. There is one girl who lives close to the church who can't read or write or tell time so she doesn't know when to come to church. So, we just ask some of the other girls to run and get her before church starts and they all jump up and run off together to do it.
I don't know what it was like in the places where you guys all served missions but here in Romania, and especially in Arad the area is super religious. The elders told us about one time when they were knocking on doors out where the vilas are and they had just been rejected. They had been walking through mud all down that street so after they knocked that last door they stopped to scrape the mud from their shoes. The lady in the house they had just left came out to do something and saw. She was shocked and then she invited them to come back to her house and come tell her their message. And it was because there is a scripture in the bible that she remembered about "shaking off the dust of your feet" after being rejected (I think it's in Matthew 10). So then she let them into her house because she didn't want the bad consequences. People here know the bible pretty well, or at least the verses that are most commonly used in their church. As missionaries we kind of learn to quote them because we hear them so often, and people always know the quotes and can finish them with you.
I got a lot of emails today. It's cool to hear about everything that has been going on for you guys. It feels like I have stepped out of time here, because I totally forgot that school was ending for everybody and stuff, and that it was the time of year for the Nestle 5K. Here we rarely go running. It takes too long to get ready and then go out of the apartment and down in the tiny elevator and then go outside and run somewhere and then come back that I don't think it's worth it. We don't get to run very far because it takes so much time to get outside and get back inside because everything is pretty securely locked up. So I just do situps and crunches and pushups and stuff like that every morning. I'm pretty ripped now. All of the sisters say that elders lose weight in this mission but the sisters gain weight. I haven't kept track of my weight but I don't think I've gained any. I can see how it could happen though because there are delicious smelling pastry shops on every busy street. My first companion and I only stopped to get things if it was lunchtime so I never got into the habit of going to them.
I haven't tried a lot of Romanian food. We mostly just eat at home for lunch like, sandwiches and soups, and we always just eat cereal or eggs for breakfast. We have eaten at restaurants on P-days with the Elders but they are all themed from different countries like Germany or Italy, and one is Japanese. Today we are planning on eating at a real Romanian place though.
I did eat stomach soup one time. It was the greasiest thing I have ever tried. I only took like two bites. There were rubbery stomach strips floating around inside.
When I was in the MTC the main thing that I tried to accomplish with the language, besides learning the vocab and grammar, was to preserve the accent that I had picked up from the internet programs that I had looked at before. It turned out pretty well for me and the rest of my district followed my example. The teacher that was Romanian said that we spoke better than any other group when we left. Sometimes people think that I've been in the country longer than my companion (who has been out for seven months) and that I speak better than her because I have tried to learn the accent. Now I'm trying to learn the voice of Romanian. There are certain inflections that everybody uses when the say a certain phrase. I picked up on the one's we hear all the time really quickly: "Nu ma intereseaza" which means "I'm not interested." Everybody always says it the same way.
Thanks for writing me everybody, and good luck to Tom.
Good luck with everything, and read your scriptures.
Love,
Sora Jay
P.S. It's funny that you found those folders that I had written names on. I remember when I did it, and then I used them all that semester and kids would give me weird looks. It was awesome.
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