Sliedrecht - Week 8 - Journal

Sooo another week is done! This week was better than the first but it's still really hard. I feel like everyone in the Netherlands hates me hahahah. "Mag ik een boodschap met u delen?" änd their response is altijd "Geen interresse!!" It gets really discouraging after a couple hours of that. We don't have very many appointments for now but hopefully it will look up! 

I can't upload photos right now because we have a windows XP computer... It's really sad. And slow. And libraries here cost money, but we might go just to upload pictures because I'm scared of them being lost. I have a whole two weeks worth of pictures right now. 

Some smells I smell a lot here are: 

-In the stores smells like yummy bread

-There is a lot of smoke since everyone smokes here 

-There is a very particular sewer smell when you go over sewer drains. That is also what our apartment smells like if we don't block the shower drain with a towel. 

I don't really understand what people are saying, but it's really easy to revert to English which is both a bad thing and a good thing. If I need to communicate but can't, it's nice that I can say it in English and they will most likely generally understand. During appointments I can understand what the conversation is about but not really what we're saying about the topic in particular. 

I live in Sliedrecht which is a cute small town, but we also go to Papendrecht, Gorinchem, and Dordrecht, although the Elders live in Dordrecht. Dordrecht and Gorinchem are GORGEOUS. You have to look up pictures! There are so many canals and gorgeous churches. Unfortunately, our P-Day is on monday and literally everything cool (like the churches and WWII museums) are closed on monday... We ride the train all of the time and we especially bike EVERYWHERE. We also got to go on a waterbus! 

It has also been SO hot this past week. Like 88 and humid and I come home a sticky mess all of the time. it really sucks. I am really glad that I cut my hair. 

The other day while door-knocking I found a cool Market Garden monument. Apparently Sliedrecht was a place where they would distribute medicine and stuff along the line. Pretty cool. 

Also, I am always hungry....

Photos From Amsterdam

Here are some pictures the mission sent us today.  

The ten missionaries that traveled together from the MTC. They are with President and Sister Bunnell.

Her new companion - Zuster Parker

 A traditional lunch.

Probably taken outside the airport in Amsterdam. 

Zuster Haynie will be serving in Sliedrecht, Netherlands!

Here is a map I found online that shows where Sliedrecht is. 

MTC Week 6 - Photos

 

MTC Week 5 - Photos

I LOVED THE RAIN

Elder Miller asked me to draw him a Nephite for his by-by book... And so I started to draw Captain Moroni but then Zuster Leman was like draw HIM as captain moroni... so I did that. He actually really really liked it!!! YAY! 

This is the drawing! 

My travel plans!!! 

Me with Motra Grigg :D I LOVE HER

Motra Grigg says that it would be the best to have a wooden leg, then she could customize it and be like "LOOK AT MY LEG". She says it would be cool if she had an aquarium leg too, so I drew that as a part of her going away note hahaha. She really liked it haha. 

MTC Week 5 - Journal

Tuesday June 28th 

Today was fine. It was 100 degrees and we had a really good devotional. It was really hard to focus and everyone was dead tired and it was creeping out our teacher. We also heard some bad news about the Instanbul airport, about the bombing, which is super sad and also means that the Turks in our zone might not be able to go to Turkey. 

Wednesday June 29th 

Today a girl came into our classroom and was like "are you speaking Dutch? I am from Suriname!" and she spoke Dutch with us and it was super cool. Also, it POURED RAIN today and thundered super loud, it was the best moment of our life, we all ran around in the rain. 

Friday July 1st

We had  TRC today where we skyped actual people from the Netherlands. my companion and I got this guy from Belgium who had an extremely thick accent and it was really really hard to understand him, in fact we didn't understand him at all, we understood like ten words. He was a really cool guy though. 

We also saw Brother Klippel's little sister today!! She is so sweet and awesome! She came into the MTC recently and she's going to the Temple Square mission. 

We ALSO GOT OUR TRAVEL PLANS TODAY! We have a DIRECT flight to Amsterdam!!! YES. I am so EXCITED. And the turks got their travel plans so they are still going! 

Saturday July 2nd

We had a 4th of July Celebration today and watched the fireworks and we didn't go to bed until 11:30 agh!

Oh yeah, two weeks ago or so during the Mission President conference thing we randomly had two missionaries going to Tokyo in our zone for some random reason so I talked to them for a little bit and one of them looked really familiar and talked really familiarly. But I figured that he just reminded me of someone. Then several days later I realized that I thought I knew who he might have been! I wondered if he was Britian Tree, and then today I found him again at the Devotional and it was actually Britian Tree!! so that was cool! I was like "hey remember me from the Sno Falls ward???" and he was like "oh yeah!" So that was kind of cool and kind of funny that I was talking to someone I knew without realizing who it was.