First Few Days

It seriously seems like I’ve been here for at least a month, but no such luck. Only FIVE flippin days. ok. calm… Well, I guess i should do a little update now. We just got internet which just made everything better. I love the internet! YAY!!!! So Sunday, we went to the church in Arnhem. It’s about 20ish minutes away. The fence around the church is about 7 feet tall and had rolls of barbed wire at the top. Not exactly your typical Utah church. Then when you get inside, the parking lot has enough room for ten or maybe even fifteen cars. You go to Young Woman’s first. We had a record number apparently. Five whole girls! The room was pretty packed. They said only two of them usually come. But it’s up to three now with me there. We don’t split into Laurels or anything. It’s just one, big, happy family. And when i say “big” i mean really, really, small. I found my first friend there though. Her name is Emily. She’s 12 years old from Seattle, Washington. I think she was pretty happy about having another American in the ward. She’s really cute. Then we went to Sunday School across the hall. There was one boy. He was thirteen. The normal teacher wasn’t there so someone from the bishopric gave the lesson. He said it in Dutch and occasionally translated a sentence or two of it into English for Emily and I. I thought that was weird since everyone there spoke at least some English. But whatevs. The bishop came and got me part way through the lesson so he could talk to me and welcome us into the ward. So our family went in his office, which didn’t really look like an office, and greeted us and stuff. He was really young. Then I went back to my lesson and sat there. The chapel has enough seats for about 75 people. It was half full. There are a lot more black people here though which is cool. I don’t really know how that tied in except for that there was a black lady and her two really cute little boys sitting in front of us. The meeting was held in Dutch but we had the headsets and a missionary translated for us. after church we talked to everyone for a while and then went home. I went upstairs to take a nap and woke up 6 hours later when my mom came and got me. We had some spaghetti and then we did something. I can’t remember exactly what it was. I fell asleep in my parents room at like ten but when i came into my room half an hour later, i ended up staying up until 3:30ish. Monday morning i woke up at 5 and couldn’t get back to sleep so I cleaned my room a little, looked through the papers and pictures I brought, took a shower and watched the Olympics. I finally fell back asleep until my mom came and got me up. I got my hair more wet and scrunched it and then my dad came and got us to go to the city hall, the bank, and the bike place. We turned in some papers about something at the city hall, tried to get a bank account from the bank, and got bikes for me and my dad at the bike thingy. Mine is a girl bike so I could ride it even when I’m wearing a skirt. It’s midnight blue and it has a bell. it’s pretty cool. Then we came back and i rode my bike around for a while. The streets and everything here are a lot different. There’s little alley type things that are for walking and biking, and there are bridges and tons of parks. It’s weird. But cool in a way. Then I did whatever until 2:30ish, at which point i fell asleep. I woke up a little after noon today. I had lunch and we rode our bikes to the city center to do a little shopping. We got cotton balls, milk, and fun stuff like that. Then we rode back, which is somehow a lot harder than riding there. We got our neighbors to come and explain the microwave/oven (they’re in the same thing) and the washing machine then we cooked up some frozen pizzas. After dinner, my dad got the internet up and running and that’s what I’ve been doing for the past three and a half hours. It’s pretty…exciting…