Wednesday was a part-day at work. Elisa and I went to the zoo with two coworkers. Elisa went sliding down the slide at the kids’ playground. I had to be the grown-up. 😉 You’ll have to imagine what that means for Chad.
Thursday I was off work for some Catholic holiday. We went with the Mascaros on a trip straight south to Genoa (or Genova), Italy. Genova itself was not that interesting. It’s kind of dirty, like a lot of Italy we’ve seen. We enjoyed the rats and the graffiti sight-seeing. We won’t mention the smell. (Don’t touch the subway walls). They have a great aquarium though. It’s one of Tony’s favorite areas. He served his mission there so he showed us around. We met some of their friends who still live in Genoa. Paulo brought us Italian chocolate. A warning to everyone else: you have to be either brave or stupid to give chocolates to someone who lives in Switzerland.
After Genoa we went down the coast to Santa Margarita. That’s where we got to play on the beach. The water was just barely warm enough to play in. The gelato is really good there. Santa Margarita is what I imagined when I thought of Italy. On our last day we went home through Como, Italy. Como is another of Tony’s favorite places. It’s on a lake in some mountains bordering Switzerland. No matter where we go, we never regret that we are going home to Switzerland because it is so incredibly beautiful here.
I got lots of comments on Elisa’s primary lesson today. She’s a superstar here. We’re learning the song about the golden plates being hidden so last night Chad and I made some golden plates. And then I had the kids write their favorite scripture stories in it. We hid the golden plates around the room while they played hotter-colder singing louder and softer to find it.
We had the new missionary couple over for dinner on Monday. Tuesday and Wednesday Chad worked pretty late, so I slaved away on my Independent Study class. My brain is pretty fried. We do not remember Thursday so maybe we partied hard that night. 🙂 On Friday we hung out with our buddies, Tony and Rachel. By that I mean, I was using their iron to finish curtains, and everybody was kind of doing their own thing. They have become like family–we just do nothing with each other for the sake of company. We had plans to take a day trip on Saturday–but we spent the day doing a lot of little jobs and errands that have been backing up. WOOHOO!It was nice to talk to family on Sunday. We felt kind of obligated since it was Mother’s day. 😉 It was my brother Jeff’s birthday–he has officially reached the late 20’s and it was fun to tease him. Primary was a little terrifying. My pianist wasn’t there and we were starting to learn a new song. Then the sister who was supposed to hang around to help translate suddenly left the room. I tried not to show the little kids how panicked I was! Elisa is laughing now but she wasn’t on Sunday. I hope I never have to do that again.
Chad has been waiting to get a haircut for a LOOOOONG time. I really like when his hair grows out. It gets all cute and curly. He finally got one this week. I was shocked when he came back with such short hair. I thought we had gone over the haircutting vocabulary enough. Kurz und Lang. I wasn’t even positive I was ordering a haircut. He had quite an interesting time. In the middle of the haircut the lady left a few locks kind of long. I guess she thought that my cowlicks would make it stick up if she didn’t. But I don’t know any of those words in German, so she just grabbed a lock of hair in her fingers and stood it straight up and said, “BING!”
With all of my emotional waterworks I was inspired to ask Chad about crying. Apparently only fiction makes him cry. The only time I think I have seen him cry was at Wicked. His long list of highly emotional moments include, the first act finale in Wicked, Les Mis and Of Mice and Men, oh yeah and Mr. Holland’s Opus (but thats embarrassing). I figured bringing the subject up would make him more secure with his emotions. He now tells me every time he cries invisible air bubbles. He has explained that he is always just SO emotional but his tears don’t work like mine.
Well besides conversations between Chad and I that probably do not make any sense to anyone else, we haven’t been doing too much worth noting. It will be nice to include some of the family in our bizarre conversations when we visit the States in July.
Today I started my third course of German. That seems to be all I do now. Study German, listen to German, hear German, write German, try to speak German. My mom studied German in high school. When she told me that years ago when I was trying to decide what language I wanted to study in high school I remember thinking, “Oh, definitely NOT German!” I still learn everything that I know from Elisa. I have also noticed that all the couples in the church who end up serving missions in other countries always go where the husband served or at least they go somewhere where the husband knows the language. That means my German is going to have to be supplemented by a great deal of Portuguese study!
I have decided that I just cannot keep putting off my degree no matter how fried my brain is after four hours of German class a day. So I have put myself to work on my courses and hope my brain can absorb everything. I love studying the information so that should help it not seem so taxing.
We had a holiday on Tuesday so the Mascaro’s and we went to Höllgrotten, or Hell Caves. We were able to hike around inside a hill through all sorts of drippy tunnels and caves. There were all kinds of stalagmites and stalactites. It was very interesting and a little like something you would expect to see on some alien planet or else the fabrication of someone’s kooky imagination.
This weekend was our stake conference. We went of course, though I must admit I was a bit unwilling. I just hate wearing those headphones for translation for very long, they make your ears hurt and give me a headache. Also they organized a new stake in Switzerland! That is always a bitter-sweet thing for people. Some people had to travel a few hours to get there, from Bern and Germany and Austria. The visiting General Authority told a story about missionary work that he had had. I remember hearing it before so it was pretty exciting to meet the people involved. I believe he had served in Germany. He had sent his new missionary companion out to knock on doors. They met back together later and his companion said, “I found a lady and the Spirit told me she is going to be baptized.” He didn’t think much of it. They went back soon after, however the missionary had forgotten to write down the woman’s name and address–all he remembered was that she lived on the 5th floor. So they looked for hours on many a fifth floor. After about three hours the senior companion was ready to move on but the junior protested. He thought that if they did that for a few more hours then at least the junior companion would remember to write the info down next time. After about another hour he recognized the name of the woman. She and her family were taught and baptized. The senior missionary companion was the authority speaking at our conference and he introduced us to a member of our stake, the son of the women he had gone up and down stairs looking for many years ago. I thought that was pretty neat.
