February 28, 2001

Dear Family,

I'M STAYING IN ZADAR!! WOOHOO!! And I'll be staying with my same companion, Sister Dillender (this will be my third transfer with her) Yay! There was a while where I wasn't sure if I wanted to stay in Zadar another transfer, (I've already been here 8 months) but right before we got the calls I was FOR SURE wanting to stay and I'm so glad that I am! Yay! So by the end of this transfer I will have served ten months of my mission here. That's a pretty long time. And so it will probably, very most likely, be my last transfer here. So I better enjoy it! And I will. Other news, we're getting a greenie in the city and also two other elders, so we'll have four elders in Zadar again. Which means a bigger district. Oh! And it means that there are better piano players now! Two of the elders coming know how to play the piano so I won't have to in sacrament meeting anymore! (probably) That's pretty exciting to me, not because I haven't enjoyed it or I don't get along alright, but because then I don't have to worry about practicing and picking hymns, and wondering "did we just sing this hymn last week??" (There are 68 hymns in our hymnbook, but that includes Christmas, sacrament, and some really weird ones that we never hear in English but that were translated into Croatian, so there's only so much to work with!) It's been fun, but I'm happy to pass on the torch.

In other news...I felt like this week was very very Croatian! That was fun. Mostly because of what we were eating. We serve at a kitchen for old people, as I've already said, and we ate there twice this week, one time was sarma (really good) another time spaghetti. Sarma is like stuffed peppers, but instead of pepper it's sour cabbage leaves. My companion calls them little brains. And then we ate at a member's house (impromptu, they live pretty close to us and saw us walking home and invited us in.) The mom pulled a pig leg out of the fridge and cut slices off of it right in front of us! and threw them in a pan on the stove, it tasted like bacon! Which is a little bit funny because they don't really do bacon here, so that was the first time that I've had something that tasted like bacon. We ate it with bread. And she had us try a homemade jam that her parents made, from blackberries and plums. That was really good. And then also we tried some homemade tea from apples. Which, I don't really like tea. But for tea it was good.
We ate at another member's house this week, the "first course" was garbonzo beans, and she said it was a traditional Croatian dish, I don't know what she did to the beans because it was really just beans, which was good. The elders ate theirs really fast though, so I felt like I had to eat mine fast, so I ended up eating it really fast. haha. then sarma, her recipe for it is really good. I hope I can maybe get it from her or something BUT we've heard that America doesn't have sour cabbage leaves. Just sauerkraut, so I don't know what I would be able to do with that. And with the sarma came these meat thingies. With a lot of fat. That me and Sister Dillender don't like. So one of the Elders ate them for us. And also this time, there were some things that we're pretty sure was pig skin. GROSS! the same elder ate those for us, too. phew! and we polished off the meal with palačinke, which is crepes, with chocolate inside. By that time I was so full that I could barely eat anything. All of us were. That member takes really good care of us :D Oh! And on Monday she also brought štrukle to family home evening, which is another classic Croatian thing. She boiled them. I thought it would be disgusting, because it's like a pastry thing and she boiled them! But they were really good. They had cheese inside.
And then on Saturday we went to one of our english students houses and she fed us some very Croatian things, too! A dessert thing, that was made out of poppies. Which was a new word for us. Mak, in Croatian. If I remember right, haha. It was kinda bland and dry, but alright. Not gross like I thought it looked like. And then we had some yummy cheese/egg/sauce circle thingies. It's hard to describe, because the outer thing is something that I'm pretty sure we don't have in America. But I guess a really thin type of.. pastry, maybe. But thin, so it gets crunchy in the oven. And she spread cheese, egg, and sour cream on them, rolled them up, cut them into pieces, turned them on their sides, threw them on a cookie sheet and baked them! Really good. And she gave us fresh lemonade and homemade pudding, and actually she said that everything was homemade. Unfortunately we didn't know she was feeding us lunch, so we had already eaten lunch! So our stomachs didn't have a lot of space. That was too bad. Oh, and she also gave us tea. It tasted more herbal, kind of like noni tea a teensy tiny bit.
My descriptions are not so good. And THEN we had an activity Saturday night! So now that I'm writing it all out we really DID have a Croatian week! I didn't eat a lot at the activity, because my stomach was tired of eating so much! But I tried a few things. And from all the Croatian things I tried this week I like a lot of them. So I will try to get recipes and share when I get home! That will be really fun!

That was basically all the exciting things this week! Food food food. I played a lot of ping pong, after family home evening, during the activity. That was fun. One little boy that I played with (his dad's a member, but he's not)(but he practically is a member) he's eleven years old, and if we had been keeping score he probably would have beat me. He was really good.

Otherwise this week was pretty slow. It's funny, because we were actually pretty busy. But I think waiting for the end of the transfer really dragged out the week. BUT I officially only have 6 months left (sometime this week) so that actually means that time is going by really fast. This is kinda funny, but sometimes when I construct complicated English sentences, I think about how I don't have any idea how that would be in Croatian (like, I know, but I would have to simplify it first and then say it and then lalala) and I'm always amazed that I know English so well. And I especially think, I'm really glad I know English as a first language instead of some other language. It's just amazing that we can know any language so well. And I think about all the people we know learning English and how they'll probably never be able to say some of the things we do, because it's just really hard to learn a language! (Don't worry, Croatian is still going well.) It's just interesting to think about. And now I'll probably get letters from you all saying that my english is actually really bad right now. Whenever I write on Mondays English still comes really naturally and I probably won't even lose it at all, but I know that I probably say some things kinda strange. Maybe not.

That's all I have from my end! Oh just kidding. I just remembered. I read Ezra this week, from the old testament, and it was SO good! It's all about the Jews returning to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple, and how happy they are to have a temple again, and how they sacrifice for it, and it reminded me a lot of the stories we hear from church history about the early-day temples, and it's been really fun. The temple rocks socks! And I hope comparing the temple with socks isn't sacrilegious in any way.

So! Congratulations to Alyssa (Amelia's friend)! haven't they been trying to have a baby a really long time? How come I haven't heard about this sooner? That's really great! And I'm glad to hear that grandma is home again and feeling better! I hope visiting the parents has been fun for Jesse! And that everything works out for Amelia and Brent moving somewhere?? well, it will for sure work out, but I hope it works out PERFECTLY. And everything with the baby, too. I read mom's e-mail, and she was like, Amelia's due date is March 23rd, and I thought, yeah, I knew it was the end of March, and that's cool that mom is already planning on visiting... and then I read Amelia's email and she said that that is IN 3 WEEKS!!! And I realized that TOMORROW is MARCH and that time is blowing by! I can't believe that Amelia is already going to have another baby in 3 weeks! I feel like that was something that I kept looking at as really far away. That's really crazy.
OK! It was great to hear from everybody this week and I enjoy keeping up on your lives! Love you tons!
Sister Laws

oh yeah!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!!!
I knew I would forget, just because I "remembered" before! I hope it's great. It's still a week away almost, but this is the last chance I have to send birthday wishes! HAVE A GREAT DAY!