Dear Family,
Ha ha yes, mom was right. Die Familie means the family and is pronounced
like dee. I didn’t even think about it. Ha ha, that made me laugh. Life is
great. Swiss-German is to German like Flemish is to Dutch. Which reminds me,
mom can you send me the addresses of Ine and Julia, the dancers from Belgium? I
made some friends at the MTC that are going there Dutch speaking. I'm starting
to understand more and more and I'm speaking or trying to speak more. It's
pretty hard because everyone speaks Swiss-German to my comp because she can
understand it, but I’m trying anyway. So basically here isn't much different
from there. It's warmer right now and there isn’t any snow. There has been rain
but not too much. I haven't really noticed a difference in the people; they're kind
of just like us Americans really. I mean obviously different culture, but I don’t
know maybe I was just expecting the difference to be drastic. I get along great
with my companion. She loves princesses and she’s very easy going. The food
here is still pretty good although I think Laura cooks better than anything I
have had. We eat a lot of brie cheese its only 1 euro for a triangle. oh mensch
we had an eating appointment with an old lady from the branch and she made a
spinach and bacon quiche or however you spell that and mensch that is one dish
that I really don’t like I was fine for the first half of my helping, but by
the last bites I just wanted to throw up and then she gave me more and I don’t
know how I got it all down...but I did. I don’t usually like eggs. Anyway it
was really painful. Other than that, the eating appointments we’ve had have
been pretty good. I actually always eat slower than everyone else and never on
purpose so I always feel kind of bad and they never really feed you more than
you can handle. Oh yeah so yesterday I played the piano in church and ha ha the
first song I botched really badly because it’s really hard for me to play while
others are singing. But I pulled it together mostly and the others weren’t too
bad. I’ve been practicing a lot and the lord is definitely blessing me because I
can basically play all of the hymns and back home even the ones I semi knew
were hard. It’s kind of incredible really, I love playing. And it’s such a
blessing that I get to play for church. It’s pretty great. I can’t think of
anything else to say at the moment, but I hope this finds you all in good
spirits and if it doesn’t then I hope you do something to change that because it’s
you who decides how happy and successful you are. Love you all!!!
Love,
Betsy
Hallo Lieblings,
Ya, ich
bin in der Schweiz. l'll be serving in Switzerland for most likely all of my
mission. Man, this German keyboard is the worst. Ugh. Well, all is gut. My German
is terrible. Well maybe not really, but I barely speak a lick of it. Ha ha it’s
like every time anyone talks to me I freeze up and I have no idea what they are
saying. Even if it’s as simple as wie gehts? It’s pretty bad. I'm serving in a
little branch called Schaffhausen and my mitarbeiterin is a German from Freiberg
de. I think maybe I’m struggling so much with speaking because she speaks English
very well and I can just have her translate what everyone says to me. Mensch
the z and the y on the keyboard switched places and its taking me forever. Awful.
So with the language I understand more and more every day. I just need to start
speaking it... that’s a lot harder than you would think. My comp says I have
really good pronunciation though. I had to give my testimony in church
yesterday and the branch pres stood up after and said that he had thought that I
didn’t speak any German at all, but now he knows that I do. Speaking of church I
am the new piano player for the ward. Apparently they had been praying that the
new sister would be able to play the piano. It isn’t too bad though. I
get to practice sometimes during the week which will be nice. So woot woot I’ll
be playing the piano. Hope you’re proud mom. Man this keyboard is kind of
putting me in a bad mood that and my comp curled her hair and the smell is
powerful. Also this seat is really low and my wrists are starting to hurt. Life
is so hard for me. Actually it isn’t.
Oh meine gute, the food here is pretty
great. I don’t know if it’s just better because I had to shove MTC food down
for 2 months or if it really is just that good. Well not everything is that
amazing. We had dinner at the, what do you call them, the old missionary
couples house and it was awesome. We just had schnitzel with fried kartofln and
rice and salad. It was good. Then for
dessert, this is my favorite, they cut up a bunch of fruit like bananas,
mangos, cranberries, pomegranates, ginger, etc. and then the mix it in vanilla
yogurt and then add chocolate shavings and top it with whipped cream and more
chocolate shavings. It’s pretty much awesome. Oh meine gute, we have had so
much chocolate since I got here. My comp has SO much from Christmas it’s
ridiculous I can hardly believe it. So we eat it all the time... oh yeah
another one of my favorites is lebkuchen, but it isn’t like what mom makes at
all. It’s a brown really soft kind of spice cookie dipped in dark chocolate and
its best fresh and soft as it gets older it gets harder and less yummy. I tried
explaining mom’s to people and they said it wasn’t lebkuchen...I don't know. But
this stuff is great. Almost every night we have abendbrot instead of abendessen
where we just eat bread and meat and cheese. It’s the best. We’ve had a lot of
what we would call Swiss cheese but it’s actually a German cheese and not Swiss.
Sorry this is mainly all about food. I can’t really understand anything that
anyone says so I don’t really have too many missionary stories. I have a longer time to email now and I’ll
be emailing Mondays from usually 10 to 11:30. I love you all so much and I hope
all is well.
Love,
Betsy
