January 2nd Email

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