When Food Goes Wrong

August 11, 2019

When Food Goes Wrong

Mittwoch, 31st:

We have a goal this transfer to actually fit in all of our Studies each day, or at least to plan for it. So far, it has kind of worked!

Sister Akre felt sick, so she took a nap.

We went finding in Lörrach again, because we hadn't been in a while.

Donnerstag, 1st: 🇨🇭

So because the 1st of August is the Swiss national holiday, the night before they had started fireworks at around 10 pm and they went until around 4-5 in the morning. I managed to sleep through all of it, but poor Sister Akre didn't get to sleep until after they stopped. So.... I let her sleep in because I could tell she wasn't doing so well.

But when she finally did wake up, we decided it would probably be better to go finding in Lörrach again in case the streets of Basel were overrun with drunk people. But after a while in Lörrach (the streets were very crowded) we decided we could probably try finding in Basel for an hour or so. When we got there, it was basically a ghost town. Apparently the Swiss people believe in only partying one night, and so Basel was entirely void of any decorations. The only evidence that anything had happened the night before was a few scattered fireworks left in the street. So we ended up running into the other missionaries in our distrikt and talking to them for a bit about how pointless it was to be finding. In grand total, though, we got 6 hours of finding done on Thursday. So go us!

We went home and Sister Akre still felt terrible, so she slept again while I did studies (and by studies I mean watch videos on Gospel Library).

When Sister Akre woke up again, she had us do Abendsport, since we had missed Frühsport. For some reason I got a little grumpy. But Sister Akre took it well. :)

Freitag, 2nd:

We had two meal appointments, so we started our day by going to Schwester Caminada. She was sweet and let us snack on freshly-picked cherries while she finished making lunch and called it our "Vorspeise" instead of making salad. That was awesome. :)

We were heading to the next member appointment, and there were a couple different stops where we could've caught our connection, and Sister Akre suggested we go to a slightly farther one, even though we had already been finding for a little bit and to be honest my feet were a little sore. But, I didn't question it, because we have a goal to be healthier, and if that means walking a couple extra tram stops so be it. While we were waiting by a fountain for our bus, I heard my name being called. Snatched out of my train of thought which was already miles away from where we were standing, I turned to see one of our friends, Lucienne, half-leaning out of a bus and waving in our direction. We excitedly waved back and walked over to her. She told us she would respond to our text from a few days prior, and quickly hopped back on the bus before it drove away. A minute later our bus came, and we sat down just as our phone buzzed with a text from Lucienne. The craziest bit is, earlier that day I had remembered that we hadn't met with Lucienne in a bit and felt like I should text her. I made the mistake of deciding I would do it in the evening, instead of responding immediately to the prompting. Thankfully, God knew I would make that mistake and provided for a situation for me to repent. We texted with her all the way to the member appointment! Basel really is a big city, and I've only ever seen Lucienne at her home, so it was truly miraculous to see her in the 2 minute span where we were waiting for our bus. Isn't it crazy how God leads us all to exactly where he needs us to be?

When we actually made it to the next appoinment with the Lucas family, we were still a little full from lunch but quite excited for dinner because... it was tacos and brownies! They're Americans, and they asked us if there was any food we missed. Sister Akre said she missed a good, quality brownie (you can't get them here, sadly) and I said I missed taco salad. So we had tacos and brownies. And the guacamole they made was some of the best I've ever had. Oooh, that and the mango salsa. 🥑

Samstag, 3rd:

In the morning we kind of just did various errands of picking up a package from the post office, doing studies, etc.

We went Finding to finish our hours, and on the bus ride home, this family sat in front of us. I saw the mom holding a brand new Boston Red Sox hat, which is kind of rare here. For some reason, lots of people wear Yankees hats (ew, but I think it's fashion or something), even though they don't know who they are. BUT! Perks of being a Sox fan, if you see someone with a hat you know they know who they are. But still, it was a little awkward to like, poke my head from behind and start a conversation. But then I saw one of the children wearing a hat for an international German school in Boston, and I was like "hold up, that's not normal". So I did the awkward thing and poked my head in from behind and asked if they've ever lived in Boston. They said they had actually lived in Cambridge for the past two years, and had just moved back to Switzerland a couple days ago. My mind was blown, and I was like, "No way, I'm from Massachusetts!" They asked how long I had been here, and complimented my German. Then they asked me WHY I was here, and when I said, "I'm actually a missionary for my church...," they noticably deflated. But I said it was cool that they had a connection to home and welcomed them back to Switzerland. They ended up getting off the bus at basically the next stop, but I'm still super happy that I got to talk to them. :)

Sister Akre had a really terrible headache, so she took a quick nap before we headed off to do Sport at the sport center with everyone. It was fun, but when Sister Akre said that her migraine was so bad she couldn't see straight, and yet still insisted to keep playing basketball, I basically dragged her off the court and took her home early. She fell asleep quite quickly.

Sonntag, 4th:

We had Church. :)

After church, Patrick and Pascal (the Egen twins) showed us some videos/pics from FSY because they had been counselors last week, and that quickly turned into them showing us all of the Memes they had saved on their phones. I got bored pretty quickly, which I found interesting because I used to love memes, but I just wanted to go home and do weekly planning.

When we did finally get home, Sister Akre's migraine was still going strong, so she tried to fall asleep early, but was in so much pain she couldn't sleep, so she ended up baking a carrot cake for Distrkt lunch the next day. I got to help by shredding the carrots. :D 🥕🥕🥕

Montag, 5th:

Sister Akre stayed up all night throwing up, and we're not sure if it was the flu (other symptoms would be headaches, Fevers, and aches, all of which she has on a normal basis, so...) or food poisoning, but considering I haven't gotten sick yet we think it was food poisoning. Except she was sweating a lot today despite it being cooler, so maybe it was the flu. Idk. But she's doing quasi better. Hasn't thrown up for a little bit and is just a little light-headed.

I also didn't sleep super well because I had some recurring nightmares again, but not as bad as they usually are so all things considered I wasn't doing too schlecht.

We had Distrikt rat, which felt kind of empty without Sister Grundvig and Sister Fragapane. And for some reason my head couldn't click in and focus, so I was bored. I'm working on it.

Sister Akre and I served distrikt lunch, which like, everyone loved my sweet potato fries (YEEESSSS) and Sister Akre had made cornflake chicken which is apparently like Sister Frome's most favorite thing on the planet, so God is good.

After Distriktrat I wrote my weekly letter to Präsident, and then Sister Akre and I both took naps to catch up on the sleep we lost last night.

We met with Véronique, in which she gave us some apples that tasted like Macintoshes, and I saw a toad.

️

Then we went home with a half-eaten carrot cake (see "Favorite Funny Story" below).

Dienstag, 6th:

Happy 14 months to me! 4 left to go...

Last night was a crazy bad thunderstorm (I loved it, and Sister Akre was kind enough to wake me up so I could enjoy it (since I usually sleep through them) and this one was SOLID) and it threw our trains out of our town out of wack. The train this morning got up to 115 minutes delayed before we bailed and just took a bus.

We kind of wasted our morning because we went to the place where all of the missionaries in our zone normally go to do their shopping, but literally most of them didn't end up showing up because they switched either their pday or their hours or something to do an Ausstellung. It's actually a really cool experience for them, but like... We didn't see anyone, and that was sad. I was looking forward to saying hi to Elder Buss again, since he's in our zone now! But that's okay, Zone Conference is next week.

We went and ate Frozen Joghurt at this one super cute place to celebrate, since it's my 14-month mark and Sister Akre's 10-month mark. It was definitely worth it, and healthier than ice cream! ;)

Now we're writing Emails.

Favorite new word: Es: entusiasmado - Excited, Deu: gehässig - spiteful, Schwyzer Dütsch: Guggemusig - Swiss brass and percussion carnival band

Favorite funny story: So we were on the bus going home yesterday, and we were carrying a half-eaten carrot cake that Sister Akre had made for Distrikt lunch with the plans to drop it off at the Egens' before making it home for the evening. I was being obnoxious and teasing Sister Akre by pretending to poke the cake through the tin foil and she said she would slap my hand if I so much as touched the cake, so I barely tapped the tin foil and she was true to her word. The guy we had sat across from started cracking up and tried to hide it, but it just made us laugh even harder, so then he took out his headphones and started talking to us. So carrot cake finding works, guys! But the story doesn't stop there. This guy had to jump up and catch his tram, so we bid him farewell and an older woman sat across from us. Sister Akre started talking to the woman, but the conversation kind of fizzled out a little bit, and we ended up just talking to each other. At one point Sister Akre whispered to me, "This guy is staring at me and smiling..." But like, this happens surprisingly frequently to her, so I didn't think much of it and just kept looking out the window and enjoying life. The time came for us to get off the bus, and so we stood up and walked off past the guy. I glanced at him, but he was looking out the window, so like, whatever. We walked to the crosswalk, which was in front of the bus, but the bus pulled off before we could cross. I figured I'd get another glance at the guy. Well, as the bus passes us, my eyes catch sight of the darn-didliest CREEPY SMILE, das ich je gesehen habe. Legit, it was like something out of a horror movie. And the entire time the bus was passing us, his eyes were directly on Sister Akre. Turns out he had also put away his headphones and was about to approach us before we stood to leave. But we left, so he didn't talk to us. And now he doesn't know where we live, since we got off several stops early! So basically we had a whole flood of blessings by bringing around a half-eaten carrot cake. I've found my new favorite way to do missionary work. Oh, and BTW, we're pretty sure we're safe from this guy, which is why it's a funny story.