About our third week here, I started to look in the mirror and say "man, someone get that guy a haircut!" So that p-day we went to a hair salon. I remembered being extremely satisfied with the last haircut I received in the MTC, which was using a 5 clipper on the side, and an 8 on the top (or the other way around, the top is the longer one). Those numbers are in the British system BTW, which I think is the same as the American system. I sat down in the chair, still kind of shaky in my German, and said "acht oben, und fünf on die Seite" which was met with a "so kurz?" from my hairdresser. Now as you may realize, the Brits and U.S. use a slightly different measuring system, using centimeters here, and bigger inches there. I thought that it could be so, but I bravely pushed on, despite the
consequences. After my hair cut you can see what my hair is like, but
it's not too bad, I hardly have to wash it, and combing is easy!
So last week we had two back to back service projects on Friday, and the second one was removing all of the rocks from the dirt surrounding a member's house. That was crazy! What we did was rake it all into piles, then remove the big rocks, and shovel the pebbles around close to the big rock pile. It was fun though, and we spent some time afterward eating cookies and drinking carbonated water from a soda stream (which I am now able to drink, FYI, and even almost enjoy it!) and talking about how to catch a bird that keeps flying into their closed windows.
Something I've learned with speaking to people in German is that, like a plane, you won't take off if you're too scared to pick up speed. I find that when I rely on my companion to do the speaking, I can't speak German to people without his help. When I go on my own (of course the same room as him though ^_^) I can carry on pretty interesting conversations just by going at it bravely and with faith.
I'll try to tell you something like my schedule that day (4th of July).
6:30 Wake up (we couldn't go running because Elder Holm twisted his ankle)
7:00 Shower
7:30 Eat Breakfast
8:00 Personal Study Begins (I was studying Elder Holland's conference talks)
9:00 Companion Study (we were trying to figure out who could take our investigator to church) (Oh, also, I can recite 3 Ne 5:13 and D&C 4 and Our Purpose [from the beginning of preach my gospel] in german now!)
11:00 Sprachstudium
12:00 Calls (Trying to find someone to bring our investigator to church)
13:00 Lunch (July 5th was a fast sunday, so this was our last meal today, we fast dinner and breakfast so we don't have to refuse member eating appointments for lunch)
14:00 Emailing a couple of investigators and potentials
14:30 We drove out to Tuttlingen to visit an investigator, and some members that could drive our investigator to church
While in Tuttlingen we met with an older member, and, unfortunately, noticed that it was the birthday of the member we were going to ask to give our investigator a ride. They were having a party, so we couldn't get a hold of them
16:00 drive back to the ward building
We spent the rest of the day trying to find someone that could bring our investigator to church. Regrettably, everyone was either out of town, or unavailable. We did line up rides for every sunday from here to forever though.
20:00 Dinner hour (we didn't eat dinner, but we used the time to do some more personal study.
21:00 Planning time
21:30 Letter writing time
22:30 Bed time!
That day wasn't the best, it was kind of frustrating, but thankfully that was probably the worst day we've had yet, and we have plenty of good days to balance it out. Unfortunately, there is no German celebration on that day.
consequences. After my hair cut you can see what my hair is like, but
it's not too bad, I hardly have to wash it, and combing is easy!
So last week we had two back to back service projects on Friday, and the second one was removing all of the rocks from the dirt surrounding a member's house. That was crazy! What we did was rake it all into piles, then remove the big rocks, and shovel the pebbles around close to the big rock pile. It was fun though, and we spent some time afterward eating cookies and drinking carbonated water from a soda stream (which I am now able to drink, FYI, and even almost enjoy it!) and talking about how to catch a bird that keeps flying into their closed windows.
Something I've learned with speaking to people in German is that, like a plane, you won't take off if you're too scared to pick up speed. I find that when I rely on my companion to do the speaking, I can't speak German to people without his help. When I go on my own (of course the same room as him though ^_^) I can carry on pretty interesting conversations just by going at it bravely and with faith.
I'll try to tell you something like my schedule that day (4th of July).
6:30 Wake up (we couldn't go running because Elder Holm twisted his ankle)
7:00 Shower
7:30 Eat Breakfast
8:00 Personal Study Begins (I was studying Elder Holland's conference talks)
9:00 Companion Study (we were trying to figure out who could take our investigator to church) (Oh, also, I can recite 3 Ne 5:13 and D&C 4 and Our Purpose [from the beginning of preach my gospel] in german now!)
11:00 Sprachstudium
12:00 Calls (Trying to find someone to bring our investigator to church)
13:00 Lunch (July 5th was a fast sunday, so this was our last meal today, we fast dinner and breakfast so we don't have to refuse member eating appointments for lunch)
14:00 Emailing a couple of investigators and potentials
14:30 We drove out to Tuttlingen to visit an investigator, and some members that could drive our investigator to church
While in Tuttlingen we met with an older member, and, unfortunately, noticed that it was the birthday of the member we were going to ask to give our investigator a ride. They were having a party, so we couldn't get a hold of them
16:00 drive back to the ward building
We spent the rest of the day trying to find someone that could bring our investigator to church. Regrettably, everyone was either out of town, or unavailable. We did line up rides for every sunday from here to forever though.
20:00 Dinner hour (we didn't eat dinner, but we used the time to do some more personal study.
21:00 Planning time
21:30 Letter writing time
22:30 Bed time!
That day wasn't the best, it was kind of frustrating, but thankfully that was probably the worst day we've had yet, and we have plenty of good days to balance it out. Unfortunately, there is no German celebration on that day.