Christmas in Hungary

Szia! 

     So Christmas this year was unlike any other I have ever experienced before, but it was also great. It was my first time not being home, but luckily I was able to Skype with my family and feel like I was there with them, at least for a little bit. 

     I don't have a ton of time today, but I'll give you a quick run down of the week. We went to visit a Néni named Ilona, I think I've maybe talked about her before, she is so cute. Whenever we first arrived to meet her she is always so grumpy and talks about how bad she feels, but then we joke with her and she laughs a little and we manage to get a grin out of her. We have visited her three times and the first time I was wondering "what her deal is?!" But now she is one of my favorite people to visit. Every time we see her she says something along the lines of "I don't know if you know exactly what I'm saying, but you're really pretty!" It's so cute. She also tried to draw a picture of me which was kind of a wreck, but she thought it was hilarious. 

     After we left her house we were walking to the Branch House and I saw the cutest little cat! I'm sure it belonged to someone because it came right over and was super friendly. It kept trying to climb under my dress because it was so cold! But I got a long leaf and was playing with the cat for a few minutes and then it started following us! I was just dangling this long leaf as we walked and it was so fun. 

     On Christmas Eve there was absolutely NOTHING opened. The whole city was basically shut down and we ran around to three different grocery stores hoping to buy food to make on Christmas, but we had no luck, so it made for a rather humble Christmas dinner. We also visited two members on Christmas which was fun. The first member lived kind of far away and my companion said she knew how to get there, but surprise, she totally didn't! We got off at the wrong bus stop and were just walking along this super foggy road for what seemed like days. We even called the member and she said that she didn't even recognize the name of the street we were on! (Not a good sign in case you were wondering, haha). Anyways, we just kept walking and all the sudden we found her street! We had the house number wrong and we were just standing in front of this house with about 15 chickens in the front yard. It was honestly comical, I loved it! Then we called her again and this time were only two houses away. She was super sweet and also fed us fish soup, I won't go into detail about that; Haha, let's just say I'm not a huge fan of fish soup but hey it could've been much worse. She was really fun to talk to and she invited us over again this next week. 

     Later that same evening, we went to another member's house with the Elders which was an enjoyable time and then we sang some Christmas Carols in a park! It was wonderful. It was super foggy and everyone who we saw walking just looked like shadows until they got closer. It was fun though and we passed out three copies of the Book of Mormon! On Christmas we didn't have anywhere to go so we just hung out at the Branch House with the Elders which was relaxing. We were each able to Skype with our families which was the best part of the day! For dinner we shared 2 chicken breasts and one pepper between the 5 of us. 

     A few other things from last week was that we had our Sport Day, which is always fun and I found out that I can actually play basketball, haha. Basketball is probably my least favorite sport but I made a corner shot and the Elders were like "where did that come from!?" It was pretty funny, and rather amazing for me to make the shot. 

     We also went to Valika's house for dinner one night last week. She is the Relief Society President and the absolute sweetest lady. She is training a dog that is 6 months old right now and SO cute. What was great for me though was that I understood everything she said!.....that is, everything she said to the dog. Haha, but really, I do feel like I can understand a little bit more each and every day and I'm just trying to be brave by talking to more and more people. I made my first phone calls in Hungarian today so that was a new experience! I set up a few lessons over the phone, so that was good for me! 

     I hope you all had an amazing Christmas. Oh, I almost forgot, I learned a new word yesterday when someone at church was talking about my freckles! Szeplő means freckle!

​Sok szeretettel, Schoendorfer Nővér