Monday, April 29, 2013

Home in Wroclaw

We finally made it to Wroclaw on Friday, the 12th of April.  The Elders (Stumpf and Weir) and Sisters (Ence and Smithee) came to our apartment to welcome us here. 

Our apartment is awesome.  We have a refridgerator and a freezer, a microwave and an oven.  There is a washing machine in our apartment but not a dryer.  No one in Poland has a dryer.  So we got a couple of clothes racks that we put up in our room and the clothes dry overnight.  Here are a few pictures of our apartment.
 Kitchen 
 Living Room
 
There were a few problems with the language barrier.  Grocery shopping was a joke.  I couldn't remember what Sis. Lloyd had told me to buy for anything.  We didn't know what the word for chicken was, or butter, or what type of flour to buy.  We just laughed and hoped we bought the right stuff.  Then when we got to the counter to check out it was a disaster.  We asked the clerk if she spoke English and of course she didn't.  The money here is in Slotz (pronouce swots).  We couldn't under stand what she meant, so Wayne just held out some money and she took what she needed.  The lowest Slotz is a 10.  Everything below that is in coins.  So 5 slotz is a coin.  The ratio to american dollars is about 3 to one.  So for 10 slotz about 3.37 dollars worth of stuff.  Also we learned that the stores don't have bags, you have to being your own.  Well we forgot, and we had walked to the store. That was really fun.  You fill up your car with gas first and then pay.  There is only one exit out of the gas station, so no one can leave without paying.  To fill up our tank on the car is about $55.00.  Here are pictures of the outside of our building and our huge car.

 
 
Going to church was fun.  Everyone greeted us very warmly.  The President of our Branch has Cerebral Palsy and has to get around with crutches.  He is awesome.  He has been doing everything by himself for the last three months.  We do have a Primary and Mutual Program.  There's three famillies in our branch and a lot of single or divorced women.  Our RS President is divorced because of her membership in the church, but she has a wonderful testimony.  She doesn't speak English at all.  So the missionaries sit by me and interpret everything for me.
 
This is the street we walk down to go to church.  The church is about a mile from our apartment, but because parking is a nightmare in Wroclaw, we walk.  People park on the sidewalk or any where else they can find.  See the trams, we are serenaded everynight by the clickety-clack of the trams, sirens of ambulances that seem to go off every 15 mins, and because there is a mile stretch on this road between red lights, the motorcyclists rev their bikes at night also.
Wayne was called to be the 1st Councilor in the Branch Presidency on the 14th of April, which was our Fast Sunday.  Both Wayne and I bore our testimonies that morning in broken Polish.  Everyone just smiled and nodded their heads. 
 
Monday is our P-Day, so we asked the missionaries over for dinner that night.  I bought some chicken and was going to make a sauce to go over noodles.  Everything was fine until I added the thickening, which I thought was Cornstarch.  It sure wasn't.  It was a gooey mess.  The missionaries were really polite though and ate everything.  I really felt sorry for them.  I did have success with some Chocolate Chip cookies.  They don't have chocolate chips here.  You have to break up a candy bar and use that.  They had quite a few of those.  I have a convection oven so you have to watch everything very carefully and everything is in the metric system, so converting oven temperatures was exciting, too.  Thank heaven for the internet.
 
Because of the Tram and the traffic on the roads, they have underground walkways at each corner.  This is a picture of one of them.  They also have stores in these walkways.  And lots of bread and fruit stands.  Polish people love their breads and donuts.
 
Our first week in Wroclaw was exciting and scary.  But we made it through.  More to come.


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