This week has been pretty crazy. As you probably know, I moved to Croatia. I'll first just tell you what the travel and first day or so was like. We got up at normal time on Monday morning. A lot of people had early flights and had to leave at like 3 or 4 in the morning, but our flight wasn't till 11:10, so we didn't leave till 8.
After I called you, Elder Bailey and I went and get Cafe
Rio for lunch (my last american meal), and then we left to Chicago which was
only like a 2.5 hour flight. For whatever reason, we ended up in Chicago 1 hour
early, but after we went and checked in at the gate they said that everyone was
already checked in so we would be leaving in 15 minutes.
The flight to Paris was only 8.5 hours and they fed us dinner and breakfast so it wasn't too bad. I only slept about an hour, though and we arrived at 8 in the morning Europe time.
We had to wait an extra hour for our flight to Zagreb and we were all pretty hungry, but for some reason the only food places open in the airport were coffee stands. All of the restaurants were closed, but all of the weird Paris perfume and art shops were open.
The flight out to Zagreb was only 2 hours and I slept about half of it. We just took one of those little planes that you just walk out to.
The Zagreb airport is actually really small. just 1 little runway and a little building where they check your passport and drop off your bags. President Rowe and some of the senior couples were waiting for us in the entry way in the front of the building.
We went and dropped our stuff of at the
mission home and had just enough time to eat some lunch before we went to the
mission office. There we took turns being interviewed by president Rowe. Since
there were 9 of us, it took a few hours. While we were waiting for interviews we
took turns going out with one of the zone leaders or APs to go street contacting
for about an hour or so. That was way awesome.
After, we got to go back to the
mission home and eat dinner with the Rowe family. They have two 9 year old
twins that remind me a lot of Aubrey. Later that night President Rowe told us
where we were going. The next day, on Wednesday, we met our trainers and had a
little training meeting and then went out to our separate areas. My trainer is
Elder Marcek. He's pretty cool, he's been out for 18 months. Me and the elders
and sisters going to Rijeka and Zadar just took buses. But the Elders going to
Bosnia got to fly out to Sarijevo because the roads were so bad. The 2
Slovenian elders, Simon and Wilson, obviously just went to Slovenia. 3
missionaries, Elders Proud, Bailey and Merl, went to Bosnia. Elder Despain went
to Beograd, and sister Sorenson, elder Scirkovich and I stayed in Croatia.
Sister Sorenson is now in Zagreb, Scirkovich is in Rijeka, and I'm in Karlovac.
In case you were wondering how to pronounce that so you can tell people, A in Croatian always is like in car. O is always like in slow or grow, and C sounds
like a TS. So you say Karlovac like Car-Low-Vahts. It's an awesome little town
just a little outside of Zagreb. There are 4 rivers within the boundaries of
the city, and they are really proud of it.The first thing people will tell you about
Karlovac is that it has 4 rivers. It's sort of like a a suburb of Zagreb,
except it isn't like a suburb in the american sense because it's still kind of
closer together with mostly a lot of tall apartment buildings, and some small
houses maybe with small yards out towards the edge of the city. I think the
population is about 50,000, so, similar to pleasant grove, and I think the city
boundaries are about the same, if not a little smaller. You don't have to worry
about me getting beat up though. The crime rates in Croatia a really low, and
especially in Karlovac, because it's smaller town. Also a lot of the people here
are older, because it's far enough from the big city but still close enough to
family, so lot's of people retire here. We don't have a car, and since it's a
smaller city they don't have many buses just around town, so we walk everywhere.
Our apartment is located more or less in the middle of the city though,so it's
not too bad. There is an old center, which was were the original fort was when
the city was first built and where the historic town square is. And several
blocks north east is the new center, where all of the new shopping centers and
supermarkets and stuff are. Our apartment is right between the 2.
We have a nice little (but
still pretty good sized) chapel,
a little kitchen/classroom were they have
relief society and we have English class on weeknights,
a little primary room (there are only 3 primary kids), and a little branch presidents office.
Our
little branch is way cool. I think yesterday in sacrament meeting there were 16
members, 1 investigator (who is the husband of one of the members) and the 3
kids. We just got a new branch president last week who was baptized just 2
years ago. I still haven't taught an investigator yet, right now we only have 3
or 5 progressing investigators and it's sometimes hard to find a good time they
can be taught. We teach a couple recently baptized members though, and also we
teach free English classes. We currently have 5 English students, 1 just signed
up on Saturday. Also Elder Marcek is really good at playing the piano so he
does free piano classes, we have 2 piano students. We've gotten a couple good
contacts just out street contacting, and there is a lady who works a the tie
store where the missionaries always go and we gave her a Book of Mormon. Also
we gave a Book of Mormon to our new English student during our first meeting on
Saturday. The food here is way good, especially compared to MTC food. They have
a bunch of little bakeries (or pekarnicas) all around the city, and a handful
off small little restaurants. Most of the Restaurants in Karlovac are pretty
Italianish, or "pizza pasta places" with all of the most classic
Croatian dishes as well. Since Karlovac isn't too big there aren't a lot of
restaurants, and they say you have to go to one of the bigger cities for the
really good food. It was really snowy all over Europe right before we arrived,
and someone said they heard that the day before, the Paris airport was shut
down. The first look I got at Croatia wasn't until right as we were touching
down on the runway because it was so foggy outside. I didn't really ever get a
good look at the whole city of Zagreb because you could only see ahead like 1
block. On Wednesday night and all of Thursday the snow and sleet was coming
down pretty hard in Karlovac. Apparently it didn't really snow anywhere else
though. The one old black suitcase I took made it all the way up to the
apartment even through all the snow, but isn't in the best shape. Anyway,
that's pretty much what I've been doing. I love you guys and hope you are all having a good time.
Love,
Schyler.
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