Weekly Email - September 3rd

Hi All,

This week went pretty well here. Łódź has its own character that I have never seen anywhere else. Last P-day (after emails) we went to IKEA which was weird because everything was in Polish in there. Other than that, it was just like in the states. You can get a large meatball meal (20 meatballs) for 13 zł (roughly 4 usd) that was pretty awesome. The food here is generally pretty cheap, a full loaf of white bread is about 2.50 zł, so less than a buck. A fresh baked loaf from a piekarnia (bakery) is about the same price! The Polish food is pretty good but very heavy. Pierrogi are delicious. There is still a bunch of stuff that I have to try like all of their stews and soups. They have a Turkish dish here called kebabs which are like huge meat filled sandwich things, they are pretty good too. There is NO free water in Poland, you have to buy a water bottle or filter your own tap water if you want a drink. All missionary apartments have mission issued 3 stage filters that are supposed to be very safe, and Łódź has some of the cleanest water in Poland.

We have a baptismal date for next Saturday, one of the members will perform the baptism, the man being baptized is named Adam. He is pretty cool, I think he will do really good. The branch has about 85 member. There are some real cool people here. Some speak some decent English, others are Polish only. There is an old man with terrible English that writes down jokes and poems in English and shares them with the missionaries.

My Polish is coming along slowly but surely. I can carry on very simple conversations if the Pole knows that they need to speak slowly. Somehow, the Poles can tell just by looking at you whether or not you speak Polish. They will talk to Elder J in Polish, and the second sentence that comes out of their mouth is "your friend doesn't speak any Polish does he?". There are some pretty chill people here.

Today we are going to the zoo for 10 zł, that is awesome. I am pretty excited for that. I am also going to buy a more formal overcoat at some point. Everyone here tells me that we will need something more formal and warm. They say we can find them for around 250 zł.

Love you all, Bye!