October 31, 2015

Used up a lot of my email time to upload pictures, but they're worth more than words anyways, right? Let's see, what else happened that I didn't take a picture of...

We were in Győr and Szombathely this week for splits, and they're both a fair ways outside of Budapest. Got a little bit lost driving there because our gps decided that it wanted to stop working, but we ended up making it there just fine. It was pretty scary driving in Hungary at first, but I'm pretty used to the small roads and tight parking spaces now, and it's not that bad. It's for sure made me a better driver though haha. Splits were fun, and it was nice to meet some new missionaries that I didn't know from before.

In Szombathely, we went to a pizza place with the missionaries for lunch, and we ended up having some leftover pizza that we put in a box to take back to Budapest. We walked out to the car, and a homeless man approached us speaking gibberish German and mumbling in Hungarian "Happy New Year." He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a flier for a bakery in the square across the street and hands the paper to me, then grabs the pizza box out of my hands and says "I eat this. I eat this." over and over in Hungarian. We were pretty confused, so we let go of the box and said okay, after which he took back his piece of paper, walked away, and presumably ate his pizza somewhere. It's okay, he probably needed it way more than we did, anyways. Plus, it gave us a good laugh because of just how ridiculously, unbelievable random the whole thing was. Maybe we should try that same technique when streeting...

Other than that, we've just been busy with everything here! The weeks are going by super fast. If I counted right, I've been out here now for 364 days now. Crazy stuff, no?

That's most of the news/funny stories for this week, more to come next time. Hope you have a good week and that everything's going well back home! :)

Driving to Győr and Szombathely with Elder Watson

Got stuck in traffic for over an hour, no cars moving whatsoever. I guess there was some road work just before Budapest, and an accident happened and all the cars were stuck for 45 kilometers. All the cars turned off the engines, and the drivers were all walking around on the highway talking to each other. Met a Romanian, German, and Serbian truck driver when all this happened. Nice people. Took longer than expected to make it back home, but we did it!

Literally got "dogged" by a program. He didn't have 

time to meet, but his retriever did!

One of the villages outside of Budapest that we go to a lot for programs, Budaörs.

Didn't remember if I'd ever shown you what Hungarian money looks like, so here's a picture! Everything's in very large numbers. Really neat looking bills and coins, though. The coolest part is that coins are actually used a lot here. I never really payed with exact change in America, and any coins I just tossed into a coin jar, but you can go to the grocery store here and buy your whole purchase with just coins. There's 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, and 200 Forint coin pieces, and 1000, 2000, 5000, 10000, and 20000 Forint bills.

Same money, just the other side. Missing the 20 Forint coin,
didn't have it in my pocket at the time.

Backstreets of Budapest

The Duna just before nightfall

The Parliament building next to a full moon

Sister Csolity, from Debrecen, is going to Mesa for her mission!

 She's just waiting for her visa right now, and until she gets
it she's going to serve for a while here in Hungary. You guys'll
 have to have her over for dinner when she's there!

On splits in Győr this week, this is out by the city hall there

Old buildings of Győr at night