To Russia With Love: Farewell Vyborg 8/05/13

Dearest Family and Friends,

TRANSFER calls were this last Saturday morning! And i will be....(drum roll) SERVING IN PSKOV! With Sister Athena Kafalas (yes she's greek). I am so incredible excited! Sister Kafalas is two transfers away till she is done so i am "killing her" in missionary terms for finishing up a missionary. She came up for splits this last week and we just got along so well and fast so i am so excited to serve with her! I haven't heard much about pskov, just that the ward is so small that it makes vyborg look like a stake. And it's a good 5 hour bus ride from st. petersburg (mission home) on a Russian bus.exciting. Also we are going to be opening an area over there so that's really cool to expand the mission! I really will miss vyborg, but i know a little piece of my heart will always be here. I bore my testimony on Sunday because I was leaving and the ward was sad to see me go but felt sure that since I am new on a mission that I very well may return to vyborg, i hope so! I also played for the last time in Relief Society, all the sisters are so incredible, I will miss them so much!

This week was a good week. I struck up a conversation with an old babushka on the bus and she was just darling, not at ALL interested in the gospel and make that very clear but was impressed that we were out here on missions. old babushkas always call us "goods" and "sweets" and "angels". They are so adorable and probably my favorite. Then when i was getting off the bus she gave me this bouquet of flowers from her Dacha! how adorable. she said that I was such a good sweet girl so she wanted me to have them! seriously I teared up and wanted to take her home with me!

As many of you probably know, it was harry potter/j.k. Rowling birthday on the 31st. And that was when the sisters were up for a split so of course we celebrated! with wafers (best things ever) and juice, it was awesome. we even happened to find some matches! PERFECT!

We also went to castle service Thursday and raked hay! It was starting to rain to the lady in charge ran out yelling at us and waving her arms. (apparently its forbidden to work in the rain). She then expressed her thanks and made us go home and make sure to "write our mothers and tell them we are healthy". I have never had someone be so concerned with my health in my entire life! Another service activity we went and had to paint at this members house, marina (shes a whole story in and of itself, but later). Anyways so we go over, and she has 1 cupboard for us to paint....so i just grabbed the brush and did it quickly because we had other plans soon. She asked if we painted in America...i don't know why some people think we live on different planets! ha ha but It looked nice when we were done (thank you to dad for the painting skills, they came in handy!).

During language study the other day I was looking through the dictionary learning words for new vocab. And you know you're in Russia when "hangover" would be a "good word" to learn from the dictionary...but really. it's so sad, people are drunk 24-7 here, all day every day. Uh just breaks my heart.
So I've come to find that here in Russia they don't like sour things, so NO sour patch kids! very sad. Also the milk here is super weird! I swear it all tastes different, every one! So it's like a test.."uhh, this one tastes like the cow got into an onion patch...."(i really hope someone knows that movie reference). :)

I love you all so much! sorry if it takes me forever to respond sometimes. Time flies and time limits really aren't my favorite thing ever.

I'm loving learning more about the gospel every day. If anyone has time, read the ensigns, they are seriously incredible! I love the one from November