Week 1 in the Netherlands

To my family and friends:  (as if there's someone else to write to:)

Man to say a lot has happened is a sickly gross understatement. It's more change than I've ever had in my whole life (combined;) lol but boy, let me kind of give a run down of what went down:

We flew over the ocean (mind you that's amazing) and I will say I love it on a plane :) it's super awesome being in an awesome plane flying awesomely over the ocean, and seeing cities in Europe at night, super lit up and epic, and the people there give you snacks and food every so often and they're really nice :) I love it hehe (my district thought I was hilarious and liked to watch my reaction as we took off and flew around all awesomely and everything :) anyhoo, enough of that heheh

I didn't sleep at all on the plane, I wasn't tired. When we landed down they checked our passports, then we got our bags and then the mission president with the assistants were right outside and greeted us. Super nice, awesome people. (btw, i stopped capitalizing cause the silly people have the enter button in the wrong place so i keep hitting stupid other things. so i decided it's not important :)..... \

we went to the office and got ourselves checked in. as we did that we broke up and went with the assistants out contacting on the street 0.0 heh.. Not bad lol. I went with elder van overbeek and it really wasn't terrible, It was just clear that just cause I know some dutch words does not at all mean i'll get what they're trying to say. i still can't. not really hehhe. but it's coming for sure :).....

It was funny cause I wasn't tired at first, but as lunch started to wear down, and when we were waiting in the office after my interview with the president, i was suddenly shutting down lol. Nobody could stay awake lol. we got to nap before dinner but even then, after dinner ended, and as the pres talked to us, i couldn't concentrate at all. mijn lichaam (body) decided it was time to shut down and it wouldn't hear any excuses lol....btw, sooooooooo cold. Not at all warmer than at home lol. The wind is evil and comes from dark fell places in the arctic. ....the next day, we had a few study sessions and we met our trainer. mine is awesome. he has been here two (count em) transfers, (about 12 weeks) and now he's training me. He got called to speak Spanish in the Netherlands, and so he's basically fluent in spanish, dutch, and has also learned some french so he could teach an africaan man who doesn't speak the other languages. He is great. I'm lucky to have him.

We’re serving in Almere, which used to be ocean but they drained it away with dikes and built cities on it lol awesome. I'm below sea level right now. This place is sooooooooo flat. it ranges from a few meters above sea level, to 2 or 3 below. that's it. it's crazy.

Everyone one here is stinking Tall. on average, the dutch people are almost all 6 feet i swear. I feel like a stumpy 1 1/3 language speaking american who never has any clue were he's going. like ever lol. .

My first lesson, we walked into a home with about 4 black afrikaan men speaking french. They were eating bread and some sort of chicken heart concoction and they (apparently) invited us to sit and eat with em. I coudn't possibly have felt more out of place like ever in my whole life lol. But we ate (it was kinda good:) and then elder Pimentel (my trainer) taught one in french and i sat and nodded my head when i thought it might be wise to do so (lol yaaa, it was awesome)......

We bought a bike and a coat the first day, cause you can't do nothing without em..it snowed here and for a while there was a couple inches on everything. My companion has bald boy tires so he nearly died several times lol. I got better ones :).....

The District Leader’s companion and I taught a nine year old (with much better dutch than mine) the law of tithing and follow the prophet, while my comp was with the DL interviewing a lady who spoke spanish, for baptism. . It’s gonna be postponed a bit, but they're still on track. ...boy. are you able to get the image a little bit here? it's quite humorous if you can picture it, but it's awesome at the same time. I'm in an apartment with elder shoemaker who is training elder muse (from mtc district) and the four of us have a great apartment right above a McDonalds (but it doesn't smell lol) the food they have is great :) it's very echt (real). I like it :).

i love you!!