Dear Family,
Merry Christmas! I'm going to be so excited to say that to you in person. I got the lovely package that mom and dad so thoughtfully prepared for me. It was perfect! The Elders in Ekat who were around when I opened it were disappointed that there was no American candy inside and just CD's, sweaters, stickers, etc. I was super excited though! The two sweaters that mom got me fit perfectly. Dad's CD's work great (the burned ones only work on our portable DVD however...).
The most exciting thing to happen to me this week was an egg. A "rule" in this mission is that you have to put your eggs in water to see if they float before you eat them. If they float-- throw them out! You might get salmonella poisoning! Ahhhhh!! Well, Sister Fedas told me that was ridiculous, and I kind of agreed with her. I've been floating my eggs (or rather, they're NOT floating) for almost 5 months, and nothing has happened. Well, I was making brownies for our zone meetings (I'm nice), and I thought "should I just float the eggs one last time? well, alright" and did it. One of the eggs floated! It was a miracle. I saved 8 missionaries from food poisoning just by floating my egg. Miracles really do happen.
Something else cool to happen in Ufa this week was the Olympic torch. Because we're missionaries, we are extreeeeeemely out of the loop when it comes to current events like the Olympics and such. We live right in the middle of downtown and traffic was terrible on Friday. We were 90 min late to one appointment and had to cancel another because traffic in the city was so awful. We had to walk home three times over the weekend and it took about an hour each time. So ridiculous. Well, we found out why the traffic was so bad! We walked out of our apartment Saturday morning to wait for the bus to church. None came, and we couldn't figure out why. Then we realized (after waiting 20 min) that there were police EVERYwhere. Turns out transport on our end of the city was totally shut down because....the Olympic torch came to Ufa! Even though I didn't see it, I saw everyone else who saw it. :) They all had really cool flags with a map of Russia on it with every route of the Olympic torch drawn on. Would've been a really nifty souvenir.
The weather in Ufa took a pretty significant drop this week. The lowest forecast was -29 C but it ended up only being -25 C. I'm not freezing to death (yet) but it's coming close! I've heard that January and February are the coldest months, so I'm excited to experience that. I bought these really cool shoe inserts (they're like insoles) that you stick in the bottom of your shoe and it adds and extra two inches so your feet are farther away from the ground. It looks like cardboard and cotton mixed together. It's definitely a bargain because it was the equivalent of $1 and definitely keeps my feet warmer. The problem is is that since now my feet are slightly more elevated inside my shoe, it's made my boots really tight on top and there's tension around the zipper. But I figure it's worth it since I can always get them fixed if they break. Also, I'll definitely dump these boots when I come home next year. (Can you believe that I can say that? "come home next year"?? crazy!)
On the way to church on Sunday, while Sister Fedas and I were waiting at the bus stop, a GIGANTIC wolf/dog came up and stood by me. Those things freak me out really bad. Stray dogs breed with the wolves in the countryside and somehow they end up living in the city, and they are EVERYwhere. Anyway, our bus came and we got on the driver turns to us and said "who's dog is that?" because the dog followed us on the bus. We told him it wasn't ours, but I don't think he really believed us especially when our bus stop came and the dog got off with us (actually, he got off before us). He ended up leading us all the way to the church and then patiently stood outside as we scurried in, trying to make sure that he didn't also come in. It was the weirdest thing, but maybe he was there to protect us from something.
The branch here put on a gigantic Christmas party this last week. It was this nativity scene that they had turned into a short play and "Russian-ized" it a lot. I played the piano for the Angel choir. We had quite a turn-out for it, and then afterward we all feasted on pre-ordered food from Lido's. Yum.
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