Started out by getting up and immediately doing Carrie's hair color. I took on the role of Andre and gave her a hair color treatment. It came out great and she was happy. It looks just like Marty, her professional hair-dresser in Federal Way. When she's happy, I'm happy.
Showered and shaved, dressed then ate breakfast. Did our studying, then left for a walk to the Elkor mall about a 20 minute walk down Brivibus iela. Walked around there then came back. All-in-all it took 2 hours.
Cooked all afternoon. I made Lisa's chicken noodle soup. Carrie made home made noodles for me. This soup uses Mash potatoes as a thickener. It is super delicious.
Carrie made rolls and brownies and Connie's chicken salad. We are set for the week.
We had the Sister Missionaries over for dinner. Sisters Sandberg and Grineviciute. Sister Sandberg is from Orem and Sister Grinevicute is from Lithuania.We had a good time and the Sisters enjoyed the dinner.
Full day at the office today. We opened at 8:30 and had nice quite time until 10:00. Completed the Missionary Baptismal Certificate for President Boswell. Sister Segeberg got the design down on word, and we found some heavy stock to print it on.
Tuesday
Worked on the process of burning the Mighty Baltic Mission 2011 Christmas DVD that Sister Boswell put together. Need a better burning program.
Went to the post office to pick up packages. There are so many at this time of the year that we decided to take the van. The post office is only about 1/4 mile away to walk, but by car is 2 km. The traffic flow in Latvia is crazy. It is almost impossible to make a left-hand turn. There are no left-hand turn lanes, and, there are signs that prohibit you from even attempting it.You have to carefully plan your route because you have to make many right hand turn groups. Most light you have to go straight thru or can turn right. We had to go 2 Km more to get to the PO because for this.
Thursday
Today was transfer day. Around noon time the office was flooded with Elders and Sisters either coming to stay at the Mission Home tonight for departure for home tomorrow or just coming to say goodbye to the people leaving. A local Sister received her mission call and she opened it in front of everyone. Lots of hugging and crying went on.
17 missionaries are going home tomorrow, so they all come into the office, then go to the mission home for the night and get taken to the airport in the morning. Many others came in to say goodbye and see the Mission Call opening. It was pandamonium with 30 or more people in the office. When the Sister opened her call, it was to the SLC Temple Square mission. She will be with the other local Sister that is also going there
This afternoon we had a power blip that took out the Cisco AP. It uses POE and has a special power supply for that. It looks like the POE unit is now dead. I went to M79 and bought two cheap switches and wired the two computers that were using wireless into the network. They now have full access but President Boswell's laptop won't be able to access the internet. I can get an AP at M79 for 22LS to fix the immediate problem. Maybe tomorrow.
My new best APP is google translate. I use it daily to figure out what things are in the food Ad's as well as everything else.
Got authorization today to buy a new computer for the office. I bought an ASUS laptop that has good specs. I was surprised to get it back to the office and turn it on. Only had DOS on it. Had to go buy Win 7 to put on it. Oops.
Friday
Today I determined that I was not going to get the Cisco AP going, so I went to M79 and bought a cheap Wireless AP. Had the office up and running on Wireless in an hour. Everything is working fine at the moment.
Started the project to burn the Mighty Baltic Christmas DVD that Sister Boswell put together. She did a great job on it and it is very nice. I burned 28 copies today for their first Missionary Christmas Party in Lithuania on Monday. I was afraid that it would take longer, but got it done by 5PM.
Went to the Millet's for dinner and a movie. We had a good time and watched "While You Were Sleeping", it was a sweet movie and we talked for a couple of hours after the movie. Had a great time. We really enjoy being with the Millet's, they are a sweet couple.
Saturday
Went to the Restaurant supply store and Prismo this morning. It is a ways from here -- over the river and through the woods. Spent a bunch of money. I hope we are done feathering our nest here.
Sister Skvortsov called while we were shopping and asked what time they were suppose to come to Dinner tonight. We had invited her and her husband (the Russian Center Branch, Branch President) to dinner tonight, but hadn't heard from them since we invited them. That's great. We'll see if they like American cooking. 2 PM
The Skvortsov's arrived and we had dinner. We had a pleasant evening and ate and talked. Sister Skvortsov speaks very good English (she teaches English in a school here). President Skvortsov speaks a little English, and understands more than he can speak. He did get lost sometimes if we were speaking because we speak so fast.We talked about each of our cultures and they told us of their experiences going to Russia and how they were treated, even though they are native Russian speakers.
President and Natalia Skvortsov
Sunday
We have Church at 1:00, and got back home at about 4:30 PM.
Miss the car. We have to take the bus everywhere.My mobility is very restricted. In the spring would like to see more of the country than just Riga. Maybe we can rent a car?? There is an Opal van that we can borrow for shopping on Saturday, but it isn't available all the time. It actually is used by the Assistants to the President mostly.
This is the most foreign we have lived in another country. While in the military we lived in several different countries but had military support, such as commissary and BX. We could get all the foods and goods we were use to.
This is different. All writing is in Latvian or Russian. Yesterday we bought a package of what we thought was whipped topping. Well that was what we thought it showed on the picture. Turns out it was yeast. The package was written in German and we obviously don't know what the word for yeast is in German. We do know what it is in Latvian though.
It is much different being a tourist also. When you are a tourist you stay at a hotel and generally eat in restaurants that cater to tourists. That really insulates you from the real culture and living conditions. If you really want to get to know a country, live on the local economy for a while.
We skyped with Shelly & Vince, Wendy and her gang, Ryan and Amanda, and the Christmas gathering at Aunt Helen's house. It was a big skype night. Busy week.
See you later,
Dasvadanya
Elder Segeberg
what do you live over? a business? another apartment?
ReplyDeleteWe are on the second floor and yes, there are apartments as well as shops on the first floor of buildings that have their front on a major street.
ReplyDeleteRight under us is a wallpaper shop.