Modena, Italy - February 2, 2011

I don't really have very much to say today at all, and I am not sure why there is so little but it is so. But my companion and I did have a funny moment that makes me wonder how strange I will be when I come home. Last Wednesday after email we were chatting and I told her about taking that scuba diving class at BYU before leaving for my mission, and she was asking how it works and stuff, and so I told her how we would have about an hour and a half of classroom time and then a half hour break and then reconvene at the swimming pool for practice for the first three weeks of the class, and then the last three weeks were all just open water dives in the crater out in Midway. And so I told her how it was a little tricky taking it when I didn't have a car or any friends in the class, and how every time we split to reconvene at the pool I had to just sort of walk around until I found someone who would let me ride with them, and how I had to set up rides with random people in my class to get to the crater. And she asked if a friend of hers had been in my class, a guy named Nathan, and we thought for a minute it could have been the same Nathan who would give me a ride to the crater. But it wasn't. Then we were talking about how I would like to take the last class maybe when we are back at BYU, and were talking about having to get rides again, and started talking about how it will be tricky now to make sure we have another woman in the car so that we are not breaking the rules. And then said, 'wait a minute, I wouldn't have to get a ride from a female, right?' and she said, 'wait, I'm not sure. um...' and we were actually legitimately confused for about ten seconds, then realized those were all just mission rules non-applicable to normal people and we laughed a lot. Another strange thing about mission life that I have heard carries over: you basically change your name for a year and half. I really am not 'Rebecca' anymore, ever, but instead I am Sorella Langham. But in practice, your companion and other sisters and often even elders drop off the last name and we just refer to each other as 'sorella' or 'anziano', in effect changing your first name for 18 months from Rebecca to Sorella. But it isn't just me, either. You always just refer to your companion as, 'hey sorella, look at this!' or 'sorella, do you have a pamphlet in Bulgarian in your bag?' or whatever it is. But you do that for each companion, and everyone does that for every companion. So basically for 18 months you spend all your time with a bunch of other people who all have the same new first name, sorella, that you do. And it is so automatic now to just call the person I am with 'sorella,' that I am pretty sure I will accidentally call people 'sorella' when I come home too! bah! How strange!

Nothing much has changed this week, just did a lot of finding work and second appointments with the people we found last week. We did have interviews with President this week, and a training from the assistants during, and it was actually really good, Sorella Snodgrass and I really enjoyed it quite much.

Well, next week we are doing scambi, but a three-way scambi with Verona and Pordenone, and I will be going to Pordenone, way up north in the middle of nowhere, for Tuesday and Wednesday, and so we are bumping back p-day to Thursday. I'll write again next Thursday!