In Rotterdam-- Week #1

I call these fine specimens of photography:

1: Soaked with bike

2: Soaked with Rotterdam

Holy cow so much has happened!

First, the story about me looking off to the side in the picture--

I was posing giving Sister Robinson a nice smile when a drunk old man walked up to us mumbling in Dutch. The AP's talked with him, but yeah, she took the picture right as he started talking to us, so I was looking at him. I didn't understand a word of what he said.

Yeah, I got "pie-ed" by a Sister Missionary, but that seems so long ago now! AGH!

Elder Taggart and Elder Shaw

Okay, my trainer is Elder Taggart. He's super funny and incredibly similar to me, which is nice. Also, he looks like Benedict Cumberbatch, except less weird. He's taught me so much already, and defends me from all the crazy Dutch questions thrown at me that I don't understand.

We're in Rotterdam! It's super pretty, you'll get some pictures. There are a ton of immigrants from various other countries here. It's super cool!

I have a bike..... It cost me a lot more than I expected..... 180 euros! Ugh! bedding isn't too big of a deal, but I'm going to get clothing today. I really hope I don't need more money, but it's entirely possible.

I love it here. And I have a ton of stories. First day we just hung around the mission office and home and took care of some paper work.

Then the second day I finally got into my area. After dropping my stuff off we went to go look for a bike. We didn't find one so we decided to go to an area and look for some inactives by the bus (by the way, inactives make up 75% of the ward). Well, it started to rain..... I got soaked. We didn't find any of the inactives but we ended up in a members home we didn't even know was there. She was there with her cousin, Ignacious(sp?), who happens to be the world #2 long jumper. The one that injured himself in 2008! He isn't a member, but loves studying with the missionaries when he can. We're hoping we can do more work with him. He's actually competing in Zurich this week.

Next day we finally found me a bike. However, I had to ride on the back of Elder Taggart's through POURING RAIN to get there. That sucked.

Other cool stories..... the members have been really nice to us. Most of them have a very interesting attitude toward the church. I'm not sure how to describe it.

Oh! We were riding back home from a dinner appointment on Saturday when a man (Elder Taggert thinks he was Moroccan) started yelling at us quite rudely. We were at a bike stop light (ugh, they're the worst) thus we couldn't really leave, but he just kept yelling at us. There were a lot of mother *$#@*& in his sentences.The Dutch people around us kept asking if we knew him. We didn't, and they were quite sympathetic to us. It was nice actually.

Oh! They have little triangles on roads that indicate who has to yield. Sometimes, it's the bikes that have to yield for cars. Well, I suck on a bike and didn't see some once and had to...... use Elder Taggert's body to help stop myself, but I ended up going a bit too far past them anyway. I did stop though! However, a police officer saw this, and came up to me; he was quite angry. He was speaking Dutch, and I didn't understand ANY of it. According to Elder Taggly Waggly the officer said I was lucky he didn't give me a 70 Euro fine. That was scary.

I apparently have a thing called greenie butt. Yeah, bikes suck.

Last day in the MTC, ya know, cuz Elder Shaw swag!

This is PART of the view from our apartment

More views from our apartment

Another view from our apartment

Artsy picture with Elder Swaggart:

And a chocolate ampersand. Apparently you give chocolate letters to people on one day of "Christmas" (there are three). I guess someone's name must start with one or something. It wouldn't surprise me--

Well, that's everything I guess. Sorry about the many spelling and grammatical errors. The computer is in Dutch, thus everything I do is highlighted in red and I don't have the heart to go back through and check it.

Love you all!

Elder Shaw