Hey!!

This is it, people! I'm in Croatia! Finally! I got assigned to a little-ish town called Karlovac, just 45 minutes from Zagreb, Croatia. I say little-ish because in my mind it's not that little, but everyone says it is. Also it's winter so apparently no one is on the streets right now, even though I think there are bunches of people out and about in this dreary, rainy, foggy weather that has eternally permeated the air. Anyway. I love it!

My trainer is named Sister Walker. She has about two transfers (9 week periods) left on her mission, so she's really good at the language and knows what she's doing. That's nice. Except she just got transferred here from Serbia, so her grammar is a little messed up :) She's really really cool though.

Karlovac is super cool. The church has about 15-20 members that actively come to church, and then about a million inactive members, but even though it seems small, the active members are really strong. Apparently we have one of the strongest branches in the whole mission (which is comprised of 14 cities). Each city in the mission (typically) has one set of elders, one set of sisters, and one set of senior missionaries. Karlovac is unique because 4 months ago, they didn't have enough sister missionaries to fill it, so they put in a second set of elders, and then 2 months ago, the didn't have enough missionaries period, so they actually took a whole companionship of elders out and they've been running short since. Then me and Sister Walker showed up, and now we basically almost have a clean slate. Which is not something you want as a missionary haha. We came in with no one to teach, and anyone who had been taught 2-4 months ago is no longer interested in hearing what we have to say. Which for us means a lot of phone calls and street contacting and going from door to door. But it's been good, I promise!

Some things about the people here:

Everyone smokes. Everyone. I will develop lung cancer (probably). 

Everyone has the same name! You know how when you think of Russian people, they're stereotypically named Valdimir or something? That stereotype is not unfounded. The Slavic people repeat names like nobody's business. One familly has two children: Ivan and Ivana. Another married couple is named Željko and Željka. It's hilarious and I love it. Ivan is probably the most popular name.

I don't remember much about my first day here. The mission presidents welcomed us, we did some stuff, and then they tried to keep us awake so that we could go to bed at night time here and adjust to the time change better. They eventually gave in and let us sleep at 9:00! That's awesome, for those of you who don't know, because on the mission we are normally not supposed to sleep till around 10:30, and wake up time is 6:30 mandatorially. They let us sleep in till 7:00, though! I don't know that a full night's sleep has ever felt so good.

Anyway. I am loving it here. We're right now in a little internet cafe in the old centar of town. Tonight we go to Zagreb so my trainer can go to a leadership conference until tomorrow afternoon, so I get to work with a sister in Zagreb until she's done with that. My first exchange already! I'm excited. And then Wednesday is zone conference, which our zone is made up of all the missionaries in three cities of Croatia (out of 6), and it's on the COAST. Warmmm :) And I'll get to see a couple of my friends from the MTC! It'll be sweet.

Okay good people, it's time for the fraza dana:

Ništa - (nee-shtah) Nothing - they literally use this word all the time. You say "thank you" they say "ništa". You say "we're missionaries" they say "ništa" and they shut the door, haha. One learns to love it.

I love you and miss you all. Don't forget about me in good ol' Croatia!

Peace out.

Sestra Watts