A Smashing First Week

Smashing is some British slang for you all, hope you liked it :) Hello! I have loved loved loved the England MTC so far. After long flights and layovers we finally got to the MTC Thursday morning. And driving on the left side of the road actually wasn't as scary as I thought it would be! They didn't assign us any companions until late Thursday night, and so we were all left to kind of roam around and get situated that day. The Preston Temple is on the same grounds as the MTC so we walked up there. There are all these lovely little cobblestone paths with hedges on both sides, and then archways and flowers and it looks like the Secret Garden everywhere! And the view we have of England hillsides from our bedroom window is incredible! I'll try to send some pictures of it later today. My companion is Sister Gjevik! She's from Norway, and we were actually facebook messaging before coming to the MTC! We were so happy! She's the sweetest person I've ever met, and we get along and teach together so well. She's been teaching me some Norwegian, so now I know that tusen takk means thank you very much, I know how to say a bunch stuff more! There's only about 40 missionaries here, and we all got here at the same time. Only 8 of them are from America, so the rest are from all the European countries! Just in my room the sisters are from England, Norway, Brazil, Germany, and Mexico. And my district includes people from Wales, England, Italy, America, and Mexico! It's insane! Listening to all these different accents has screwed mine up, especially having a Norwegian companion! I don't even know what I sound like anymore! The other missionaries here are going to either Greece or Germany, so some interesting prayers have been said. We've done so much in the past week that it's hard to sum it all up. But if I had to I would say: devotionals, classes, studying, role playing, and teaching. That actually pretty much explains it. But the days go by so fast since we're just in classes all day! And they feed us SO MUCH. The food is so good here, and the desserts are to die for! The MTC President, President Preston, instructed us that we cannot say the words cool, awesome, guys, or dude. And I started saying them 10x more in the past week because of that. So now I'm working on replacing them with words like marvelous, splendid, delightful, smashing, and so forth. And it's really hard to get used to eating everything with a fork and knife, including bacon?!?! And hot dogs?!?! It's the worst! I've played football twice now in England, which I think is the coolest thing ever! I'm still dreadful at it. They also have table tennis here that we can play, and I'm really competitive with table tennis, so I find it really difficult because we aren't allowed to keep score. I'm steering clear of it from now on. They're busing us out to Manchester tomorrow to go street contacting. I'm straight terrified. Half because I don't know how to understand some British accents, and half because I don't think I'll be able to respond. But we only have a week left in the MTC, so I best get used to it! Three people in my district come from my mission, so they were telling us all about it yesterday. Apparently the people in Birmingham have the worst accents, and the wards are all crazy. So I'm pretty excited. But they did say that they've never met nicer people, so that's good. I already love the people I've met from there, and I just love England so much! They're letting us bus out to the supermarket in a few minutes, so I'll have to be going, but I'll try to send some photos later today! I love you all and miss you an awful lot! Have an amazing week! -Sister Nielsen