What were you grateful for this week?
Church! I’m so thankful I was able to make the journey to church even just for sacrament meeting. 30 minutes by train and 30 minutes walking and back. So worth it though! And the missionaries translated for me. One was from Utah and it’s also his first week in Italy so we had that in common. They gave me their phone number in case I need anything. It was perfect!

What was the most difficult or challenging part of this week? 
Missing my family. I always miss my fiancé and watching my host mom with her daughter sometimes reminds me of my mom and me and that is hard sometimes.

Tell us about a “wow” moment you had this week.
While the mom and daughter were working on Italian homework together, I decided to deep clean the house.

Tell us about your week! 
This week was great! I toured around Merano and my host family were my tour guides for one of our nightly walks. They showed me all the best pizza and gelato places and shopping!

 

I took a bus to a beautiful botanical castle called Trautmansdorff. It has 4 huge gardens and my camera and I just hiked through it and loved it! We also went to a friend’s house for pizza and none of them spoke a lick of English, but I still had fun.

 

I also took a long train and walking journey to church in the next city over and that was such an incredible experience! I felt so much love and so happy I was able to be in the building even if just for an hour! My host girl and I have had a lot of fun practicing English by talking about everything under the stars, playing scrabble in English, listening to music, and having dance contests. I’m also a photographer and she loves photography so I’ve been teaching her some tips and tricks about her camera! It’s been so fun to get to know this little girl and really come to love her and her family, and their cute dog, Arthur. 

 

It’s been hard adjusting to the culture shock, missing my family and fiancé and not ever really hearing English, but things are slowly getting easier.