Day 6

Today is the first Sunday of our trip. We had church at 11 and weren’t quite sure how long it would take to get there, so we left at about 10 to catch the bus and make sure we would have some time. Of course it only took about 20 minutes to get there, so we arrived at the church at about 10:30. I think my favorite thing about church was that in addition to the 35 of us invading their ward, they also had some other families and small groups of Americans visiting their ward so I swear like 75% of the people there were American. It was kind of weird because it honestly didn’t feel much different from going to church in the States. It made it kind of troublesome as far as study goes because I was really looking forward to listening to some good Irish accents and writing down some examples of differences between American and Irish English. It was fast and testimony meeting, and I think only 2 or 3 of the people that bore their testimony were not American.

One of the things I love about the church is that no matter where you go, the church is the same. Even though we are in Ireland the bishop still said “we would like to welcome you out to sacrament meeting today,” which I think is the classic greeting at every church meeting I have ever been to. But of course what I mean is deeper than that. Even though in the past 2 months I have been to church in Provo, St. George, Italy, and Ireland, I still feel the same spirit, the same fellowship and love. And of course, we all believe in the same Gospel. We are all human, and we are all just striving to live our lives the best that we can while putting Christ at the center of our lives and I love that fact about the church.

So . . . on the way home from church on the bus I had a little accident one might say. I was sitting on the top deck(?) of the double-decker bus sort of halfway on one of the seats next to a girl I didn’t know. We were about halfway back to the hostel, and I was half asleep and not really paying attention to what was happening. So all of a sudden the bus hit a bump or turned or something, I don’t really know, and I definitely just slid right off my seat flat onto the ground. I was so confused! I don’t have any idea how it happened, but it was really embarrassing, and of course it didn’t make it any better that I was wearing a dress and it was kind of riding up . . . anyway. And Marissa was sitting right across from me and then she laughed basically the rest of the way back. What a day. “I’m usually such a good traveler . . . “

For the rest of the day Robyn and I just decided to kind of take it easy and eat and relax and such. We got some sandwiches and then went back to the hostel and talked to some people and facebooked (by the way I love that that is a verb) for a while and worked on our assignment. After a few hours we decided we were hungry again, so we went to the little grocery story next door to find something good. We settled on little boxes of cereal (dad will be so proud!). We fought over the best boxes of course, but in the end we compromised and shared the mega crunch coco flakes.