Email from Sara 3/18/09

Buongiorno from Firenze!

Hello friends and fam!!
Just a warning. The space bar on this computer doesn't function very well,so some of my words will be running together, but I'll try to keepit legible...ormaybe not :)

Alrighty, so Florence is VERY different from Rome in many many ways. First of all it's very flat here. Which is nice. People ride bikes all overy the place and my companion and I keep saying thatwe need bikes, because it would just be so useful. We are slowly learning ourway around, and unfortunately my sense of direction (notthat it was great before) but it's completely gone now. Hopefully it will come back. Another way that Florence is different is that there is a funny accent. They don't pronounce thehard "K" sounds. So instead of saying "coca-cola"like we do in english, they would say "hoca-hola". It's a little bit different to hear people say that they are going to "hasa" and that we are "amerihans". It's kind of funny actually- but I'll get used to it pretty quick, I'm sure. Lets see... also it's been super niceand sunny and our appartment is on the fourth floor, sowe go outside and have lunch and language study. I'm getting a really good farmers tan and I'm excited about it :). The area is absoultely beautiful and it's so much smaller than Rome. Centro or downtown is so concentrated here and then the rest is not quite so obnoxiously full of people. It's nice, I like it. Lets see... oh yeah, there are TONS of americans around here. Aparently a lot of tourists come to florence, andthere are also several universities around here. It's good, but kind of weird for both me andmy companion to hear englishso much on the busses.

As far as the church goes uphere. There are two branches and I think on Sunday there were at least 50 people in church. It'sa little tricky to come in and pick up what sisters left 6 weeks ago, butwe're trying to find some of the contacts and investigators that they had.

Another BIG difference is that we live in 4. The Firenze1sisters live in the same appartment, which is nice becasue they can tell us how to get places, but it'skind of hard becasue we don't even livein our proselyting area. It's about a 30 minute bus ride to where our area starts so that's a little different. In Rome if we just had an hour or so we could just go do some housenearby, but here that's not so much of an option, soit requires some different planning. I'm excited though, the members are great and seem really excited to have sisters again.

Mycompanion is great... she kind of reminds me of Emily in someways- which is good. She's from Ogden, and also the youngest. Her dadwas actually a mission president here about 20 years ago and served his mission here so there are people who recognize her name. It's fun.

Okey dokey...I've gotta go now. I actually forgot my camera today becasue it's charging, butI'll be sureto send some pictures nextweek.
Life is good, and I'm looking forward to learning and growing in new ways this transfer. Love you all!!

Sorella Leckie