Brutal Attack

I know that this is probably not the kind of content that you've come here for. But I couldn't resist. I guess we all have our ways of coping with the stress of change. It appears that our black dog just needed to take his frustration out on another unsuspecting creature (and roll a bit in its "guts"). Brutal.

We're going to church for the first time this morning with our gang. Speaking of brutal attacks, it will be interesting to see how the kids respond to everyone coming up to them. We're excited about that...but the kids (mostly Rachel) are pretty nervous about the prospect of meeting so many new people at once. I figure the best way to get over that is by jumping into the "deep water" immediately...so I'm going to ask if Rachel can get up in front of everyone and introduce all of us herself. Just kidding...do you really think I'd do that?!

We're about caught up on our rest...especially after my 7:30pm bedtime the other night. We've been going going going...take in all of the sights as well as the incredible sales around town. I can't believe what you can get here for a little money. We bought about 13 pieces of nice clothes yesterday for around $100. I promise you that those same clothes would have been at least 3 times the cost in Poland...and I think that's being extremely optimistic. It might be even up to 6 times as much. We kept telling the sales lady things like, "that would have been $x.xx more where we have been living." She got a real kick out of that and agreed that she would have waited that whole time to buy more new clothes as well.

There are some things that have caught us off guard here, surprisingly enough. For one, food is everywhere. We'd honestly forgotten about that. You can't escape it. When you're in the mall you literally cannot find yourself in a place where you can't see or smell some kind of food...ice cream, starbucks, restaurants, etc. It's amazing. And the portion sizes...good grief! Of course I'm not saying that I haven't been enjoying it...I have been...way too much! We're going to have to bring it down a notch before I need to begin replacing my belts!!

I also realized something was up when I walked into Petco the other day (the day after we arrived) and I was literally stopped in my tracks in the doorway. I couldn't believe my eyes. So many selections...so many of this and that. It took my about 5 minutes to just figure out what kind of dog food to buy. In Poland there were about 3 choices of Eukanuba. Here there was an entire wall (and a big wall at that) of Eukanuba choices...and none of them were what we bought in Poland. I finally picked up a bag of dachshund food, amazed that they actually had a special food for our little guys.

This all might be pretty funny or maybe even a bit unbelievable for some of you. I know it was when I've heard missionaries talk about this "phenomenon" in the past. But after spending 3 years and 8 months in Poznan we had seriously forgotten what life here looks like, smells, and tastes like. Funny huh?

Well, off to get ready for church. It's going to be strange not worshipping in Polish...and not leading communion (haha!). I'm going to miss it actually.