P-day

When I got onto the Metro this morning at L'Enfant Plaza I found a seat on the train. It was quickly vacated when I saw three sister missionaries and two elders get on. It was P-day and they were off to Arlington Cemetary to say good-bye to the "dying missionaries" (i.e. the missionaries who were going home).

And since today is sister Jess' P-day and I got a lovely email from her, I started thinking about my mission and P-days and all that jazz (because duh, we know I think about my mission).

Here is a quick note from her email:

I forgot to tell you last time about the deaf and mute guy that I contacted on the bus a couple weeks ago who's turned out to be awesome. I saw him with a huge smile when I got on the bus, which isn't that abnormal because a white girl with super curly light colored hair in the midst of a bus/city/country/region of the world completely filled with Asian people who range from super white skinned Chinese, to really dark Indians and East Indonesians, is always a sight for everyone to see... actually I'm knid of getting sick of it, especially at the bus terminal where everyone stares at us and sometimes make really inappropriate comments to us. The latest thing I've discovered is that all the men who work for the buses have a nickname for me: "rambut" which means, "hair" in Malay. Wow. Anyways, so this guy I sit next to him and he immediately turns away which is weird considering he was just smiling insanely, and then i start to talk to him, but he turns back and motions that he can't hear or speak, so I act out writing and he can, so we started writing back and forth and he wanted to meet again! So we met him at the church that week and had a lesson on the white board basically, watched the Joseph Smith video and he loved it so much. Lessons with him are awesome, becasue he takes notes and what we write on the board/half act out, and he tries really really hard to understand what we're teaching him, and you can literally SEE when he really gets something which is awesome.

And since I was thinking of my own P-days and wishing for one. Here are some lovely pictures from those lovely days.

(click to enlarge)

First row: Katowice-snow hike with branch; Krakow; Auschwitz
Second row: Warsaw-Majdanek; Lunch with sisters; bowling
Third row: Bydgoszcz-Baltic sea; Torun; Gdansk

I wish I could just take a P-day now! Oh wait, those don't happen in real life. Well, then, how about a sick day?

PS-I put the label nostalgia on this one, but I'm not really wishing to go back on my mission. I don't hardly think I wished to go back the minute I walked off that plane. Perhaps the nostalgia is for Poland and simpler times. Perhaps it's to go back and have the camaraderie of being on a mission. Perhaps it's missing all my mission friends, Americans and Poles. Who knows, but the nostalgia is not me wishing to go back and have grueling days of rejection.