Bryce Moore's Blog, page 36

Tomas Update: Week 15 in Žilina

Ahojte všetci! The end of the transfer is coming up again which is crazy, next week is the last pday before transfers. Every week just goes by so fast that I really don’t know where the time is going! I figured it would be a lot slower out here but I was totally wrong. Anyways, here’s what happened this week:

Tuesday was my name day which was pretty cool. I think it’s the first time I’ve ever been in Slovakia for it and one of our friends have me a box of chocolates as a present which was legendary. Aside from that not a ton else happened but we did end up making a nameday Google calendar since none of the online ones we found were working.

Wednesday was a weird day. That morning I got up and baked my foccacia I started last night but I totally forgot to put anything on top or to poke some dimples in it and it definitely didn’t sit long enough in the fridge because it barely rose. Also we didn’t have any olive oil like I thought we did so I had to make it with sunflower oil. Despite all that it turned out pretty good and I’m happy with it, I’ll be making another this week with like real olive oil and some fixes. Anyways after that we hopped on to a train to Dubnica nad Váhom, a town just northeast of Trenčín, to help a member move and assemble a couch. The Trenčín elders would have done it but they were actually in Prešov that day so we helped instead. We ended up spending like 3 hours moving the thing upstairs and then assembling it with only hand tools and no manual. Cool couch though and the member was super thankful for our help. Also we got to chuck the old couch off the edge of the building so that was a plus. Anyways that was basically our day since getting there and back took a while and we had lunch there too.

Ok Thursday was pretty good, that day we usually visit a member who can’t make it to church in person every week but this week we actually visited two. It’s always really nice to visit them and great language practice because they’re so patient. Besides that we planned out for the next week like usual, and that was about it.

Friday was WILD. We had the Trenčín elders with us for an exchange and we went out and did our survey (we are kinda behind numbers wise in žilina) and me and elder Wagner actually ended up teaching two guys off the street a lesson in a restaurant which quickly turned into teaching like six guys, all from Košice weirdly enough. I ended up breaking off from the main conversation and having another conversation with one of the guys there and we talked abiut a lot of weird stuff. I’d like say something and then he’d agree and tell me how wrong I was but like respectfully? And then he talked about how the tower of babel is Iraqs fault and how Elon musks son is the antichrist. And a lot more than that but rest assured it was a really weird conversation and we were in that restaurant for literally 3 hours. That’s how life is basically – you plan something but then end up teaching six random guys in a sushi restaurant for 3 hours. RIP language study for Thursday.

Anyways Saturday was comparatively more chill. We were gonna go survey more but it was all nasty out and the streets are pretty empty Saturdays anyways so we called a ton of people and then helped out with the Czech Bible project. So for that the church has a scan of a 1904 Czech bible and a digital pdf of a “text believed to be very similar” and basically we gotta go through it verse by verse and compare what is different in the digital version so that we can make them identical and thus fair use or something. That hurts my head. I almost understand the Czech sometimes but like reading everything twice in a language I don’t even like 60% know is weird. We go through about two pages an hour. It’s fun though! Later that night we had our game night and played Bang! Me and one of our friends won and killed all the outlaws. A lot of the games we have are just in Czech as well so a lot of Czech that night.

Okay that brings us to Sunday, it was pretty good. Solid turnout for church (2 adults, 2 kids) although unfortunately none of our friends came. Me and elder Noftle played a cool arrangement of How Great Thou Art though which was nice. Rest of the day was studies and then we did more Bible stuff (we found two words that should have been italicized but weren’t!!!) and then dinner with the Ottos, who had received a big ol pot of borscht from one of their friends, a nice Russian couple. So pretty authentic there.

Here we are at Monday, basically we had Trenčín and Banská Bystrica come here. We played a round of Skull King (I won for the record) and we got all the stuff to make a massive batch of halušky and made and ate lunch with the Ottos. That was super fun and I am very full and have never seen that many halušky in one spot. Then I got shredded in chess by elder Osborne as usual. Also I got my new pros bag today so I’m excited to have a better bag this week. Anyways after that they all headed home and we went shopping and now I’m writing this email.

Hope you’re all well back home and doing cool stuff. It’s been great out here and I hit six months as a missionary in like 6 days so it’s been a bit for me even if it might not feel like it… 

Photos as usual:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/qYoYaKPmkqFZHoVM7

S láskou, 

Starší Cundick

March Madness 2023!

Look at this. Two posts in one day! (But this one is very short.) The NCAA brackets are all finalized, and it’s time to make your picks! As always, I’m running a personal group for any and all who’d like to join. And there’s a prize! I will put the winner into my next book. (The book I’m revising now. And let’s just say the odds of you actually seeing yourself in print are pretty darn good, but more on that later, I hope.)

You have until Thursday morning to join. I hope you do!

. The password is vodnik.

Oscars 2023

Another year, another Oscar party! And this year there wasn’t even any physical violence on stage. What a concept! Honestly, I found last night’s broadcast to be very good. It really helped that there were so many positive narratives to see come to a resolution all at once. It was almost like a Brandon Sanderson ending. You had Short Round hugging Indiana Jones (and me discovering Data’s lawyer is Chunk), Michele Yeoh, Jamie Lee Curtis, Brendan Fraser, and on and on. It was almost enough to make you think it was scripted. I enjoyed the focus on movies, with not too much in the way of politics to distract from any of it, other than a few zingers here and there.

Was it a surprising night? No, it wasn’t. I won the Oscar the Grouch hat in a landslide, with 20 out of 23 correct picks. When that happens, you know there’s not much in the way of upsets. I hadn’t anticipated All’s Quiet on the Western Front to get quite so much love, and I’d given the edge to Angela Bassett over Jamie Lee Curtis. Other than that, it all played out as I thought it would. I was happy to see Everything Everywhere All at Once garner so many Oscars. It was an original, very different movie, and it’s great to see a science fiction film clean up at the ceremony.

Jimmy Kimmel did fine as a host. There weren’t too many really idiotic schticks. (The only one I really found egregious was to try and rope Malala into an inane “ask the audience” routine. Thankfully, she handled it well and sort of slapped it down, as she should have.) The musical numbers were quite good. (Though the one for Everything Everywhere was . . . very different. I loved Naatu Naatu, and Lady Gaga hit it out of the park.)

The two built in advertisements were tedious. One for The Little Mermaid (which was the worst of the two) and one for 100 years of Warner Bros. They should have been straight up ads. Instead, they were portrayed as part of the ceremony, which seemed very cheap. But at least they didn’t have the applause-o-meter going during the In Memoriam segment, so maybe we end up with a wash.

My actual party was a lot of fun, though it was really just a few of us there. I dressed up as The Dude (from the Big Lebowski), Denisa was Goldie (from Fiddler), Daniela was “the girl in green” (from Turning Red), and MC was Hermione. Then friends came as Simba, Elsa, Headmistress Trunchbull, and an 80 for Brady fan. Daniela and I made up a peanut butter banana chocolate trifle which was quite tasty, we had Italian sodas, and fancy cupcakes. How can you go wrong?

Full disclosure: this time I turned off the broadcast at 10:30 while Rhianna was singing, and I watched the rest in the morning once I woke up, because I really needed some sleep. I will likely do that again. Yay for DVRs.

Really, the one thing that’s still changed for me and my relation to the movies is that I don’t see them in the theater anymore. I don’t think I went to a single movie last year (though I watched 104 movies.) I also watched 26 seasons of different television shows, which shows me some of my movies are definitely shifting over to TV. Will I ever go back to the theater? I’m not sure, honestly. There’s something to be said for being able to watch the movie on my big screen, with my great sound system, and not have to worry about being around other people who might talk or check their phone or otherwise annoy me. The big thing I used to turn out for was movies that had a huge fan base. Marvel. LOTR. Harry Potter. Star Wars. These days, it doesn’t feel like there’s a lot of “must see movies” coming out, that I look forward to ahead of time and really plan to see. Maybe that will change.

In any case, it was fun to do another Oscar night, and I was happy for a good, classic show with few distractions.

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, as well as PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking this DON’T GO TO SLEEP Amazon link. It will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

TV Review: 1923

I watched and thoroughly enjoyed 1883 a few weeks ago, so it felt only natural to move from that right on to 1923. It’s basically the second season of the show, although it jumps ahead forty years. Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren star as the latest Dutton family members, now trying to shepherd the family through turbulent times as their now-successful ranch faces pressure from new threats. It’s not nearly as much as a western, though it still has strong western tropes. (Just mixed with more of a 1920s vibe.)

Did it hold up to the earlier show?

Well, in some ways yes, and in some ways no.

At its heart, it’s a strong show. The conflicts are really solid, and the characters are well executed. If it weren’t for one (big) plot line, I’d be recommending it right next to 1883. But in this case, the show dips into areas that are just too unsavory for me to give a thumbs up.

This might not be a hang up for some people, but it’s a pet peeve of mine for sure. Specifically, Timothy Dalton plays the role of an evil banker. A man wholly focused on himself. He doesn’t care what he has to do to other people to get his way. Fine. Every show needs a big bad guy. But in an effort to show us just how much of a big bad guy he is, the writers show us (repeatedly) that’s he’s a sexual sadist. Casually depicting violence on women just for the sake of establishing that someone’s a nasty person is something I think we can just do without. (Game of Thrones did the same thing with Joffrey. We get it. He was awful. We don’t need to see him killing women for sport for us to get that point.) It’s not like those scenes have anything else to do with the show.

So I can’t really recommend it to anyone in good faith. If I give a show a thumbs up, I have to be able to stand by the recommendation. If this trope sounds like something you’d be fine with (or you want to just skip the scenes each time they come up (it’s very easy to see them coming), then the show would probably be dandy. But as is, if you enjoyed 1883, I’d be hesitant to jump into 1923 without knowing what you’re getting into first.

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, as well as PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking this DON’T GO TO SLEEP Amazon link. It will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

Quick Thoughts on Progressive Glasses

My new glasses came yesterday! There was much rejoicing, for values of “rejoicing” that are “mild relief.” I was surprised by how light the frames are that I bought, and (more importantly) I was very happy to see how effective the progressive lenses are.

Ahead of time, I did some research into ordering different kinds of lenses, and from what I read, progressives are an area where it’s worth it to pay some more money for them. For me, glasses are how I view everything in the world, every day. I spend a lot of money on a nice home theater setup, so why in the world would I skimp on the equipment I need to be able to appreciate that setup? That said, I also am not a fan of buying glasses at the eye doctor’s. My experience with that has been much less than good. I feel like I have to make a decision right away, and it’s always (always) felt like I was paying too much.

So I went with Eyebuydirect again, the site I’ve used multiple times to order glasses. I went ahead and bought the highest of the high end lenses, because once I’m already paying for nice glasses, I might as well get the really nice ones. So these are super thin, with all sorts of coatings, and the premium progressive version. (This supposedly makes it so that there’s more usable viewing area.) In total, they set me back about $300, but I also bought prescription sunglasses, and because they were running a buy one get one half off, I ended up paying a bit over $400 for both pairs of glasses.

Now that I’ve been using the glasses for a little, I’ve already been very impressed at how well they work. I’ve gotten so used to having to take my glasses off to see anything close up, but I hadn’t realized just how hard it had been to see things at that distance with my glasses on. When I first tried to read something, it felt like I suddenly had magnifying lenses for my eyes. It’s fantastic.

Yes, it’s a bit disconcerting to see things a little blurrier far away if I’m looking down (if that makes sense), but it’s not very hard to train yourself to not do that. You just move your head more instead of just your eyes. No biggie. Better yet, the glasses look totally normal, so I don’t feel too much like an old fogey. I’m a progressive fogey, I’ll have you know!

The glasses look good on me (I think), so the “try the glasses on virtually” system on Eyebuydirect worked as well. All told, a good upgrade. Now when I draft Magic the Gathering cards, I won’t have to squint quite so much . . .

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, as well as PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking this DON’T GO TO SLEEP Amazon link. It will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

Tomas Update: Week 14 in Žilina

Ahojte všetci! Back at it again with another crazy week in žilina. I feel like I say that every time but life as a missionary really is just so different. Anyways, here’s all the stuff we did this week:

Tuesday we spent a while recording a music video for Elder Noftle, so if you want to see that you can find it on his Facebook. Things went a lot faster when we realized that we could just cut together all the good parts and hide it by changing angles, so in the future we will be a lot faster. Glad my video editing skills helped too.

Wednesday was zone conference (all the missionaries in our “zone” (which is Slovakia) gather in Trenčín and we have trainings and stuff and learn how to do things). This time around we had a special training as we are doing a survey of the people here to get a general view of what people believe and as such we are going out without ties or tags since we can’t be biasing the data. Learned a lot and hopefully will be able to apply it. 

Back to regular Thursday, we visited one of our members who can’t make it to church like we do pretty much every Thursday. Always wonderful to be there, she’s just so thankful that we visit and it’s great Slovak practice because I translate for the senior missionaries here. Overall just always a great hour or so and I always look forward to it.

Friday we met with one of the members on our branch over missionary work, and then went through a list of old contacts to see who we could visit. We lost touch with a lot of members here over covid so the list is a lot bigger than the actual amount of people who come to church. We got lunch at the vegan bistro beneath our apartment (really good food) and then got to work on that survey. Felt soooo weird to be out without a tag or tie but we can’t be having biased information can we. Anyways we didn’t actually get any surveys done that day (turns out it’s kinda scary) but I did find a hidden geocache on the back of a bus ticket dispenser which was pretty cool.

Saturday was pretty legendary, we went back out to Blava (classic 18€ round trip) so that we could go to a baptism. Tham being baptized (coincidentally also named Tomáš) was actually at the last baptism we went to, where we met him, and it was super cool to see his progress and how much he loves the gospel. He was so happy and already has wonderful relationships with the members there. Then I sat down and had a good discussion with one of the missionaries friends from Banská Bystrica, who also made he trip out, and he talked about how his dream job would be to be Jesus and help people all the time. Cool guy. We missed the first car meet of the season (prezident told us to go to some to find people) so that we could make it out, but on our way back on the streets of Blava a Ferrari drove by us so I’m glad God appreciated us being there. I’d make a joke and say we are even but I’m pretty sure I’ll always be in His debt. Cool though.

Okay then a pretty regular Sunday, except it was fast Sunday so we didn’t have breakfast or lunch but that was all good. We combined some of the skipped meal time into a longer dinner and CRANKED out some halušky for dinner which tasted super good after not eating. Bryndza (like a traditional sheep cheese topping on halušky) is growing on me.

Okay, that brings us to today, we headed out this morning to Trenčín and went and visited babka which was pretty cool. First though we had to get the boot taken off the car because the Zls parked it in the wrong spot (again) and the cops think we’re just silly Americans (which we are). Anyways, Babka made us super good food (potato dumplings with sausage inside and red cabbage on the side) and then we helped her move some roof tiles so she could hang her laundry again. Then we dressed up in some medieval clothing and got pictures. It was cool to go back to her house and I was soooo appreciative of the fact that I could like basically 100% understand her and for real respond. That was really cool. And it was just good to see her again, what a crazy opportunity I have here to be in the same country and stop by sometimes. Also I mentioned to mom that I wanted to get a knife sharpener or me thing since all of our knifes are dull in the apartment, and I actually got my grandfather’s old whetstone today which is super cool. We will see how this goes.

Anyways, that’s about it for this week. Hopefully yall are doing good out there, congrats to the Nordic team back home and everyone going to Easterns and/or Junior nationals. I’m just chilling on the train ride back to žilina and then we will go shopping for the week.

As always, here’s the photos link https://photos.app.goo.gl/qYoYaKPmkqFZHoVM7

S láskou, 

Starší Cundick

The Benji: Fostering Family Unity

Sometimes it feels like there’s always something going on with a family that takes some effort to fix. (Relationships are like that. If you don’t pay attention to them, then they go downhill.) Lately, something that’s been on my mind is trying to encourage more family unity. Not that my kids have been turning into hellions or anything, or that we’ve had non-stop squabbling, but there’s been more attention being paid to what people are doing individually in the family than I’d like. What I mean is that for a family to work well, it’s got to be a team sport. As soon as you start keeping score of who does what, worrying that someone’s doing less than they ought to, things can deteriorate.

So as I was driving to Bangor for a library meeting, I was thinking through different ways I might help solve this issue. Typically, I’ve reverted to some sort of goal tracking system, but that didn’t feel right in this case. Ultimately, what I wanted was for everyone in the family to be looking out for everyone else. To be searching for ways to do nice things for each other. I really believe that when you serve other people, you grow to love them more, but if you’re just doing something because you expect someone to do something for you back, then that’s not really service. It’s a business transaction.

I wanted more service and less score counting.

Requiring everyone to do a certain number of acts of service each week didn’t feel like the way to go. It’s punitive, and I wanted no resentment from anyone. Resentment = bad. I also wanted people to recognize when someone had done something nice for them. For a bit, I thought about doing some sort of marble system, where any time you did something nice for someone, then you put a marble in a communal jar. Jar fills up, and the family celebrates somehow. But I worried that would make it so not everyone was necessarily participating, so I thought about having four individual jars. That still didn’t feel right. I also dismissed the idea of having people put marbles in the jar when they saw someone else do something nice for them. The problem is that people don’t necessarily recognize when someone is serving them. They can take things for granted, and all I needed was for this to turn into a series of fights over whether or not something was marble-worthy.

On my mission, I lived in an apartment with three other missionaries for a while, and we had issues with doing the dishes. (Namely, one Elder ended up doing all the dishes, and he got fed up with that system for some strange reason.) So he came up with something called the Dishes Bear. It was a tiny light blue stuffed bear, and whenever you did the dishes, you then gave the Dishes Bear to someone else in the apartment, who was then on the hook for doing the dishes. People were motivated to do the dishes regularly, because if they didn’t, they still had to do all of them before they could pass the dishes bear on to someone else.

What if I could come up with something like that, but with a positive spin. (I didn’t want people to groan when they ended up with the Being Nice Bear, or whatever it would be called.)

In the end, I settled on this. My old Benji stuffed animal is now the sign of someone having done something nice for someone else in the family. For example, I had been given Benji a few days ago, and so it was up to me to do something nice for someone else. I decided to go out and play in the snow with MC for a while, something I rarely do these days. She had a blast, and at the end of it, I told her that was a Benji, and it was up to her to pass it on next. So whoever has the Benji is expected to do something to pass him on within a day or two.

One rule is that there can be no judging on whether or not something is Benji-worthy. You can’t tell the person who gives you a Benji that their action didn’t count. I want people to recognize when someone’s doing something nice for them. Or even at bare minimum when someone thinks they did something nice for them. Denisa wondered what we’d do if everyone just started doing tiny things to get rid of Benji. I told her that we’d set the tone by what showing the girls by example what’s Benji-worthy.

We’ve been doing it for about a week, and it’s gone very well so far. Well enough that the girls both mentioned how much they like it, which doesn’t always happen when I come up with some new thing for the family to do. Will we stick with it? Who knows, but I tend to think we will, mainly because it’s kind of self-policing. Everyone in the family knows who has the Benji, and who wouldn’t want someone to do something nice for them? So there are gentle reminders that someone’s had him long enough . . .

Here’s hoping it keeps going.

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, as well as PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking this DON’T GO TO SLEEP Amazon link. It will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

Television Review: 1883

I’d heard a lot about Yellowstone. “Soap opera for cowboys,” is the description that came up most often, with some people really loving it, and some people not being fans at all. This intrigued me (I am, after all, a big Downton Abbey fan, and I’m under no illusions that it’s anything but a soap opera for history buffs), but I was still hesitant to commit to the show. However, there was a miniseries that takes place 150 years before Yellowstone: 1883. Not only was it very well reviewed by just about everyone, but it’s a western, and as we all know, I’m a sucker for westerns.

Denisa and I finished it a few days ago, and we both really enjoyed it.

Mind you, this is not a show to watch if you want to feel good about life. Basically, it’s “all the awful things that might happen to a pioneer wagon train, and then a few more.” It centers around a group of German and Slavic immigrants who dream of making it to Oregon. The only problem? They went the complete wrong way about it. They know nothing of the journey. They’re starting late, and from the wrong part of the country. They’re clueless when it comes to survival.

Any guesses how it’s going to turn out for them?

The one good decision they make is hiring a leader who knows what he’s about. Sam Elliott does a tremendous job of portraying Captain Shea Brennan, an old veteran of just about anything you could think of. He in turn hires on the Daggett family (ancestors of the folks on Yellowstone, or so I’m led to believe), played by real life couple Tim McGraw and Faith Hill. Honestly, I was skeptical they’d hired two country music stars to play leading roles, but they really hit above their weight class in the show, as well.

Overall, it’s a riveting look at how things might have been back then. There’s none of the polish and idealism that you’d get in earlier westerns. It feels like the prairie is just filled with a slew of cutthroats and thieves, and the only want to get anything done is to shoot people. Sometimes twice. (As I’m currently writing a western, it was very interesting to see them go over some of the same obstacles I’ve thrown at my protagonist. I’m not certain how accurate 1883 is, but it certainly gives the feel of being accurate, if that makes any sense.)

It’s only 10 episodes long, and it packs a lot into those ten episodes. It’s rated TVMA for a whole ton of violence. These pioneers didn’t go easy, and the show doesn’t go easy on portraying those deaths. It didn’t really roll around in the violence, though, if that makes any sense. (Though I could have done without the amputation scene . . .)

All in all, I gave it a 9/10. If you like westerns or history from that time period, it’s definitely worth your time, and even if you don’t, I’d still give it a shot. I liked it enough that we went straight into 1923, starring Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren. If the series keep being as strong as these, I’m almost definitely going to end up giving Yellowstone a try, as well.

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, as well as PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking this DON’T GO TO SLEEP Amazon link. It will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

Tomas Update: Week 13 in Žilina

Ahojte všetci! Another exciting, eventful week out here in žilina. Hopefully I can remember all the stuff that’s happened.

Okay right off the bat, on Tuesday we took our first bus trip here to meet a guy from Facebook who 3d printed us some tie hangers. It was like a super quick transaction and we didn’t end up talking to him but I was super happy to get those and also put myself out there in a way related to what I love. I’ll throw some pictures of the hangers on the photos – my tie collection takes up like half the space it used to and doesn’t fall off the hangers like it used to.

Wednesday was pretty chill aside from like all 10 people we called throughout the day didn’t pick up. That usually doesn’t happen so it was weird. That night we packed up and headed out to Trenčín to spend the next day there with the elders. The train was pretty uneventful, sometimes you get some weird people on trains but lately it’s been quiet. One time though we did have the ticket checker guy come by and tell us we must be confused because Jesus already had a church. Missed opportunity probably but we will likely see him again. 

Okay Thursday we were in Trenčín all day, I was with Elder Osborne (who was trained by the same elder as me so we are technically “brothers” as we treat training like raising a child for some reason??). Anyways, the biggest thing we did that day was go pondelokking. (Update: I have since been informed that the name is “panelák” and not “pondelok”. My bad.) So basically a pondelok is one of those copy and paste socialist apartment buildings that are everywhere, a ton of people live in them. We don’t really knock doors like in the states-except in the pondeloks. There’s a method to getting in: ring literally all the bells and then rub your hand on the speaker and mic, and someone will let you in. Not sure if the hand thing does anything but I’m keeping it just in case. Anyways, in the pondeloks there’s like 0 windows and a few apartments per floor, so you go to the top and then make your way down knocking doors. Also just kinda inside those windowless, usually dark hallways is weird. Usually people turn you away fairly fast, sometimes they say weird stuff. Thankfully everyone we saw was fully clothed but I’ve heard stories of the opposite happening. People for real just open the door regardless of what they are (or aren’t) wearing. One guy told us to go bother other normal people, we weren’t sure if that meant he was like not normal or something else. Another guy told us the whole building is catholic and to go try somewhere else. Also we met a deaf woman and unfortunately I don’t know any sign language so we tried our best to understand, although the message of “go away” is pretty universal. The other building we tried had windows which was cool, also when we got to the top we realized that there were two other guys knocking doors as well – initially we thought they were Jehova’s Witnesses but they turned out to be some sort of dental salesmen?? Anyways we talked to them to find out what works because they literally made a sale after us watching them talk for 10min, and the guy goes “we are trying for different things but it’s all in your mindset. Be positive” and we went about our way. What a crazy day. That night we made halušky too which is a classic dish (peasant food is perfect for a missionary budget).

Okay after that crazy day, Friday consisted of a lot of calling people back who didn’t pick up, same with Saturday. Nothing crazy those days although there was one woman who was super positive first call, then two days later asked us to not call her again – she probably Googled us and decided against us. It happens but it is her call in the end so no big deal. Saturday we also had game night and played Catan with one of our friends, Peter, and it came down to a super close almost 4 way tie at the end. Peter won (and it was his first time playing!)

Sunday was branch conference, none of our actual žilina members could make it except over zoom but that’s fair. We had lunch afterwards with all the people from Banská Bystrica which was fun. Then a chill rest of the day although the sky looked kinda weird in the evening for some reason. 

That brings us to today, we just headed to Trenčín and did a little hike, got vaguely lost, and ended up not making it to the top but we got cool pictures in some random hillside fields, a pretty small town church, and explored an airsoft field. That’s about it.

Okay, pictures link as usual:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/qYoYaKPmkqFZHoVM7

I finished my black and white film so expect pictures from that soon!

Hope you’re all well!

Love you all, 

Starší Cundick 

New Glasses

As yet another piece of evidence that yes, indeed, I’m getting older, I ordered my first pair of bifocals last week. Well, they’re not actually bifocals. They’re “progressives,” which means “bifocals, except they don’t look like bifocals. (I debated refusing to order progressives and demanding I be allowed to order conservatives, instead, but something told me people wouldn’t get the joke.)

The bottom line is that I’m tired of having to take off my glasses to look at anything close up. This should hopefully help with that.

As I was looking at new frames, one thing that was important to me was to find some that would stay on my face, even with wearing a mask. The ones I have now have always struggled with that, to the point that I ended up buying little rubber hook things that fit over my ears and make sure the glasses stay put. When I was ordering this time, I decided to do some research online before I made the order. I’m surprised I hadn’t done this earlier, since that’s right up my alley.

What did I find out? Well for one thing, that I could have just changed the angle of the earpieces of my current glasses to fix the problem. I hadn’t realized that was possible, so I’ve been walking around with poorly-fitting glasses for two years, when I could have solved it with about ten minutes of effort. Though I also found out that my glasses are a bit small for my face, so I’ve ordered larger ones.

The big takeaway? Never make assumptions about The Way Things Are. It’s always worth it to take some time and investigate why things are the way they are, and if there’s something you can do to change it. The hiccup, of course, is sometimes it’s hard to recognize you’re making assumptions. Like, would I ever want to research if gravity really has to be in effect all the time? Probably not. But when you make those assumptions, it’s difficult to know if the assumptions are justified or not.

In any case, my new glasses should be here in a week or two. I went with thinner frames this time. Mixing things up a bit. But if I’ve been progressive before, just imagine how progressive I’ll be now. Is the world ready?

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