Monuments and Melodies: Reading (Nope, you just said it wrong.)

Welcome to Reading, Pennsylvania!

For those of you who just said that as "ree-ding," that's wrong. It's "red-ding." You'll never look at the word "Reading" the same again.

So! How to describe Reading, PA. Well, there's a mushroom factory in Reading, and when it's humid, warm, or windy, the smell of mushrooms wafts through the air. There's a Pagoda up on the hill that it's famous for, and I'm convinced that the Walmart has a high theft rate because even the cheapie headphones were in protective cases and they didn't have electronics on display, only cardboard cutouts of tablets and such.

So, that's Reading in a nutshell. It's a little hard to get a feel for the place, considering I've only been here for a couple days. But it's been a fantastic couple of days! And my companion is Sister Suckow, who is HILARIOUS and reminds me a lot of Jenna Fiesta, Kim, Brandi (Sister Meeks) and an awesome less active sister in Whitehall. But yeah, it's been a blast. Sister Suckow tells jokes all the time. Also, there wasn't much food in the apartment besides breakfast food (that's how transfers goes down-- no one wants to buy food that week) so we've eaten a lot of pancakes and eggs.

We also have a pretty sweet set up for housing. We live in an entire house by ourselves. There's a ward member who owns it and rents it out to the missionaries. It's really weird because we have a full-blown house with heated floors. We're so spoiled! Minus the ant infestation around the toilet (random, but true).

So let me tell you a little bit about our trip down to transfers on Wednesday. We told Sister Spanogle that we had a lot of stuff-- I mean, there were two sisters getting transferred, which means we had lots of stuff. Well, they pulled up that morning and it was Brother and Sister Spanogle in a small car. We looked at all our stuff and at the car and then at each other. There was NO way our stuff was all getting in that car. But Brother Spanogle insisted it would work, so he went to work stuffing. Well, long story short, we all sat in the car and then we played a game of Tetris around ourselves. We kept joking about the miracle of the five loaves and seven fishes and if there was a reverse miracle to make our stuff get smaller. But the crazy thing is... we managed to get everything in! The following pictures will help you understand how great a feat it was.

I was so sad to leave Sister Wilson, Sister Wiehl, and Bethlehem. But the Lord only needed me there for one transfer, and it was a wonderful transfer. I'm so grateful that I had two amazing companions who made me laugh constantly.

So, that's my week so far. I don't know what else to say, because I'm still trying to get a feel for everything. Huzzah!

Love yous!
Sister Singleton