Hola from Madrid!

Oct. 20, 2010 - Wednesday

Well I´m in Madrid right now :) and I am definitely not caught up on any sleep whatsoever. We´re all so dead and tired, but we get to go to bed at 7:30 tonight and sleep till 6:30 which is great! The plane ride was fine; just really long.

We met a family who has a son who is also in the Provo MTC and she showed us pictures, but we didn´t recognize him. She also has a son-in-law, who was on the plane as well, that served in Barcelona on his mission! Small world haha.

We landed in JFK and one of the Elders that was traveling with us said he lost his boarding pass for the next flight so we spent like 15 minutes trying to work that out and ended up having to call church travel services. It was crazy but we eventually got it worked out.

The MTC here is sooooo different, but i kinda like it a lot better. Me, Elder Keeler, and the two other Elders that flew with us were the only four missionaries here today for a while, and then two other French missionaries joined us. So in all there as six of us right now, but that way you get more attention to your own development and everything.

The rooms are way nicer here, too, which is always a plus. We get an hour of email instead of 30 minutes which is pretty cool; and we actually go to a park and contact people....real people; not the pretend people in Provo MTC.; and here it´s allll spanish which just adds to the anxiety, but it´s still pretty exciting.

I´m pretty sure I´ll love it here, but I know I´ll miss my district back in Provo a lot just cuz they all added so much to the atmosphere and the attitude of our district. It feels weird to eat meals with less than fifteen people here instead of 2000.

The temple is right outside our window which is way cool, and the stake center is right next to us, too, and we can use it to play basketball or volleyball or whatever, which is awesome. There´s a futsal court nearby so we´re probably going to play there a lot. Apparently the local teens go there when we have gym time cuz they know that´s when we come to play haha. So at least we´ll have people to play with.

Apparently it usually only takes about 7-10 days for regular mail to ship from Spain to the U.S., or vice versa which is a lot shorter than I thought it was going to be, but I´m not complaining haha.

We were just outside getting our little orientation thing and our maestra was saying how cold it was. Everyone had pants and sweaters or jackets on and we all thought it felt amazing out! But apparently sunny and 20 degrees (celcius) is pretty cold for them. So I have a feeling I´m going to like the weather a lot. Wish I could send some of it to all of you haha.

Love and miss you all!!! But know that I´m doing great and I´m loving it :)