Day 2 in Madrid

Oct. 21, 2010 - Thursday (P-day)

I lost my key today...and I´ve only been here two days! The key was to my drawer that had my passport/visa, wallet, camera, and money. So we had to go to the desk and they called people and after 2.5 hours and five people we finally got it open! haha crazy morning!

We got to go to the Madrid Temple today, too! It was so cool! The temple was way pretty and so much bigger than the Palmyra one; and it´s really strange when everything is in Spanish; so but luckily, we could hear the session in English :)

Apparently we get another hermana tomorrow! So now we´ll have 8 people here! I think I told you about contacting in the park already, but I can´t remember, so I´ll do it again haha. Every Saturday we take the metro to a huge park, like Central Park in NYC, and we go with our companions and we walk around and talk to people there and try to get referrals and things like that. They told us that baptisms do come from this so it´s not just for practice; but I´m still way nervous because these are real people that aren´t pretending to be investigators; and on top of that they speak crazy fast Spanish!

Oh funny story this morning haha. So Elder Keeler and I went to breakfast and we went to grab a tray, and this lady said something and I guess we didn´t need a tray; and she came over and said something and we just looked at each other with that blank stare hahaha. So i just said "no puedo comprender" which means I can´t understand haha. So she just smiled and kinda laughed and then spoke a little slower and used some different words and some hand motions. So we understood after that. But yeah, they speak way faster over here and with a way different accent. So that´ll be fun trying to get used to that.

Yesterday during our gym time we went over to the futsal court to play, but no one was over there! We were pretty bummed. We just played around for a little and then came back and played basketball in the stake center. The Elders and Sisters from Madrid had pday, I guess, so we got to play basketball with the Elders. It was pretty fun.

The keyboard on the computer is wayyyy weird. Since the Spanish people use different letters and symbols, they stick them on the computer keyboard and so things are in different locations, which is kinda annoying. The colon, parenthesis, quotation marks, question mark, and a few others are like on different keys so I´m still getting used to it, but it´s ok i guess.

Hope all is well back home and wherever anyone else is when they read this haha, Elder Mathews is doing fantastic :)

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 :)