Friday, June 21, 2013

Week 1 in the MTC (CCM in espanol)

Mi familia!! At long last! Holy moly I think this may be the longest we have gone without communicating… EVER!! Super duper crazy. ANYWAYS, the CCM ROCKS!! I don´t think I have ever been so happily exhausted before in my life! The amount of sleep is fine (And yes, Dad, I DO get up on time, and I DO make it to all of my classes and everything on time) but we are just so mentally and spiritually engaged all the time that you are exhausted by the time you get to bed! The temple is right kitty-cornered to the CCM and we are in a building where the first 2 floors are distribution center and institute rooms, the next two floors are hostels and comodores for temple workers and those who have come from far away to go to the temple, then we have the top 3 floors. The 4thfloor is our classrooms, la sala grande and offices, the 5th floor is the living quarters (sisters to the south facing the temple and elders to the north, although the couple missionaries live on the sister side too) and the 6th floor is the comodore…err cafeteria. It gets a little stuffy being inside the same building on the same 3 floors all day, but that just makes when we actually go outside be SO great!! My companions and I love to go running around the block by the temple, it is so beautiful here and the weather hasn´t been too bad (except Sunday when it felt like HADES).
My companions rock. Seriously. Hermana Bennett is from San Diego California and she was going to BYU-Idaho before the mission. She is so kind and caring and really in tune with the Spirit. Hermana Schone grew up in Maryland, actually Katie, she grew up in your stake that you are living in now! She was wondering which ward you are living in? But now, her family lives in Sandy, UT. She has such a vast wealth of scriptural knowledge which is great cause I´m not exactly the best scriptorian. I can describe the scripture I´m thinking of to her and she knows it right off the top of her head! It really works having the three of us, Hermana Schone knows what to say, Hermana Bennett knows how to say it spiritually and I know how to say it in the language.
Speaking of the language, I am in this weird in-between state, where half of the time I am thinking in English and the other half I´m thinking in Spanish. I´ve been saying a lot of Joseph Christ and Jesus Smiths and my Spanglish has never been better! Hahah but really it is so cool how quickly you can learn or improve a language here. I am so glad for the Spanish I studied before coming, because now it is a big help to me and my district!
My district is super cool. Elder Nielsen is our district leader, he is a little guy but has a huge spirit. His companion, Elder Whitworth actually lived in New Heritage too, and we figured out that I´ve been to his apartment before for a party!! Elder Quesne (pronounced Cane) is from England and his british accent when he speaks Spanish kills me! He really is like a 70 year old man in a 19 year old's body and is such a proper Englishman. Elder Jackson is his companion and he´s super funny and very LOUD! But we all get along really well, probably too well since we forget to speak in Spanish sometimes since we are so caught up in talking with one another..
The food. Its kind of hit or miss. Either you love it, or you hate it! I think I have had more seafood in the last week than I´ve had in my entire life! I´ve had some very interesting dishes as well, I´ve tried swordfish (tastes like fatty chicken), squid (it dyed the rice purple), mussels and scallops, some random white fish that tasted pretty good, and a lot of mystery meat (they have a menu, but its in Spanish and I don´t know foods very well…) BUT we have potatoes with almost every meal in some shape or form which I LOVE!! And even better, THEY HAVE PEANUT BUTTER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I was so excited when I saw it! Oh and nutella is like the peanut butter here though, so most people put nutella on bread for breakfast, and we have nutella all the time!
Kind of weird things i´ve noticed: the light switches are ginormous and upside down from American light switches. The toilet paper sheets are twice as long as American ones (it feels kind of wasteful). A green cross means pharmacy.  Hmm that might be it right now!
My teachers are awesome. Hermana Perera is in the morning, she is from the Canary Islands and just got back from the Malaga mission 8 months ago and was married 3 months ago. She is such a good teacher of gospel principles in a simple way. Hermana Ganaza is in the afternoon and we spend the most time with her, she is a little Spanish woman from southern Spain. She´s like our mama here and she is FUNNY and SO sassy!! She´s married and has a few kids. Hermana Nalbandyan is our evening teacher and she is from Armenia and served in Madrid. She is as thin as a twig and everytime she hugs me, I´m afraid I´m going to break her. But, you can really tell she loves us and loves this gospel!
Funny quote from Elder Reina, the area 70 who came and spoke to us on Sunday  “You weren´t held in reserve for the last days because you are the best, I think you were just being taught how to use all this technology!”Haha that one took me by surprise..
On Saturdays, we go to the park and contact people and it was actually super fun! I realized how much more I need to work on my Spanish, but actually getting out and interacting with the people was AWESOME! EVERYONE was super nice and actually pretty willing to hear what we had to say!
So I guess you could say I´m doing pretty well, keeping busy, studying the gospel and practicing my Spanish!
We have an hour to do emails now which is super nice actually! Oh boy am I craving a burger right now… Oh and yes, my suitcases were there with everyone elses. Who knows how they made it on, but I´m just sure the Lord was watching out for me!
 
I love you all and miss you all and hope you are enjoying life in the States (it still doesn´t feel real I´m in Spain!!
LOVE YOU LOADS
Hermana Folsom
 

Saturday, June 15, 2013

Adios Familia y hola Spain

Hola familia!! I made it safely to Madrid. I´m almost done with my first, very LONG day at the MTC! It rocks here! You probably already know this, but my flight out of Seattle was 2 hours delayed which got me into JFK 15 minutes before my flight to Madrid left. The Lord was definitely watching over me because everyone let me run ahead of them off of the plane, and when I asked what gate my flight was leaving from, it was the gate right next to the one I was on! So I booked it over there and made it onto the plane safely seated 10 minutes before we left the gate. There WERE loads of missionaries on my flight which is awesome! We all met up at the airport and were shuttled to the MTC where we dropped off our luggage and then they set to work keeping us busy so we don´t fall asleep, although it has been pretty hard. I´m the senior companion in a threesome right now with Hermana Schole and Hermana Bennett. They are really cool and I´m excited for this!! My pdays are normally going to be Thursdays, but they INSISTED that we e-mail our lovely families to let them know that we didn´t die while on the flight and I knew you guys would be stressing about if I made it on my flight to Madrid or not. I did :)) My district speaks about the same amount of Spanish as I do, which is awesome so hopefully we will be speaking like crazy pretty soon here! Oh and the temple grounds are so ridiculously beautiful and I feel so blessed to be able to look out the window and see el templo.
 It's so beautiful in Madrid. I still don´t feel like a missionary but its cool. We are all super tired. Its hilarious. If you look around during a meeting, half of the people are standing in the back trying to stay awake and the other half are nodding off in their chairs. But if you nod off, the president will call you out and have you do something! So needless to say, I´ve been staying awake! Anywho the group here is super duper small and there are only like 50 of us here, we have 2 zones and I think 8 districts? Its cool cause we get such individual care already! I am loving it so far,hahah its been a good 24 hours :))

Okay I gotta go to dinner now, I love you all and thank you for your prayers! Please continue them!!
Hermana Folsom