Holly's first week at the MTC

_Hola!

_{Well, this has possibly been the longest week of my life (and everyone else's lives), but it's also been a super awesome week!}

_{I have a bunch of questions I'm supposed to answer so I'll start with those.}

_{How we got to the MTC from the airport: we took a bus (two buses actually), it was about a half-hour drive with traffic.}

 _{People in my room: Six! Me, my companion (hermana Lighten), hermana Forsyth and hermana Barton (both in my district) and hermana Glover and hermana Parkinson. All of us get along really well and we're normally the first room down to breakfast. So, it's a room with three bunk beds and very tiny closets. But it has a gorgeous view! The bathroom is in the hallway, four showers and three stalls. I think there are four rooms of 5-6 girls each, and there are two bathrooms total.}

_{The food in the cafeteria is Spanish food cooked by four super cute and tiny Spanish ladies. Only one of them is a member. A lot of the foods are pretty weird, but they're never bad or anything and we're glad we get to try out the funky-looking meats before we're eating at a member's house or something. Also, the rolls are always super good. And they have peanut butter! We all eat apples with peanut butter like every day, and it's an adventure cutting our apples with butter knives.}

_{The elders in my district are elder Bennet (Sully's roommate) and elder lambert (from my YSA ward), they're companions, and then elder Lentz (from my YSA ward) and elder baker. We get along really well as a district (sometimes it seems like we're having a little TOO much fun haha), we were supposed to set goals on Sunday like not saying "guys" and only speaking Spanish for 4 hours from 8-12 every day, so we wrote a "constitucion" on the board and whoever breaks a rule gets "punished" by having to stand in the corner of the room, facing the corner, and recite the missionary purpose in Spanish. I haven't been punished yet but hermana Barton says "guys" about every five minutes haha. She's from California and is very much a surfer-hippie sort of person which is super funny. We've decided elder Lentz and elder Baker are like tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum, since they're always making jokes. They're already best friends even though they've only known each other for a week.}

_{There are about 50 people at the MTC. We aren't getting any more new people until the "native" Spanish speakers (we're pretty sure) in a couple of weeks. There are two sisters and an elder heading to France (one girl is from Cali and her mom is French so she knew French, and then the other sister, sister Esmieu, and the elder are from France). The sisters are going to the Paris temple visitor's center, they have one week left.  There are also 5 Portuguese-speaking elders, only one of them knows English. I'm not sure when they leave, but they're only here for three weeks too. Then the rest of us are all learning Spanish.}

_{There is a laundry room for the girls and laundry room for the boys. 6 washers and 6 dryers. They're on the floor where the rooms are, and we can do laundry any day except Sunday. Normally when we leave for sports we stick laundry in the wash that any of the girls in my room need washed, and then we put it in the dryer when we come back.  Speaking of... sports!! I've done volleyball, futbol, and the gym so far. I'm actually not bad at volleyball, still pretty bad at futbol, and I just do the elliptical in the gym which is pretty hard to mess up.}

_{every day, this is our schedule:}

_{6:30 wake up}

_{7:00 breakfast}

_{7:30 daily planning in classroom}

_{8-9:00 personal reading of the book of Mormon in classroom (president packer asked us all to start it over and finish it by the time we leave, I just started Mosiah! Also, 2nd Nephi chapter 31 is super awesome and you should go read it!)}

_{9-1 various classes/study time}

_{1:00 lunch (we get a whole hour for lunch since it's the biggest meal in Spain, so normally we get to go back to our rooms for a little bit!)}

_{2:00 back to the classroom for more classes/studying}

_{5:00 deportes!!! Everyone has to exercise every day and there is a sign-up sheet.}

_{6:00 shower/prep for dinner, also this is when we can read emails. It's kind of tricky with so many people trying to shower at once, but it's actually only half of the girls who need to shower (I'm in zone 2, zone 1 does sports earlier) so it's not TOO bad}

_{6:45 dinner}

_{7:30 back to class/study}

_{8:30 is when me and hermana lighten teach our investigator, "Denise"(she's just one of the teachers). Other companionships teach at different times. We have Denise for a few weeks, then we get a new investigator. We teach in Spanish so I say most of the lesson when we're teaching since hermana lighten took Spanish a while ago (8th and 9th grade), but we both plan and pre-write some things for her to be able to say during the lesson. She's also gotten way more confident just between the first few lessons! It's crazy because even just between Saturday, our first lesson, and now, me and hermana lighten can tell that our Spanish has gotten WAY better!}

_{9:00 done with class, go to rooms}

_{9:30-10:30 sleep, we always say we're going to bed at 9:30 but then end up talking until 10:30.}

_{Anyway, that's a day! It's super long but definitely makes it feel like you're making every minute count.}

_{The teachers at the MTC are mostly young (younger than 30, all returned missionaries) but there are a few older head teachers. All of the teachers are native Spaniards, I'm pretty sure, except for the Portuguese and French teachers. The teachers are super good and super funny and awesome!!!And almost all the teachers can speak a ton of languages! I guess that's just a European thing, since sister Esmieu can speak several languages too.}

_{Apparently, Americans have a smell. Sister Esmieu came into our room the other day and was just wanting to smell like our lotions and things because "They smell so American" haha. We're going to miss the French sisters when they leave.}

_{On Friday, instead of exercise we do service, this past Friday we cleaned the temple grounds. It's been so cool seeing the temple get cleaned (we get a super awesome view of it every time we go up and down the stairs, which is a LOT--bedrooms on one floor, classrooms on another, cafeteria on top). You can see which parts of it have been power-washed and things. We're excited to actually get to go next week!}

_{On Saturday, we went to the park! We took the subway! I'd only ever seen the subway on Disney channel shows so it was kind of awesome taking it. I was in a trio for the park with sister Esmieu and sister Cornwell. We met someone who spoke French and it was so cool because even though I had NO clue what sister Esmieu was saying to her, I could still feel the spirit!}

_{This past Sunday, we were all assigned the topic of PMG chapter 4 (recognizing and understanding the spirit) and told to prepare a 4-minute talk on it. IN SPANISH. And then in church 10 people were called up to speak and the companion of whoever was speaking was the translator to translate the talk into English! Luckily me and hermana lighten didn't have to go up. The talks were really good though. This week the topic is "developing Christ like attributes."  Speaking of church, me and hermana lighten have a calling! We're the music coordinators (or something like that), which basically means that we're in charge of music for church, Saturday and Sunday devotionals, and any other big group workshops/devotionals (normally 1-2 during the week). AKA, I've been playing piano a lot and she's been leading the music a lot, because no one will ever admit they play piano! But we've gotten a few other people to do things, and we're going to find more people who can play piano too. This Sunday after church we had choir practice, then at 8 we went to the temple steps and sang hymns and things which was super fun. And pretty hot. But also fun, and a few people stopped on the sidewalk to listen.}

_{Today for P-day pretty much everyone went to the mall. We took the city bus. Or buses actually, since we couldn't all fit on one. Every Thursday we get to either go on the "Excursion" option or stay at the MTC, and pretty much everyone chose the excursion. It was super fun getting to see Madrid as we drove to the mall, and at the end, all of us ended up at the McDonald’s in the mall because apparently we're all super American. Also, at the mall instead of normal escalators with steps they had weird ramp ones! So we had to take a lot of pictures on them haha. Next week the excursion option is going to some city (not sure which one), so I'll let you know how that goes.}

_{I love being at the Spain MTC because everyone knows each other and we're able to go out and do fun things on p-day and even just being SO close to the temple and in the middle of the city is super awesome! It's also nice being taught by Spaniards since their Spanish is different.  Overall this has been the longest week ever, and we're always super tired at the end of the day, but it's also been super awesome because you can feel the spirit all the time!!! The church is so true and everyone here is trying to be the best they can be and it's so awesome!}

 _{Love, hermana Walker}