On Sunday, we had stake conference at the Madrid temple. It was beautiful ground and interesting to see all the members of the church gather here. According to our religion teacher, Faustino Lopez, there are 44,000 Mormons in Spain - about 1 for every thousand people. His class is really interesting and he talks about when he converted, it felt like he was no longer a Spaniard anymore because everyone who is Spanish, is Catholic. It's just the way it is historically. The family I live with are mostly inactive and don't go to church at all except for Nieves. It's really interesting to see the church in this different culture. Although they are from different backgrounds, our classes and meetings still teach the same things and don't vary from ward to ward, stake to stake or country to country for that matter. It's just something interesting we've all noticed despite the language barrier.
The funny part of Sunday was as I was getting ready, my curling iron blew out - and the rest of the apartment's electricity. So now I've broken my straightener, curling iron and my blow dryer is on the verge of snapping. It was time for new ones but I would have liked to avoid breaking all of them!
Valentine's Day was not as bad as I thought it was going to be - it was actually one of the best Valentine's Days I've had (being single anyways.) I woke up to a package sent from my wonderful family with a nice card and some candy. Growing up my parents would always ackowledge the holiday and give Chloe and I treats. After classes, my friends and I headed to Carrefour (similar to a Walmart) to get ingredients to make sugar cookies at our director's house. Apparently they don't use baking soda here in Spain so we found some sort of conversion for baking powder for baking soda. If you use 3 teaspoons for every 1 teaspoon of baking soda the recipe calls for, you'll be fine. Well our cookies turned out delicious. Instead of the liquid vanilla extract we got sugar flavored like vanilla. We bought a bouquet of flowers for our director too. We headed over there around 7 and we each brought little treats including: sour candy, m&ms, oreos, principes (delicious Spanish cookies), huestitos, kit kats and then we ordered pizza as well. We made our cookies with questionable frosting because of the powdered sugar we found was bizarre. And after we gathered around my computer and watched Valentine's Day. It was so fun. I talked with different girls in the program and got to know them better. I love them allll!
It was late when we all headed home and Jenny, Lexi, Carly and I roamed the public transportation for about 40 minutes with the sketchiest bus driver ever. I'm pretty sure we fishtailed twice and he was trying to kill us. We couldn't stop laughing because we were so jittery from all the sugar we consumed. Apparently, the bus driver liked Katy Perry and played a song for us from his cell phone we all hadn't heard of. His driving made me feel so sick and we finally got home after staying on for the whole bus route for the 6 bus. Quite the adventure to end Valentine's Day spent with the girls I love!
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