I made it to Madrid safely, it has been a pretty crazy day to say the least. Tyler and I sat next to each other on the flight and I had the window seat just over the right wing, couldn't have asked for a better situation! After leaving you at the airport we flew to Paris, the Charles de Gaulle airport is so weird though, really unorganized in my opinion, but that may have been because everything was in French. Anyway, we got there... Then we missed our flight! We flew in around 11:15 and they started boarding for our flight to Madrid at noon. The flight leaves at 12:30, keep that in mind. But they made us go through another security check even though we never left the airport at all... But that messed us up and we got out of security at 12:10 but they had already stopped boarding. Pretty frustrating, so all of us missionaries missed our flight so we had to go to the client services desk and catch the next flight, luckily they had room on a flight that left just before 2. So we got into Madrid around 4! It was a pretty cool feeling flying in, it truly felt like home... Even when I was in France I just really wanted to get here, France gave me an uneasy feeling but that was most likely just because everything was so chaotic. But anyway, when we were about to land I just had this feeling that it was like home, that this could be the place I could embrace and find comfort at! It's gorgeous, I'm taking lots of photos. It was raining when we got here. We were picked up by MTC employees from the airport and they immediately took us to go and get the rest of our dollars switched into euros. $50 only turned out to be like €34,25 haha but that's alright.
We got to the MTC and I met the MTC President AND my Mission President for the Spain Madrid Mission, both are very good guys :) We had a Spanish evaluation which I think I did ok on, that's just to see what classes they are going to put me in, all was dependent on how well my Spanish was coming along. The MTC Presidente interviewed each of the Elders, just to get to know us and why we decided to serve a mission. He's a really great guy and he seemed to like me a lot as well :)
The computer I'm typing on has a 30-minute timer and I still have 13:54 left so I'm going to load you up :)
I can already tell that this is going to be a whole lot harder than I had even anticipated, I'm in SPAIN! But I'm up for the challenge and I know that no matter where I am that the church is true and Heavenly Father is still who he is and that he's not going to leave me alone. Just need to keep him involved in everything that I do and everything will be just fine and I will be a productive missionary.
The MTC President told me that we go to the temple every Thursday while we're here, and on Saturdays all of the elders go out to the giant park (similar to central park in NYC) and we go proselyte. It's going to be a great!
I'm not exactly sure when my P-Day is either, so I'll be sure to let you know when that time comes around.
Well it's time for me to go now... I love you Mom! Tell the family and everyone that everything is going well so far.
xoxo
Elder Koeven