living with faustino

so today, we found out that apparently the senor of the familia we are living with is not only the head of all CES here in madrid/spain, he's a recent area authority. that's cool, we're living in the house with a general authority. don'tttt worrry. how funny is that? i had no idea until right now about that when we looked it up because we were slightly suspicious that he was something of a big deal. yep. living with faustino lopez in madrid. his wife's name is consuelo, and they have five children, four boys and one girl. i'm not positive, but one's married, one is serving a mission in the CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE MISSION (say hi to tanner for me!), and i'm pretty sure that the other 3 live here at home, although i've only seen one thus far in the 3 days we've lived here. his name is julio and he's 21, the "baby" of the family (as they call him), and is in a wheelchair. they're a really upstanding stalwart family (clearly).

the house is really really compact. there are 4 stories, and i have yet to venture into the basement, but there's an attic and then 2 floors with living space. the bathroom that we use is the SMALLEST THING I HAVE EVER SEEN. the shower is too small for me to even move, i keep hitting the hot/cold knob and freezing/burning myself to death. but it's fun, and consuelo is a good cook, and i am enjoying the house. there are 3 girls stuffed in a room the size of the small room at 887, with a bunk bed and a single bed, but we're working it.

today was a pretty similar day to yesterday: a story of trying to get accustomed to public transportation and our town. we had a "walking tour" of alcala de henares with our professor, and then we went into madrid with our entire group and walked around. this is a picture of a few of us visiting "el parque del retiro" in the middle of town: it's this ginormous park even bigger than central park, where the royals used to relax and roll around in their chariots and such. we only visited the very tip of it, i'm excited to go there and read don quijote! (i bought it and will be reading it while here in spain. sadly, my copy is in english.. but i figured that 1000 pages of reading in spanish would be a little extreme. better for me to fully understand it, right?)

word of the day: frambuesa = raspberry.

favorite thing of the day: gelato and french bread baguettes that are everywhere.