05 de março (March 5)

The people here are so funny with their futebol. So there are about a million caffés here, several on every block, that sell all sorts of pastries and bread and also grilled ham and cheese sandwiches. And they all have TVs in them as well. And every single night, every single caffé we walk past is PACKED with people watching futebol. GLUED to the screen, it´s dead silent, they don´t talk to each other or even eat their food, they just watch. It´s pretty cute, too, on Saturdays and Sundays, all the parks are full of dads out playing futebol with their kids. They are very devoted to their sport.

There is a kitty who lives in the apartment building next to us on the very top floor who is all white, and makes me miss our kitties. He isn´t very smart though, he´s always sitting on this little ledge, maybe three or four inches wide, outside the window, and he´s about twelve stories up. But he hasn´t fallen yet, so I guess he knows what he´s doing.

I don´t think anyone in Portugal really has dryers. Even the big, fancy houses always have clothes outside drying on lines so I think it´s something they just don´t have here. It is funny because in the apartment buildings a lot of people string their lines between windows (almost everybody in my area lives in apartments. I have only seen a handful of houses here, don´t know if all of Portugal is like that or if it´s just Braga) and even the people who live at the top do that, I would be so worried about all my clothes falling down but I guess it doesn´t happen to often because that´s what all the people do. We dry our clothes on a rack in our apartment, so we don´t have to worry about all our clothes falling.

Well I don´t have too much to report. The two people who were supposed to get baptized on Sunday didn´t, and they didn´t even come to church, which is a little discouraging. The elders were supposed to have two baptisms as well, two teenagers. But then the parents read some not-so-nice things about our church on the internet and forbid the missionaries from ever contacting their children again. The ward mission leader is going to try to talk to them this week, though, so hopefully that will go well.

Anyway, I hope you are all doing well. I love you all!