Portugal Part 1

David's mom has a distant cousin who has lived in Lisbon, Portugal for nearly 20 years. Since Spain is so close, they wanted to go visit for a few days. Graciously, they let us tag along. :) It's funny how I've never really thought much about Portugal as a country and certainly not one high on my "I really want to visit there," places, but given the chance, of course we were delighted to go and we loved it. We rented a van (because ours is a bit old and a bit rickety) and made the 8 hour drive from Madrid to Lisbon. It was great to see the Spanish countryside with its green rolling hills, olive groves and orchards. Then, Portugal was just gorgeous. (You can click on the pictures to see them larger).

This was at a little restaurant where we stopped for lunch. Wood is very scarce in Spain, but tile is everywhere.

Overlooking Cascais, the coastal village where we stayed.

One of the main streets. Much more tropical and lush than where we live.

All the sidewalks were made of these cobblestones done in artistic patterns. Very old and very beautiful.

One of the little pastry shops. On the top shelf, notice the easter bunnies and birds made out of bread. :)

"Bird of Paradise" plant. My very favorite plant in the whole world, I think.

Just an ordinary house on an ordinary street. Seriously. Doesn't it look like something in a calendar? They were all this beautiful.

More gorgeous street views. It kind of felt like south Florida, except older and more European, of cousre.

Semana Santa

When the Spanish observe a holiday, they really observe it. This is Semana Santa (Holy Week) and the public schools have been on a two week holiday (our school only gets one). Yesterday was Maundy Thursday and today is Good Friday and NOTHING is open either day. No grocery stores. No malls. No shops. Very few restaurants. It's like Christmas Day in the U.S., only they have these holidays throughout the year and they always sneak up on us. I have mixed emotions about it. On the one hand, I think it is good that they really value family togetherness and time off. This is definitely not a consumer-driven culture. On the other hand, I am still so accustomed to 24 hour availability that it frustrates me when I can't run to the store and get bread or bananas and having to do without. I'm learning...

Spring Break - Segovia

David's parents came from Minneapolis to spend the week with us over Spring Break. Of course, we always welcome an opportunity to be tourists so our first stop was Segovia, a town about an hour north of here. The town is very historical with a Roman aquaduct dating back to the 1st century.

You can see part of the aquaduct in the background.

All over Spain, there are super old buildings with beautiful patterns in/on the walls.

This is the cathedral of Segovia. It was designed in the late Gothic style between 1522 and 1577, it is widely considered Europe's last great Gothic cathedral.

This is the famous Alcazar, or castle, of Segovia. It is said that this is the castle which inspired the castle in Disney's Magic Kingdom. We were able to go inside as well as up the 152-step tower overlooking the city.

Looking down into the tower.

View from the top.

At the top of the tree you can see a stork. There are a lot of them in this area.

Taking a little break.

A few kilometers from Segovia is La Granja, the King's former main summer palace, built in 1721. The gardens are beautiful, although it was still a bit early for the spring blossoms.

The Red Plate

The Red Plate.  I'm not sure the origin of the Red Plate, but we received one as a wedding gift and have especially enjoyed getting to use it so often here in the dorm.  I keep it in the original box and write on the box lid the occasion each time it is used.  A sampling of occasions since we have been here...

• Olivia's first day of high school
  
• David's birthday
  
• Ashley's last day of student teaching
  
• Jesse making a 99% on her PSAT
  
• Penny's birthday
  
• Rachel's birthday
  
• Pau graduating
  
• David passed his driving test
  
• Corban and YongJun's report cards (significant improvements from last semester)

When the boys moved in, they weren't as excited as the girls had been about getting the red plate.  In fact, Pau quite adamantly did not want it at his graduation dinner, but we coerced him to eat off of it.  Since then, though, they have had more fun with it and realized just how "cool" it really is.  When David passed his driver's test, one of them said, "Oh! He gets to eat on the red plate tonight!"  

Tonight was our "night off," so the boys were headed out the door to another home for dinner when I handed them their report cards and told them how proud of them we were.  One of their first comments was "Oh! I guess we don't get to eat off the red plate tonight, huh?"  So after they came home, while they were watching a soccer game, I brought them a little dessert on the red plate and set it on the coffee table.  They loved it.  :)

A Typical Sunday

Our Sundays are pretty routine here in the dorm. Our children wake us EARLY, and we try to keep them quiet so the boys can sleep in. We usually have a hot breakfast (pancakes, waffles, french toast) and a leisurely morning. We have been attending a small church plant here in Camarma, which actually meets at the school. When David helps with the music, he goes early to practice (at 10:30), but church doesn't start until 12:00 noon. Each week is a different speaker, almost always in Spanish, sometimes translated into English. Rachel attends the elementary Sunday school class. After church, we come home and eat lunch, around 2:00. Sometimes we just eat leftovers. Sometimes I have something in the crock pot. It is one of the more challenging meals for me, just because everyone is starving when we get home so I want it to be ready quickly.

After lunch, everyone has free time / rest time. Often the boys will go out and play sports or go mountain biking, running, etc. They also spend a good bit of time playing football on the Playstation. :) Today, we (David, me, Rachel and Mathis) went for a family bike ride around town, then stopped at a local playground (of which there are SEVERAL), to let the kids play for a while. There was another little girl (a Spaniard) there who was very excited to meet Rachel, an English speaking girl, as we later learned this little girl (Agatha) and her mother were learning English. Rachel was a bit bashful at first, but after some prodding by us, she started talking to the girl and her mom and they spent a good bit of their time talking to each other in English.

For dinner, sometimes I make a full meal, other times we just make french bread pizzas or something simple. After dinner is over and we have put our kids to bed, we usually have a short devotional/prayer time with the boys. Tonight we ate homemade brownies and ice cream. Afterward, David catches up on miscellaneous work he needs to do and I spend a while planning homeschool lessons, making my grocery list and menu or just reading, preparing for the week ahead.

Day Off

As dorm parents, we are encouraged to take one day a week as our "day off," since our evenings and weekends are when we are "on." It doesn't happen often that it falls on a day when we truly have no other commitments, especially with David having been in driving and language school and Keri helping out at school more often now, but on our days off, it does give us a break in that the boys usually go to someone else's house for dinner that evening. Today was our day off for this week and because the weather was warm things are just beginning to bloom, we decided to take the afternoon and head into downtown Madrid. We have heard of Retiro Park, but had never been. I guess a fair comparison would be Central Park in NYC. It was enormous, lush and green. The kids had a blast playing on the very cool playground, then watching the fish in the lake and just frolicking in the grass and picking daisies all afternoon. Unfortunately, our camera is out of order for a while so I just found these pics on google.

This is one of the famous pics of Retiro Park. You can rent these paddle boats for about $5.00 for 45 minutes. We didn't do that today, but maybe another day...

This is another famous monument in Madrid, called "Puerta de Alcala." The entrance to the park is just on the left.

We live about 15 - 20 minutes north of the closest Metro/Subway stop. Usually, we drive there and park, then take the Metro into downtown. It's fast, affordable and David loves not having to drive downtown.

From the park, we walked a few blocks just to explore a bit more. This building is the City Hall.

This is a random picture of a building, but it could be any building in downtown Madrid. They are all this beautiful. There's just something about being in a big city...

Discussion

Every Sunday night we have a short devotional and time of prayer with our dorm students. Last night we were talking about humility and what it means to be humble. One of our students, a Korean, was having a hard time understanding the concept. He asked one good question after another and we ended up talking for quite a while about it. We don't really know where he is spiritually, but were very encouraged by his openness and eagerness to understand. We just wanted to share this and ask for your continued prayers.