Dia del Bicicleta

Back in early September our town had its annual weekly "fiesta." The central plaza becomes a market and stage and there are different performers all week, as well as family activities each day. One day is "Dia de la Bicicleta" or "Day of the Bicycle," where everyone is welcome to join in a ride around our town. This year David and Rachel joined in the fun and as our house is fortunately on the parade route, Mathis and I stayed home to watch for them.

Here is the police motorcycle leading the way.

Followed by hundreds of bikers.

Here they come!

This was a cute homemade "taxi," to carry the little one.

The Ambulancia, just in case.

And another police car at the end.

Observations

I (David) have a new student in my sixth grade math class who has just come out of the Spanish school system. He is actually half Australian and half Irish. It has been interesting to learn through him how numbers are written differently in Spain. In the Spanish system, the "." is used to separate groups of thousands where we would normally use a "," and vice versa. Thus, the number one million would be written 1.000.000,00. This has been confusing for him as we first worked with larger numbers and are now working with decimals.

Another difference that sometimes frustrates us is that in Europe, dates are written day/month/year instead of month/day/year that we are used to. For example, my date of birth is Nov 8, 1973, which I have always written 11/8/73, but here it would be 8/11/73. So when you see it written but don't know if the person who wrote it was European or American, it's not easy to tell if they meant Nov 8 or Aug 11.

On a somewhat unrelated note, our headmaster Mr. Musser was asking all of the students where they were born as they came into the school building this morning. I'm not sure why he was asking, but it was interesting to stand and listen to the cities all over the world that were given. In one family, each of the three siblings was born in a different country! We are an American school, but our student body is certainly international.

Good Times

Here are some random pics of life lately.

Sophie and Jesse baking chocolate chip cookies one Sunday afternoon (with their little helper, Rachel, of course.)

This is what our table looks like on a normal night. From left to right, Rachel, Keri, Schielah, Laura, Sarah, Sophie, Jesse, Stephanie and Bop Bop. Thankfully, our large table comfortably seats all of us.

Rachel and Mathis love having big sisters to play with. Here is Jesse playing Barbies.

and a silly picture of Mathis, just for fun.

Matthew 5:14-16

This is the theme verse for our school this year. Rachel memorized it with her class.

Student Leaders

Really? My last post was Sep 10? I can't believe how time is flying. I can say that having five girls in addition to our own family certainly keeps me busy. Whew!

Anyway - last week a select group of juniors and seniors from ECA were privileged to attend a Student Leadership Conference for ACSI schools (Assoc. of Christian Schools Int'l, of which we are a part) held in Budapest, Hungary. One of our dormies, Jessica, was one of those selected to go. This morning in chapel, the group shared some of what they learned and gave a challenge to our ECA middle and high school students. (Click on pictures to make them larger)

Mr. Madsen, on guitar, was one of the teachers who led the group and who also has attended this particular conference every year for the last 12 years (I think). He was also in charge of worship for the conference.

The middle and high school students in chapel this morning.

Daniel is the student body president this year. Here he is sharing what he learned at the conference.

Here are Jessica and Susie, talking about a workship they attended on the plight of orphans around the world.

And here is Andrew giving his challenge to live for now and not to be afraid of being laughed at or mocked for doing what you know is right.

As each student shared, they talked about different Biblical leaders, such as Saul, David, Nehemiah and Esther, and what we can gain from their stories and challenges they faced. They closed with a few questions for us to ponder and reflect.

How am I living dangerously?
Am I willing to do what is right?
Am I willing to be laughed at or rejected by my peers for doing the right thing?
Who have I laughed at for doing what is right?
How is God calling me to live dangerously?

Language fun

For three weeks we are privileged to have with us two girls who are the daughters of an Irish mother and an Australian father. The girls don't have particularly strong accents, but in the last 48 hours we have had fun noting the differences in vocabulary. For example:

One of them came down to breakfast this morning and asked, "Where can I find the cuttle-ree?" "The what?" I said? "Cuttle-ree." "Oh, cutlery! Silverware, you mean."

Yesterday one of them had a headache and asked for the Mah-trin, (Motrin).

"Capsicum" is their word for red bell pepper. "Bikkie" is cookie.

I love listening to them. And I think it's awesome that we are a minority in our home right now with 2 Irish/Australians, a Columbian and a Philipino.

Good times. :)

10 ways to pray for us

This is a video done by Jacob Bock, a veteran missionary here in Madrid, whose kids have attended ECA. He tells 10 ways to pray for missionaries and we wanted to post it to ask you to pray this way for us and for others.