Back to España

Plaza Cervantes, Alcala de Henares

 No, we're not moving back to Spain. But I did get a chance to go back for 2 1/2 weeks. I went to teach a Photoshop workshop with the ministry we used to work with when we lived there before. It was like old times! I started this blog when we lived in Spain (from 2007-2009). You can go back to the beginning in the blog archives and read about it if you have a hankering. Good times.

Although I was there for "work", I arrived a few days early so I could hang out with my good friend, Loida, and her family in Zaragoza (half way between Madrid & Barcelona). It was SO good to see them all again. It made me realize how much of my Spanish I have forgotten, not that I knew a whole lot to begin with. But Loida had mercy on me and spoke English or VERY slow, basic and enunciated Spanish. Thanks, Loida! :)

Loida and her Spanish horchata (which is VERY different from Mexican horchata).

Her sister, Eli and her brother, Javi, also speak English very well, so I wasn't completely in the dark. But when Grandma or their parents spoke to me in fast Spanish, I did a lot of smiling and nodding.

Loida, her cousin Olga, and her grandma.

Eli in her purple room.

Such a great family.

I had missed so many things about Spain. Of course I missed our friends. But to be shallow, I REALLY missed the coffee.

My first Spanish coffee on my trip back to Spain - one of MANY.

Loida also took me to an incredible gelato place. We can get gelato in Denver, but really, does it compare to actual European made gelato??

All natural gelato place in Zaragoza.

Really??? How am I supposed to choose??

But I did choose. "Pistacchio Sublime" and Amaretto.

Before.

During.

Loida during.

After.

Seriously, this place was over the top cool. The gelato was super delicious and the decor was something I wouldn't mind adapting for my own kitchen some day. Lots of natural wood and black accents. I probably wouldn't wear the cute puffy black chef hats the gals working there had on, but maybe...

We walked back home that evening, so that we could work off a little of that gelato. I snapped this photo of the amazing cathedral of Zaragoza while standing on the bridge the spans the Ebro River. So beautiful.

I left the next morning to go back to Alcala de Henares to start the "work" I came to Spain to do (it just doesn't seem like real work!). More about the rest of my trip later...

Hope you enjoyed!

I love a good road trip.

So some of my friends have once again not so subtly reminded me that it's been a long time since I posted anything. I kind of get in a funk sometimes. I haven't even been reading blogs lately. No reason. But I started back up in the last couple of days.

Here are some updates about the doin's at our house:

• I FINALLY got my hutch open. My mom gave me a brilliant idea. She suggested that I saw through the paint that had sealed the door shut. At first I thought it would cause too much damage, but then I came across my pumpkin carving tools, which includes a very very small saw. It fit in the space at the top & bottom of the door, so I just sawed down through the paint & it opened LIKE MAGIC. Thanks Mom. So I should be posting next week about the hutch and it will be filled with DISHES!
• We're getting an estimate on our roof soon. When the roof is done, then I can paint the outside of the house and it will no longer look like it's abandoned. I'd like to do a little more planting, too, and rip out those giant shrubs in the front.
• I'm having a garage sale, so I'm in organizing mode. I'm tired of moving junk. And living in a small place, we really don't have a lot of room for stuff we don't use.

But on to the subject of the post! We went to Dallas/Ft. Worth over Labor Day weekend to visit friends & pick up some of our stuff that we had left in Spain. We went to some great restaurants & saw some fun stuff on the drive. Here's a gallery of our weekend:

 Our dear friends Christopher & Ragna

We had a great time in Dallas with our friend Jessica. She took us to this great restaurant called Park. I loved that turquoise fireplace with the stacked firewood and horizontal wood planks. This was outdoor seating.

This restaurant had a California beachy 60s flea market feel to it.

 

This was inside.

 

This was some of the yummiest pizza we've ever had: dried apricots, proscuitto, boursin cheese and basil.

 The counter at Pinkberry (super tasty yogurt place), view from our table outside.

More spying on Pinkberry patrons. This was Vino's yogurt: mango flavored with berries and fruity pebbles.

So a big part of the whole road trip experience is stopping at funky places along the way. I'm glad Vino wants to do things like that.

 

 Saw this place in Oklahoma. We thought it was an icecream parlor. We thought wrong.

 

What??

Seriously. I think Vino wanted to take this one home.

Why would anyone think this place had ice cream? 

I peeked in the window of that pink camper. It has cheetah print carpet!

I asked that green guy permission first. He didn't care.

 

Of course there were singing metal frogs with GIT-tars.

 

I'll take one of each, please.

 

More than anything else at this store I wanted that soda bar arrow sign like nobody's business. Who cares that I have absolutely nowhere to put it right now. Lucky for me, it wasn't for sale. I really don't need a giant red arrow in my tiny house. But if I lived in a cool urban loft...

 

Pretty jar of ribbon on spools.

 

 

I was laughing at a shelf that had a giant head of the Burger King and one of Ronald McDonald on top.

It looks like I'm wearing a green chandelier hat.

 

Pink bike fencing.

 

Creepy doll-head fencing.

 

Last stop on the way home. Breakfast at this "famous" cafe in Oklahoma.

 

They were really nice to us, even though I was wearing my Husker shirt. 

It was the only clean thing I had left in my suitcase. :)

 This week I vow to return to the land-o-blog. I've missed it!

Little spring things that make me happy: turquoise & fringe

thrifted fringy turquoise table cloth

Not much blogging going on here. Too much work...and flu-ish yuckiness...

But Spring is here!!! The daffodils and hyacinths are coming up all over town. The snow is gone. That's the best part. No freezing cold, dirty, wetness.

I don't know why, but this table cloth brings a smile to my face. It's a happy color and I like the thick fringe. I know it's nothing important in the large scope of life. But when I see things in our house that need to be done that I don't know when I'll get to, when I think about unencouraging issues with infertility & adoption, and any number of other stupid things I could fixate on, seeing something that brightens my day helps me to focus on things that I really am thankful for - the things that do matter. My faith in God, health, family, friends, the good man that I married.

I know it's just a table cloth. I'm not going to get dramatic about it. :)

What kinds of things help you to focus on what's really important? There's gotta be something.

Land of Christian History & Star Wars

We returned late Thursday night from an incredible week in Tunisia with friends. Wow! Let me just say...Wow! We absolutely loved it there. After a rather upsetting change of flight (there was a mix-up in communication with the place we bought the tickets from, and we didn't find out until we were AT THE AIRPORT standing in line that our flight had been moved to Thursday evening instead of Tuesday). I was mad, but I got over it, and Thanksgiving turned out to be magnificent. Our friends & their friends all agreed to celebrate one day late so we could be there. Yay for friends!



The next 3 days we went on a road trip that in included the Sahara desert, a Roman Amphitheater & a Mediterranean beach, among other things. Not bad. Not bad at all.


In the Sahara, we saw one of the sets for Star Wars. We found out that the Jedi & Jawa robes were not made up costumes for the movies. They are outerwear actually worn by Tunisian men. We saw them everywhere! While we were in the desert, we paid a guy to let us film him & his camel while he watched an iPod. We needed the footage for a video we're doing. The scene was not too far from reality, as his cell phone rang while w were out in the middle of nowhere. Then I got to sit on the camel, who was really not in the mood. I think he looks like he's singing blissfully with his eyes closed. In reality, though, he was hollering to be left alone.


The paradoxes for us were rather startling. After the road trip, we returned to our friends' house & put up Christmas decorations. Tunisia is a Muslim country, with very few known believers. The women veil only if they want to, but sharing your Christian faith & converting a Muslim is illegal. So the culture is most definitely Muslim. The clarity of cultural & religious differences came to us while putting up the Christmas tree & listening to Silent Night, while the Muslim call to prayer is broadcast loudly in the neighborhood around. Or driving in the car with Nat King Cole singing about chestnuts roasting on an open fire, while the view out the window shows a relatively warm day, skinned sheep carcasses hanging from butcher hooks, and veiled women walking down the sidewalk. Not the Christmas scene we grew up with!


But while America seems to dominate as a "Christian nation", I was enlightened on this trip as to the rich Christian heritage in Tunisia. The ancient city of Carthage is just on the outskirts of Tunis. This is where Scripture was canonized. It is also where the first female Christians on record were martyred. You can read about Perpetua & her maid Felicitas here. In Carthage, you can visit the ruins of the Roman amphitheater where they and other Christians were martyred. Their story, although ancient, is not too far off of the present day stories of believers in Muslim cultures today.


It was difficult to leave Tunisia! We made new friends & saw & did SO many things while we were there! Definitely one of my favorite vacations ever.

Back from Romania

We just returned from Romania this evening. We drove from Oradea this morning to Budapest, Hungary (the closest big airport). Weird to think that we've been in three countries just today!

We LOVED our time in Romania and hope to return. We felt like we had a lot in common relationally with the friends we met there.

One day after classes several of us went out to some property owned by the school's director to have a picnic. They prepared several different kinds of grilled meats - chicken, pork, mici (pronounced "MEECH"), along with savory bread rolls and grilled mushroom caps. For dessert we had little bite-sized pastries made with a walnut paste that tasted like it also had nutmeg in them. And of course, fruit. The director's wife put together a beautiful fruit basket for table decor, then served the fruit at the end of the meal. When we first arrived, Vino looked at the fruit basket and thought the fruit was plastic, especially the grapes - because they were perfect! Green, pink & purple grapes. There were purple grapes growing on a trellis around the house, which I noticed was common in that area of Romania. I loved the simple arrangement, so I took a few photos.

After dinner, we all played a Swedish lawn game that we were told was called "King". I had never seen the game before, but had a lot of fun playing it. It involves throwing sticks, so naturally, I was shamefully bad at playing because I throw like a girl...who can't throw. Our team came very close to winning, but squandered away our lead with poorly aimed tosses. Seeing as how I hardly have a competitive bone in my body, I was fine with losing, especially since it was getting pretty dark near the end and the mosquitos were out in force.

Good times!

For Love of Cabbage!

I haven't eaten this much cabbage in the past 10 years combined than I have in the last week. Every day is a cabbage day. We've been in Romania for a week now, and leave in a couple of days. I think the cabbage is growing on me. It totally depends on how it's prepared and what it is served with. Examples - Bad Cabbage: cooked and served with plain pasta (this was lunch yesterday). Good Cabbage: wrapped around little meaty spring roll type thingies called sarmale. I'm not doing well at describing these, but they were delicious. Seasoned ground meat (pork? beef?) and rice wrapped in cabbage leaves, simmered in a savory broth. They were so delicious.

We had spent the day in the countryside last Saturday with some new Romanian friends. When we dropped one of them off at her house, she invited us in to meet her family. Their home, in a village, was simple and humble, yet incredibly warm and welcoming. We were greeted by her parents, two sisters, and her sister's foster daughter. Immediately the table was set for us and we were presented with a stock pot full of these things. It made me think about my own hospitality. I want people to feel a welcoming peace in my home, but it has so much more to do with how I treat them than how cute my decor looks or how presentable I think I look (or don't look!). These people were incredibly generous to share their food with us. I can imagine that they don't have a lot of excess for their own family, yet they, with joy, gave to us.

Before we left, our friend's father gave me a bouquet of flowers that he had just picked from the garden out front and tied together with a string. He was so cute when I thanked him profusely and gave him a hug. I don't know if it was culturally weird for me to hug him, but it just came out. :)

So we have just two more full days in Romania, and I can pretty much be guaranteed to eat cabbage at least two more times before we leave. At least. And why not? It's nutritious, inexpensive, and more versatile than I ever imagined! Cabbage soup...cabbage and potatoes...cabbage salad...cabbage and hot dogs...gotta love it. Cabbage.