ohh chamartin, we will never forget you!

brittany, you got to sit next to me on the train!

we had a wonderful day in madrid with kate! seeing cibela (goddess of nature of course), getting kate some candy she is obsessed with, eating lunch, visiting plaza colon (where the espana futbol fans go CRAZY!), & getting some cute little pastries before heading to Becca & Jason's for dinner.

ohh... & getting blisters & missing the last train out for the night... which meant catching a taxi all the way back to las matas. fun times!

churros&chocolate!

at plaza mayor. 

love the colorful walls 

above the old Bakery!

i wore the shirt mom!!!

we found the famous bakery in sol... thanks aunt susie!

                 

the bear is the spanish symbol. we think its on the emblem or something. its pretty much where everyone meets up in sol.

david & daphne took us to get churros & chocolate! its a spanish tradition, late at night to get these. the chocolate is suppose to be like hot chocolate but its more like hot pudding. 

el escorial continued.

this is king david. hi david!

interesting...hmm, el escorial.

we went to the HUGE market at majahonda with Peggy & Hannah. It was crazy! kate only got cherries. 

life 

is good, linda. 

even in spain...

we then met up with bettina in el escorial.. very interesting!  she is trying to start up a travel guide business & wanted to practice on us. she is so nice!

fashionably late? not so fashionable in spain.

we are learning many lessons in this culture. one is punctuality. while spanish culture is always slower and people come about 2 hours late to everything. we have learned that when it comes to transportation you HAVE to be on time or else you are out of luck. 

we tried to get into madrid to meet up with nicole's friend for dinner, and planned to leave with enough time to the train station, but missed our train and would have been over an hour late if we tried to get another one. 

so we have learned the lesson to be early from now on. amen. so we had a frozen pizza at the house with our bf here.. chily. 

nicole proposed with a ring made out of my favorite candy here in spain. i said yes.. pretty soon we are going to need to go to love and respect marriage counseling. why the heck not? 

chily (not chilly or chili but chily)

peace and strawberry jellies.

scarface appears.

so we also got to bring the kids to the park for most of the morning on saturday before we headed to the paella pow wow- they just LOVE us!

even if jordan did fall off the swing & get her face a little scratched!

surfing with Jesus

Sunday, Peggy led the service and asked us to help out for alot of it. It was really fun because it was a family service so all the kids were there and their families. She had Nicole and I act in her skit and help lead motions to the worship songs. I like to call this Peggy did an awesome job using different teaching styles to tell her message. And she used some art work and did this thing called Knee to Knee and had the kids pray with their families. Nicole, Kate and I were a family ;). Here is a picture of us in the skit. Nicole got to be Peter and surfed with Jesus to safety. It was funny. 

Pray for Peggy and her daughter Hannah as they are going to Prague on a mission trip with people from their church in California. 

peace and love and wol (women of leadership) 

paella pow-wow...riekje raising some funds ;)

So Saturday was the Paella Pow-Wow. It was a fund raiser for Proyecto Barnebe. We raised about 2,000 Euros!! Nicole and I were stationed as the ticket takers and the photographers. Both of our cameras were dead and we didn't know until we got there. Great job ladies!! Well luckily Hannah had hers so we confiscated it for our assignment. It was really fun and all the food was really good!! Paella is a rice dish with seafood and really any kind of meat in it. Richard made an Indian Paella with curry in it! They were all so yummy and everyone had a good time. There was face painting and the kids all looked so stinking cute!

Nicole doing her job with sweet Maty! 

taste testing.. very serious job.

We met up with Kate our friend from UT and enjoyed some sangria.. duh!

face painting!
the CUTEST baby ever.. Christian. He is pretty much our Spanish boyfriend that we share.

segovia. segovia. segovia.

this lady tried to tell us about a "bonita" cathedral that we should visit... she was right!

cute little nun walking along the road.

we walked all 9 miles down the Roman aquaducts- jk!

whenever we don't know where we are going we find the Asian tourists and just follow them!

filling up our water at the public fountains. duh!

Segovia was so beautiful... aquaducts... flowers in the window boxes... street musicians.. pottery.. Catedral de Segovia... the fortress (disney modeled their castle after it)...poppies... yummy spanish tortilla (really an omelette on a french baguette haha)... sangria... beautiful tiles on the buildings... 

its the kind of city you think Spain would like. it was fun to travel with Hannah and Peggy. our little adventure buddies!