January 2012 Review

January was pretty calm for us!  No traveling, no visitors, and simply an easy welcome to the new year.

We re-started hosting a community group at our house (we did all of last school year, but this fall, when we were traveling so much, we couldn't manage it).  Sorry for the blurry photos - but we've averaged between 10-15 people at our place every Monday night to share a meal followed by a discussion.  Currently, we're doing Tim Keller's Gospel in Life - I'd highly recommend it to anyone!  There is so much meat to the study - each weekend, Brian and I have headed to the park to have a coffee and work on the next week's study, and we've had some great discussions with just the two of us as well.

My friend Janelle, a travel agent here, invited me to go with her to a huge travel convention in Madrid.  We collected lots of information on places to visit, and we also tried local foods from various regions.  As I was walking around the Basque region booths, I was stopped by some workers and asked if I wanted to take a pintxos class, which I of course accepted!  It was fun :)

 One thing I really miss having access to is a library - we brought a lot of books over with us (most of which I've hardly cracked) but it's always nice to have access to new and interesting literature.  For that reason, I decided to host a book exchange with some of my girlfriends.  Sorry for the blurry photos.

 There were a lot of books exchanged, but in the end, I think it simply turned into a reason to get together and eat and drink :)

 I know we'll be doing it again in the near future!

Finally, we were part of the annual Skybridge retreat.  This year, it was hosted in Madrid, which was convenient for us!  It was a weekend-long event, with 20+ attendees, many flying in from all around Europe.  Brian and I hosted a session on both loving your city and working with christian distinction, which we used mainly as a vehicle to discuss how these individuals approach each of those ideas in their own cities.

What a random post... but it just goes to show that we do more than travel here :)