Around Madrid in February

Amidst all the traveling of January & February, we were able to do some cool things hanging out around town. I thought I'd give you a little update on our day to day life here... not just all the stuff about traveling!  Most of the time, we spend hanging around our apartment, or out with friends, but we try to do fun stuff around town as well.
 I have this super amazing friend here, Bea, and she and I have been hanging out more lately, and I've loved it!  

We've been doing cooking classes - our first in January was for pancakes & maple syrup from scratch.

In February, we did rice krispie bars (I had LOTS of bags of marshmellows, thanks to Mollie & Kez!)  The second photo of Bea is her showing me some Mac & Cheese that she found on another friend of mine's blog!  She made it from the recipe, and it tasted amazing :)

Also, random photo from my life.  This is probably my favorite breakfast, but I don't let myself have it too often... Chocolate Croissant & a homemade cappuccino with brown sugar.  Thanks Emaz for the cool cup & saucer!

Then, we had a weekend of amazing weather, and Tep asked me to go cross country skiing with her.  One of the amazing things about Madrid is that I can drive 45 minutes north of my house and be in 8000 feet above sea level in the Sierra de Guadarramas.

The snow wasn't the best, and as you can see by my sweet outfit, it was pretty warm.  Check out those leggings....

But, it was really nice to get out of the city, and to get some great exercise in the beautiful weather!
I'm also going to try to do a better job of simply documenting the city around us.  There are some amazing things that I walk by on a daily basis, and whenever it comes time for us to leave Madrid, I want to make sure that I've captured the everyday, as well as the amazing sites within our city.  This is one of the main buildings that welcomes you to Gran Via - the main road in Madrid.  There is some awesome historic architecture in our city.

Lastly, we had a small group of YWAM-ers (Youth With A Mission) stay with us at the beginning of the month.  It's a cool story how they happened to stay with us.  I noticed a few months ago that an old friend from mine from Wooddale's youth group had moved to southern france when I was facebook stalking one day.  I messaged Carissa to tell her that I was living here, and that we'd love to have her come visit at some point.  She wrote back, explaining that she was starting a new YWAM base in Biarritz, France, and they were having teams going around Europe promoting a base.  I offered up our place, and we ended up having these 3 kiddos pictured above - Ellen from New Zealand, Girard from the Netherlands & Cory from Canada hang out with us for a few days as they met with people around Madrid to spread the word.  Brian did 6 months with YWAM back in college, and we were glad to help out and host them!   (Notice the beautiful flowers that Brian brought home for me!!!)

And, they were great cooks!  They made an amazing stir-fry dinner for us one night.  It was so much fun to have them around, and we loved getting to know them even in the short time they were here.

We've been having amazing weather here in Madrid.  We've been trying to enjoy it as best we can, and so on a couple of Sunday afternoons we've headed to a little outdoor cafe in Retiro not far from our house and spent the afternoon reading in the sun.  I love it!

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Whoops, January Wrap, Wrap Up

Well, I had only intended to do one January post, but in the interests of my readers who may enjoy shorter ones, I split it up.  Plus, I hit publish before I remembered that we took another trip that month.

The next weekend after Basel, Brian & I decided to take a trip with our friends Andrew & Aindrea up to wine country in Spain.  For those of you who aren't winos, there are 2 regions in Spain that are considered to produce some of the best wine - the Rioja & Ribera del Duero.  Spain is split into Denominacion de Origens, which help preserve the qualities of specific regions.  According to all knowing Wikipedia, there are at least 120 DO regions in Spain.

"The Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAPA - Ministerio de Agricultura, Pesca y Alimentación) regulates the quality of Spanish foodstuffs via a labelling system which establishes, among other things, a Denominación de Origen for the country's highest quality produce. Products labelled Denominación de Origen, apart from being of superior quality, are expected to carry specific characteristics of geographical region or individual producer and be derived from raw materials originating within the region. Like most of these designations, a fundamental tenet of a DO label is that no product outside of that region is permitted to bear the name."

 We decided to head up to the Ribera del Duero region, and spend the night in Valladolid, which is about a 3 hour drive NW of Madrid.  Although we had planned on visiting a couple of wineries, the tour times were not super convenient, and so we ended up only going to one tour, in Spanish.  It was a great tour, and tasting, and I was surprised at how much I was actually able to understand!

 Barrel room - sorry a bit fuzzy.  I promise I hadn't done any tastings yet.

 Wine in the bottle, aging.

 A whole lot of wine in bottles aging.

A heck of a lot of wine in bottles aging.  All the black things on the sides of this photo are the crates of wine that you see in the photo above.  That's a LOT of wine!

But, I'm glad that we didn't schedule any more tours.  I was counting, and I think that Brian and I have been on approximately 12 beverage tours in the last 6 months (wineries, quintas, distilleries, breweries) and I think I'm done with those for a while.  I'd rather just enjoy what products they produce :)

After the tour, we headed into Valladolid to check into our hotel & tour the city.  We wandered around a bit, got some tapas, and got the feel of the city.  Nice little town.  Then, back to the hotel for a siesta :)  Later that night, we went out to this really cool restaurant, and drank some more wine.  It was a wine weekend, what can I say?

The next morning, we slept in and headed back to Madrid.  It was a great little weekend getaway!

Thanks Andrew & Aindrea for spending a great weekend with us!

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January Wrap-up

It's been, as I usually seem to say, an incredibly busy last month.  When we returned from the states early January, we already had several out of country trips planned, and a lot more activities to be done.  I learned, very quickly, that I need something to look forward to after coming back from big trips like that.  Being home, with everyone, is such a high for me.  Even though Madrid is cool, and we love being here, I knew that I would need to plan other things to look forward to for my personal sanity.

So, the first weekend we were back, we spent in Madrid, and the weather was amazing (think upper 60's).  We walked in the park, hung out, blah blah, did stuff that 20 somethings without kids do on a weekend.  Ate & drank wine.  Tried to remember what it was like to live in Madrid.  Recovered from jet lag.

The next weekend, we headed up to Basel for a conference.  Some of you may not know, but I help out with an organization called Skybridge.  It's really cool.  Check it out.

My new twin/identical personality/friend/Skybridge coworker Julie flew over from the states to help out with the conference, and we got to spend a ton of awesome time together.  She lives in KC, which is awesome for me, because some of my other favorite friends live there as well, so I can multitask even more when I visit :)

By the way, Julie is the one who hooked us up with many of our initial connections when we moved to Madrid.  We both went to Cornerstone when we were in college, though I didn't know her at the time.  When I found out we were moving to Madrid, Lynn suggested that I talk to Julie - who had been living there for 2 years.  Unfortunately, she moved back about 2 weeks before we moved over, so we haven't gotten to spend much time in person together, but we've become really fast friends in the time we have spent together.

You can also see Larry in this photo - Larry is the glue that keeps Skybridge together.  He's cool. smile.

The retreat was primarily a time for people who are like minded - "In Europe, On Purpose" to get together.  It was fun to meet new friends, hear some great talks, and explore a new city.  And eat bratwurst too.

Here's a few photos of our weekend in Germany/France/Switzerland (Basel sits on the edge of each of them.

When we got back on Sunday night, the girls & I decided to have a little night to go out to enjoy some of Julie (and our) favorite things!  I met up with Bea, Tep & Julie at our favorite sangria place.  Then, we of course had to go get churros for Julie.  She's kinda a chocoholic.  I can't relate.  I love these gals!  We had such a great time together.

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Spain/Spanish Resources

I've spoken with several friends or acquaintances in the last couple of weeks about a couple of resources that I've found helpful since living in Spain.  I know that the majority of our blog readers are not living in Spain, but for those of you who are (Dennie & Katie, I know you're out there!) I wanted to share a couple of resources.

First, a video that explains the Secret Powers of Time (dun, dun duuuuun).  This is a worthwhile viewing for anyone, but it specifically goes on to explain some of the differences between catholics & protestants,  northern & southern europeans.  Honestly, this is good for ANYONE, including people not living in Spain.  It really helps you understand the major differences that exist between these people groups, and why they are like they are.  PLUS, it's a smart lecture illustrated in an exciting and engaging manner.  I've posted this before, but it was worth a second mention.

Second, there is a blog that I read called A View of Madrid.  From what I can gather, it's written by a British guy who takes a lot of his time to research and write very intelligent posts about culture, places, events, or unique things about Madrid or Spain.  I've looked through his archives quite a bit, and it's helped me understand some things about my own city that I never could have found out by reading a tour guide or even asking my friends.  I love learning about my adopted city & culture, and Brian and I have had fun exploring some of the places that this guy explores.

Third, the language school that provides our tutoring service created a blog called Spanish and the City to provide links to additional spanish resources.  I haven't used it much, but I'm glad to know that it's there for me to use.

Last, a plug for our primary means of communication for the states (other than email).  We use Skype, like many of you, but our primary method of calling home is a MagicJack.  You're thinking to yourself, Kate, are you really promoting a made for TV product that comes on at 1 am as an infomercial?  Yes, that is what I'm talking about.  You can pick them up at Radio Shack.  We use this thing to call home because it's only 20 bucks a YEAR for the service.  I did a lot of research before we came over here to see if we should get a Vodafone contract, or use Skype Call or something else, and this was by far the cheapest option we had.  It works great, and we've been so satisfied.  Plus, when we travel, we can just bring along the little USB port, and plug it into any computer to use it.

Though, I have been using GoogleTalk to make several phone calls this week, and that's a pretty sweet (and totally free) system that's worked great as well...

Do you have any Spain/Spanish resources that you'd suggest?

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My Christmas Vacation, Part 4

We finally reached Cedar Falls a few days after christmas... and we were incredibly busy while we were there!  I hung out with several of my close gal-pals, visited our storage unit, did some errands around town with Rich, got to go shopping with Kay & Hanna, did a little photoshoot, and celebrated an incredible new years with some of our closest friends.  We also did some sweet bowling with Mike & Hanna, and I was able to have some quality time with some of my closest girlfriends.  We loved it, and it was so hard to say goodbye in the end!

I think that the highlight of the entire trip was getting to just spend a lot of quality time with people.  It was great to be refreshed by spending time with people that we know and love, and who know us well.  We relaxed a lot, even though we were doing so much every day.  I'm so thankful that we have great families and amazing friends, and that we were able to be with them during the holidays this year.

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