We had a good Friday. I worked in our downtown office and met with a couple reps. Made some good progress on both relationships and a couple deals. Good stuff. Friday night we went to a mobile phone store and the Honda dealership to look at cars. It's hard to call it a dealership when there are 4 (not kidding) cars in the place and no cars anywhere else to be found. Real estate is expensive here and car space is precious!! We like the Accord, which is the same car as the Acura TSX in the US. It's a nice car and (surprisingly) not too popular and therefore not very expensive here. We're needing a car by next weekend and we are big fans of Honda/Acura... so we're likely to buy this "Accord" soon.
Saturday...
We got Becca a mobile phone! :-) Her new number is 011 34 608 560 913. (Her number is really only the last 9 digits but you need the 011 for international and the 34 is the country code for Spain. Confusing? Yes.. phonecalls here can be a real challenge. It seems you need to have a secret decoder ring for each new place and phonetype. Challenging.
IBM provides me with a Blackberry phone (soon) so we'll publish my number sometime in the future.
By the way... our Vonage telephone number is not yet functional. This hotel is wireless... so there's nowhere available to plug it into.
Then we went to a nice lunch (we had wandered into the Ritzy side of town) and stopped by the Renault dealership. It was 4pm and the dealership was CLOSED. Crazy! They are only open from 9-1pm on Saturdays. We are starting to see that "business" is conducted during the week... and only during the week... interesting. I guess the weekends are for fun here!!
We came back to the hotel to refresh a bit... and then we went to the Heart of Madrid. Puerta del Sol. It's the literal center of the entire country of Spain and a crazy place on a Saturday night. Lots of street performers and people (tourists and locals!) going around taking pictures and such. You could feel the pickpockets watching your every move.
We had a simple dinner in a small restaurant recommended in our guidebook (great fish!) and then we walked around a little on our way to the taxi for "home".
It was a good day and we're headed to bed soon.
We try out a BIG church in Madrid tomorrow morning. It has 100+ people in it, which is HUGE for Spain and Western Europe in general. We have read everything on their website and found several blogs of church members. It's a church supported by Missionaries who home base from a good church in Lancaster, PA that we know well. We really hope we like it. Specificly, we're praying that Katie has a good experience. She's not enjoying all this Spanish talk around her. She wants to find some kids that she can communicate with. I prayed tonight with her before bed that God would start showing her the friends that He has for her. She put her hand on my cheek and said, "don't worry Daddy... I'll make some new friends." Sweet girl. I guess we're really worried about her and she knows it too!
Well, seriously. Off to bed. Jetlag effect are nearly gone, which is great... so I'm actually genuinely tired. :-)
Much love,
Jason and the sleeping beauties
3 comments:
So good to hear all the details. We will be praying for Katie and new friends. Sounds like you are getting around pretty well. So great to have this blog to keep updated. Found myself reading it and getting choked up because we're missing you already.
Ruthie
Thanks so much for keeping us updated with your blog. Tell Katie that Aunt Jenn and Uncle Bryan are praying for some new buddies for her at her new church. We miss you all and are sending prayers and hugs your way!
Love you,
J/B/C/C
Sounds like y'all are having a grand adventure. So what are y'all doing about the whole learning spanish thing or do you know some already? If so, how close is Tex Mex spanish? Glad to hear the good experience at church. It makes life so much more enjoyable to have a good church home. Take care and I enjoy reading about your adventure.
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