Safely Home

Well... all good things must come to an end and Rich flew home on Thursday morning.  He called us from Dallas at 3pm/9pm and he was doing great and looking forward to the Austin flight and home.

It was a great visit and such an encouragement for us to have a little piece of home with him here. We are quickly getting settled and building a network of friends, but clearly we have a long way to go until this is our "home".  It was hard to say goodbye and see him go.

Keeping this post short... it's quarter close and I need to get into the office!

Jason

Great Weekend!!

Well, it's Sunday night and we have had a great weekend with Rich!

Madrid Friday night...

Saturday, we had a fantastic visit to Toledo.  It's a picture-perfect town with amazing architecture and such.  We really enjoyed the city.  The only part that didn't go well was that they closed the Cathedral early because it was Easter Sunday coming... so we didn't get to tour it.  It was built in the 13th century, so it was sad to miss such a special place!  Next time.

Today... we gave Dad our regular Sunday schedule.  We went to church in the morning and then to our pastors house for lunch.  He had 20 people over (!!) and made home-made Spanish paella.  It was delicious.  The crowd was the usual eclectic assortment of folks.  Brits, Irish, Spanish, Canadians, Hungarian, Indians, Dutch, etc. etc.  Lots of great conversation and cultures all mixing together.  We had a GREAT time and didn't make it home till 6pm.  

Katie enjoyed her Easter basket and we just finished watching 101 Dalmations.  It was fun and she really enjoyed it.  She had a big Easter basket outside her door this am and it was great fun to share her candy today.  yum!

We're still debating our plans for tomorrow.  Perhaps a run to Segovia or perhaps we'll go back into Madrid to one of the museums or something.  We're having a great visit!

Jason

Rich is here!

Jason's Dad made it safely to Madrid yesterday afternoon.  He flew from Austin>Dallas>Paris>Madrid and had no weather or other problems.  His bags arrived ok... which were 80% filled with stuff for us.  :-)  mmmmmmm, macaroni and cheese...

We went to a great dinner last night at a restaurant in the center of Madrid's historic area, the Plaza Mayor.  The city was PACKED with people for a Good Friday related parade.  We saw a few elements of it as we left the restaurant, but we were all tired and we zipped back home.

Today, we are planning to visit the historic town of Toledo.  It's a beautiful old town and we're looking forward to it!

Jason

P.S.  I returned yesterday from a business trip to Tel Aviv/Haifa Israel.  I had no time to see Jerusalem during the day... so I pulled an all nighter (not kidding) and saw it on Thursday night.  Amazing.  I'll post on it another time.

Great Weekend!!

Another fun weekend in Spain.

We slept in a little on Saturday and Katie and I went on a breakfast date to Starbucks. She noticed that from the window we can see the mountains. They are snowcapped and beautiful! It was fun.

We picked Mom up at 11am and headed into those mountains to the beautiful city of Segovia. It's about an hour northwest of Madrid.

The highlights of Segovia are:
-A Roman era Aqueduct. It was built in the first century and it's amazing. Beautiful. Huge. It's still a functioning part of their water delivery system today. Crazy.
-The CASTLE where King Ferdinand and Queen Isabela lived. It's the first castle that I've ever seen and it didn't disappoint. Wow. We climbed up the VERY winding & narrow stairs to the tower to find an incredible view of the city.
- Coffee and hot chocolate. You think I'm joking... but no. Their coffee (cafe con leche) with milk is outstanding. (Note from Becca - the pig intestine soup was not so much on the highlight list :-) Beware of menu items that are "local specialties". Also not so much on the highlight list was the pig's foot sticking off of Jason's dinner plate. It was a very interesting lunch.)
- Believe it or not... we ran into people we knew in Segovia. It's hard for even the social animal in me to believe. One couple was from one of our flights overseas. They were traveling back when we were here in December. It was neat to see them again. They speak essentially no English, but we plan to get together with them soon. I'll let you know what stories occur as a result!!

Then... we drove back home and stopped at McDonalds on the way for a burger and fries. We think they are still doing the transfat here b/c the fries were GOOD.

Sunday...
We did our usual thing on Sunday. Church in the am. Lunch with a different pastor's family for the afternoon. It was a relaxing day and we enjoyed getting to know this couple who moved 7 months ago from California. They have 3 grown kids and are very comfortable people to spend time with. They had another couple and a mother/daughter also over for dinner... so it was nice to spend time with everyone.

All in all, a great weekend.

Jason and the Spanish speaking girls...

P.S. I'm going to Israel tomorrow for meetings in Haifa and Tel Aviv. It's the furthest part of my territory and (if you can believe it) one of the areas that gets very little attention. I won't have time to explore much... but I'm mainly praying for safety and that God will let me see a little something historic while I'm there. It's a little frightening to go to this area, but I'm essentially escorted everywhere I'll be going... so it should be fine. Pray for me!

P.P.S. We are VERY excited that Rich (Jason's dad) is coming for a visit. I arrive here from Israel at 11am and he comes in at 2pm! It'll be GREAT to have our first visitor to our Spanish home. We are looking forward to a great visit. :-)

Strange happenings on the streets of Madrid...

While slightly embarassing... I just have to share this story.

A little background...

I have a laptop bag that has a handle and rolls. I carry lots of stuff with me and I find this is just easier on my back and shoulder. After working in Europe now for 10 weeks, I can say with certainty that only foreigners roll their laptop bags. It´s a source of great interest when locals ´hear me coming´ with my bag. The sidewalks here are mostly brick and it´s very clear when I´m nearby. People give me all manor of strange looks. It´s amusing to me too... so everyone is enjoying themselves.

Then came Thursday.

I had a couple meetings at our downtown sales office so jumped on the metro and took the train in. When I made my final stop, I began a 10 minute walk to the IBM building. Beautiful weather, perfect morning. Great coffee in my veins and a London newspaper (a big treat for me since they are $5/3€ here) in my bag for the lunch break. Loving my life.

I´m rolling along the sidewalk with black bag in tow when I vaguely notice a woman coming towards me on the right. She was walking beside a 1/2 wall and we were on a collision course. I sped up a little in order to miss her and as I slipped my bag in front of her, the dog I had NOT SEEN with her ATTACKED my laptop bag!! I jumped a mile and (might have) screamed (but I´ll never admit it).

Come to find out, the dog wasn´t angry... it was a playful kind of romp on some strange, square ´dog´ that he believed wanted to play. It was a real hoot.

The owner (in Spanish of course) apologized profusely to me while seeming a little amused herself. I assured her in perfect spanish (right!!) that it was no problem. When my heart rate came back down to normal, I laughed and began to look forward to telling you all about this one.

It seems even foreign dogs know that we´re foreigners...

mucho amor,
Jason for the 2 sleeping (8am here) beauties

New Car!!

With exactly no drama... we picked up our new car last night! It's a 2008 Honda Accord... but not the Accord in the US. It's the same car as the Acura TSX. It's a dark, metallic brown and is sharp!

We also successfully drove to Hertz and returned our rental car. No small feat in the middle of the Madrid rush hour. Traffic was crazy.

It's a nice car with lots of creature comforts. It reminds me of a slightly smaller version of Becca's Acura that we sold a few weeks ago... except that it's DIESEL (!!) and a stick shift. (No small differences, for sure). The coolest thing is that they installed an MP3 adapter in it, so Bec hooked up her iPOD and now we can play 16 gazillion songs without shuffling CD's. Come to think of it, we didn't bring the CD's... so this is a very good thing!

Anyway. We're very thankful to have our own wheels. The rental car was a good one, but they are pricey and it's nice to check this task off our list.

Lovin' that new car smell...

Jason for we 3

Great Weekend...

Hey friends...

We had a great weekend and both completed needed errands and had some fun!
Things we did this weekend:

Saturday...

- Visited our local City Hall and registered as residents
- Took that paperwork to the Honda dealer in order to complete our car purchase. We pickup the car no later than Wednesday. :-)
- Acted like tourists for the afternoon and went to the ´Central Park´of Madrid. Had a GREAT time with perfect weather. Saw a few of the beautiful old buildings there and took some great pics. We´ll surely post some of them soon!!
- We tackled the ÍKEA challenge´of putting together their furniture. 2 hours and a few confusing looks later at their directions... and Katie now has a cute pink dresser for her clothes!

Sunday...

- Slept in a little (church starts at 10:30)...
- Big family breakfast of French toast and yogurt. Yum!
- Great time at church where Jason was asked to come up front to read scripture. Note: 12 years at IBC and zero appearances on stage. 3 weeks (!!!) at Mountainview and I´m involved up front :-)
- After church, we had dinner at the Pastors (Richard and Rickja Wallace) house again. It was a great time and they had 3 other families joining them. Very relaxed and enjoyable time. We are quickly growing a great network of friends. Sometime this week, we´ll have the Wallace´s to our house for dinner. We´ll be discussing how to start a small group in our area. (We live 25km - aka 15 miles - from the church and they are interested in growing their base in our area.)
- We arrived home at about 5pm and had a nice relaxing evening watching College basketball and laughing at how they write the London newspaper. You must ask Becca about this. I almost put the video camera on her so I could capture her comments permanently. Hilarious.

We love and miss you all. I´m in Madrid this week with no travel (hoo-ray!).

Note: With Daylight savings time, we are an hour closer in time to you all. We don´t change till later this month ?? - I think. So... if you want to call us up till 5pm Dallas time (which is only 11pm here)... CALL US! We´d love to hear from you.

817-545-6206

much love,
Jason for we 3

Pictures!

As requested, I finally got around to posting up some pictures to (mostly) match the posts. I decided it would be better to go back and add pictures to old posts rather than try to add 62 pics in 1 new post. I added pics all the way back to the 1st post from Spain on 2/17 (you can get there by clicking "older posts" at the bottom of the current page). So check them out!

This morning, Katie & I successfully drove across town to go to the moms & tots meeting that we went to last week as well. It is affiliated with the church, but open to whomever wants to come. It was nice to see some of the same moms we had met last week. I was proud of myself for making it all the way across town in the car too - navigation is an amazing thing! I figure if I ever get too hopelessly lost, I'll just give up and have the navigation take me home :-). It knows where that is for sure! I also drove home from the airport yesterday after dropping Jason off. Parking is an entirely different matter - extremely stressful!!! The spots are extremely close together and the aisles between rows are very narrow. Tuesday at the grocery store I think it took me 15 minutes to get settled into a spot :-). Let's hope there are no hidden cameras recording my efforts :-). We pick up our new car on Friday night or Saturday - we bought a Honda Accord. (which is actually like the US Acura TSX) I'm hoping the fact that's it's smaller will work in my favor in the parking department. We have decided they park by feel here (i.e. by bumping into the neighboring cars to "see" where your boundaries are), something I am not looking forward to engaging in!

This afternoon, I decided to not do more unpacking, but instead to go exploring to the park down the street. It has been BEAUTIFUL weather here - the trees are in full bloom, and they clearly think that winter is over. I'm not sure if they are right or not, but it has been nice. (It's so crazy that it's been snowing in Dallas! I would never have guessed that Texas would ever be colder than Europe :-) ) Today was quite a bit colder & windier, so I was afraid that the blooms would fall off before I got a picture of one of the beautiful pink trees that are all around (I'm not sure what they are - maybe cherry blossoms?) I was afraid Katie was going to rebel at the biting wind, but she did not even seem to notice, and didn't even wear her jacket most of the time! There is a nice playground just a couple of steps outside our gate and Katie enjoyed playing there. I kept thinking we'd meet some other kids, but not today (and today we were even there after school was out, but still no). I can't remember if we mentioned it, but Jason is walking to work, and we found him a shortcut behind the park, so he can take the diagonal instead of the 2 legs of the triangle. It has only been taking him 20 minutes so maybe this will shave off a bit more time. It's so great to be that close to his office!

Jason was in Athens last night and is in Rome tonight and tomorrow night. I asked him how Greece was, and he said he mostly saw the airport :-). So we'll have to go back for sure! We decided not to go meet him in Rome this week - it's just been a little too recent that we've gotten out of a hotel! Soon the family travels will begin, I'm sure!

This is probably getting a bit stream-of-consciousness given the hour here, so I'd better close :-). Enjoy the pics!
Becca

The Air Shipment arrived

OK... a quick post... I've been staying up WAY too late and need to go to get some sleep!

However... wanted to share that our Air shipment arrived today. Clothes, toys, kitchen things, the iMAC, my office things, lots of household items and YES (!!!) our bed. It looks very tall in our new bedroom... and it's wonderful. We can't wait to go sleep in it tonight. There's nothing like sleeping in your own bed! :-)

It's been a good but busy day. Lots of good stuff going at work. I fly to Athens tomorrow for some meetings on Wednesday. Then to Rome for the same. Should be interesting.

... but for now, I'm getting a glass of milk and heading up to get a GOOD night's sleep. :-)

Jason for the 3 Spanish Risley's

Hey... CALL US for FREE!!***

The Vonage phone line works! Incredible. :-)

So, please call us. 817-545-6206 will ring to our home here in Spain. We are very thankful that it´s working and are hoping that YOU will call and chat with us for a few minutes. BTW, if that area code is long distance for you, call us and we´ll call you back. It´s free for us to call anywhere in the US from Vonage.

One request. PLEASE realize the timezone difference. We are Dallas plus 7 hours.

In case you´re "time zone challenged" like me, this little table might help.

Dallas Madrid
7am 2pm
8am 3pm
9am 4pm
10am 5pm
11am 6pm
Noon 7pm
1pm 8pm
2pm 9pm
3pm 10pm
4pm 11pm and you should have a good reason for calling!!
5pm Midnight... we might be asleep!

We´re headed to IKEA at the moment, so if we don´t pickup the phone... try us later or leave us a message. We´ll call you back!

Jason

Estamos en La Casa!

Ahhh, what a great day. We are in our house and Katie is next door to my office asleep in her own bed. The ADSL is working (took one of my colleagues 10 weeks to get ADSL!) and we are in a clean and wonderful, warm home.

The day wasn't without it's challenges, but that's just part of the experience of moving! It started with us renting a car from Hertz this morning and not being able to get out of the parking lot. The agent gave me an exit ticket for the gate but neglected to tell me it still needed validation from the security office. We literally had 10 cars lined up behind us blaring their horns! Surprisingly, we weren't frazzled. It's a foreign country and well... things are foreign to us. :-)

Amazingly, ALL of our bags fit into the car we rented. It's a small station wagon and we shoehorned all the stuff in. It was tight, but we were thankful b/c it saved us making an extra trip back to the Hotel.

The Garmin 370 (Navigation) worked like a charm and we drove straight to our place! The British pronunciation of Spanish words is a real treat.

We arrived at our house to find challenge #2. The owner (who truly is a wonderful man - invited me to go running with him where the soccer stars practice...(he's a sports agent)) had moved out the high priority things he wanted and left all the other stuff here. The house also hadn't even been cleaned and was honestly a mess from the painters and their work. Well... HIS agent was VERY unhappy with him and (you'll love this) coordinated our security guard for the neighborhood and the owner's cleaning lady to complete his move and to clean our house. :-) His agent apologized to us 1000 times and left a great bottle of champagne from his stash in the fridge as an apology. Love it.

While Becca's washer was doing our first loads of laundry and the crew was moving/cleaning... we went to see some new friends from Mountainview Church. They are a wonderful couple who culled through their camping gear and loaned us towels, pillows and a bunch of kitchen gear. Our "air" shipment arrives on Monday, so we'll be very well set then... but in the meantime, we're super greatful for our friends Rob and Chris and their generosity! While we were stopping by their place, we all took a walk in their neighborhood and shared a snack and some great coffee. It was a great part of the day.

We came back to the house still in progress, so we went shopping! Carrefour is a big Super-Target style place here and we spent a small fortune on food and kitchen appliances. We have both an Expresso and Coffee machine... so Jason can now officially function. Internet and caffeine. What else is there???

Seriously, it's so great to be here and God has truly taken care of every step for us. Moments like today are best seen through the eyes of Katie. Somehow, it's easy to see the details that didn't work out and to refuse to react with pure joy when you find (for example) all your pony's and books on the shelf of your new room. Having a young child is a great reminder of what it means to be childlike and thankful. We often aren't... and shame on us.

We're happy clams. BTW, this house has "two master bedrooms". We have plenty of space for YOU. Come and see us. :-)

Jason and the girls

UPDATE 3/5: The 2nd picture is of Katie looking out her window for Peter Pan :-)