What we saw in Dublin

OK - this is the end of the Dublin posts :-) I just thought I'd write a bit about what we saw while we were there.

1. The Book of Kells - a very cool illuminated Bible from many many years ago (i.e. 800 AD!!). It's amazing the time and effort the monks took to write and illustrate the Bible when they had to do it all by hand! No pics of this as we weren't allowed to take any :-). But here's a link with pics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Kells

2. There are lots of cool doors in Dublin - the architecture is amazing! Most of them were very colorful, but I guess I only took a pic of these black ones :-).

3. The Dublin Zoo - I was reluctant to do this b/c we can see the zoo many places, but it was really fun. Animals actually move around when it's not 90 degrees outside! This goat was rather "cheeky" as the English would say - I told Katie to get up next to him so I could take her pic - and the goat tried to nibble on her hair! So this pic is the 2nd time I was asking her to get close to the goat :-) The other pic is of feeding time at the sea lion pen. They were doing the "dog dinner dance" just like our dogs did at home! This is Rusty's only time of day to be so animated, where he races back and forth between the kitchen and the laundry room until he gets his dinner (or gets yelled at to settle down :-) ). The sea lions were truly doing this too! About 10 minutes before feeding time, they got really animated, swimming all over the water area, then getting up on land to look for the zoo keepers. Then they would jump back in the water and swim some more, then back up to see if it was time :-). It was hilarious.

4. Christ Church Cathedral (or Ca-Tee-dral as they say in Dublin :-) ). This was one of my favorite things we saw - it was beautiful! All around the cathedral there were stained glass windows illustrating Bible stories. It was really cool. This one is of Jacob's Ladder and Abraham going to sacrifice Isaac. They also had an older area below that had been excavated called the Crypt. It dates back to the 11th or 12th century and is the oldest structure in Dublin. It was my favorite part of the church, but you can see Katie's opinion of it by this time in the tour :-). We did get to see a mummified cat and rat who got caught in the organ and couldn't get out. She thought that was cool :-).

5. The Guiness factory. Now, I am not much of a beer drinker, so I didn't think we'd be much interested in visiting here. But it is the most popular attraction in Dublin (kind of sad as a general statement, but it's true), and Jason hadn't gotten to see much around Dublin. So we went there after he finished work on Friday. It was very cool! What mostly made it worth the tour was that they give you a free pint of Guiness in the Gravity Bar - which is an all glass room at the very top of their building looking out over the city of Dublin. It was very cool. And Guiness that fresh from the factory is quite good :-).

OK - lest I start to bore you with ALL the details of our trip... that's good for Dublin!
Becca :-)

More about Dublin

It's hard to consolidate our other impressions of Dublin, but I thought I'd give it a shot this morning :-):

1. They drive on the wrong side of the road. This just messes with your head!! We are VERY thankful that we do not live somewhere where we have to learn how to do this! Here in Europe, they often use roundabouts instead of left (or right) turns. You just enter the roundabout at the intersection and then exit to the right when you get to your turn. Well, they also have roundabouts in Dublin, but you have to go the wrong direction!! It was crazy just to watch, much less do :-). At many intersections, they have helpful note for pedestrians to remind you which way to look for oncoming traffic :-). I guess they are well aware that they are in the minority in the world in driving how they do!

2. We stayed at a WONDERFUL place that we highly recommend to anyone visiting Dublin! It is called Number 31 in the Stephen's Green area, and run by a very nice man named Noel Comer. It was very close to the downtown area, so it was a bit pricey. But included in the cost is a full, delicious homecooked breakfast every morning! Even Thursday morning when I moved our bags from the 1st hotel to this one, they met me at the door and said "Have you had breakfast yet?" and proceeded to bring out all kinds of yummies - even tho we hadn't stayed there the previous night! They had a huge assortment of fresh fruit, including (my favorite!) fresh berries - strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries - YUM!, as well as delicious vanilla pears made with real vanilla beans. They also had fresh sqeezed orange juice, homemade breads, and homemade granolas to pick from. Then they took your order for a huge egg breakfast of eggs Benedict, cheese omelet, mushroom frittata, scrambled eggs w/ smoked salmon or "the full Irish" of fried eggs and meat. It was amazing! We really didn't eat lunch much in Dublin b/c breakfast lasted us all day :-). The staff was extremely helpful, whether it was with electronics converters (yes, the plugs in Dublin are yet again different than Spanish plugs), what to see in Dublin, or just interacting with and entertaining Katie (she was the only child we saw there). One of the ladies, Ann, brought Katie some paper the 1st morning when she was getting restless before I was done eating. She asked Katie to draw her a picture which she then put on her wall in the office! It was so kind. They also gave us bread for the ducks in the nearby park. They were wonderful! No pics of the breakfasts unfortunately :-), but here's one of our beautiful room.

3. The 1st day, Katie & I went to see one historical thing (i.e. "boring" for the 4 year old set :-)), then we got a small picnic lunch and took the duck bread to the park to feed the ducks. It was so much fun! Europeans spend much more time outside than those of us in Dallas do (perhaps it has something to do with the temperatures?!?), and it is so fun to experience the parks with the cross section of people we found there eating lunch too. We saw some tourists and some business people on their lunch breaks, and heard English, French, Spanish and who knows what else :-). I think that people here just walk more and their leisure activity with their kids seems to be going to parks. The ducks were hilarious - it was actually more sea gulls than ducks and they were quite vocal with their desires for the bread :-). We loved watching them and laughed and laughed at them fussing at each other. That's some of the best part of being a parent - getting an excuse to do "kid things" again! :-)

4. The flowers here are beautiful - something has been blooming here since we got here in February! I think we're actually experiencing a true spring - where it's not just a 1 time event where a few things bloom, but where there are waves and waves of different trees and flowers that bloom. It is wonderful! This pic is also from our picnic in the park in Dublin.

Well, it's probably time to get the day moving around here :-). My parents are visiting and we took them out to our favorite restaurant last night. It was wonderful, but we didn't start dinner until 9:30 and didn't get home until after midnight! Then today it's very rainy, so we are all moving slowly :-). I think we're off to see the Prado in a little while though - our 1st visit! Should be fun and a great activity for a rainy day!

More on the sights of Dublin later :-)
Becca

But there are still challenges...

Our toilet has been broken for a month - it seems hard to believe that is not an exaggeration, but I just went back and counted. It has actually been longer than that - it's just been 4 weeks since they fixed it last time when it only worked for a day before breaking again.

They were supposed to come to fix it while we were in Dublin (and it would have made the list for the good week post, believe me!), but we got home Sat and it was still broken. At first we thought they hadn't come at all, but it looked like they had and just fixed the sink. When we 1st moved in, the sink was dripping just a teeny bit, but the portero (guard of our complex) had tweaked and it's been fine since.

Well, it turns out that I may have been using the wrong Spanish word for toilet.

This would probably be funny (and probably is to many of you :-) ) if I weren't so frustrated... and if our toilet were actually fixed. So check back with me in a little bit to see how funny it seems.

I did look up the word for toilet a couple of weeks ago, and found the word I've been using in the dictionary (lavabo). This is also the word they have on many public toilets around town. So I truly don't know if it is the word the Spanish use or not. But our portero is Porteguese, so he more likely knows the Latin Spanish word for toilet, which is inordino. (the spelling may be creative here, but you get the point)

So maybe this is why it's taken a month - maybe they just haven't seen the urgency to fix a slightly dripping faucet... when in reality it's our TOILET that's not working!!! Grief!!!!

Did I mention that we're starting Spanish lessons soon???!?!?
Becca

It's been a good week

Hello everyone!

It has been a good week - in so many ways!

--We had a GREAT trip to Dublin - what a cool city! We loved it - and think we must go back to see more of Ireland! (are we going to feel this way about every place we visit?!?) The people were so wonderful and friendly - and they speak English!!! :-) Always a plus :-) We definitely enjoyed the English "break" - and the English bookstore that we found there. I visited the bookstore each of the 3 days we were in Dublin - and spent enough there to earn a "free" book :-). That in itself was a treat! It was nice to feel like we were coming home though as we arrived back in Madrid! I'll write more about the trip soon. (with pics!)

--Katie loves her new school and did not want to come home "early". (she only stayed until noon both Tuesday and Wednesday) She made several new friends and seems to be fitting in fine. She is excited about staying long enough this week to eat lunch with her new friends. We also found out that her teacher may be a Christian. She grew up in a Southern Baptist church and was interested in visiting our church here. God is so good - more than we can ask or imagine. It truly blows me away how He led us to such a perfect place. And Katie's school was wonderful for me as well - I had a coffee with a different friend each day! :-) I feel like now we'll be able to establish a routine and that we'll have more structure to our weeks which will be nice. (of course the getting up and out early was a bit of a shock to my system after so many weeks w/o having to be anywhere before 10:30!) I hope to be able to find a gym to work out in (which don't provide childcare!), and explore more of the area around that I just haven't had a chance to explore. (and yes, that does involve shopping :-) Not buying necessarily :-), just figuring out what's out there!) On Tuesday, Katie told me we had to take a picture since it was her 1st day of school :-). Guess that girl is figuring me out already! :-)

--Our small group did go very well on Tuesday night (I think Jason mentioned it a little in his post from Dublin). And several more couples were asking this morning about coming next time. There was 1 lady who came who doesn't attend Mountainview - and she heard about the group at 5:40 Tuesday night to join us at 8:30! She has been praying for a small English speaking group to connect with here in our area and was so thrilled to come. So that was exciting. (and her husband plans to attend as well when work allows) She has several Christian contacts in our area who might also be interested - so we'll see who God brings to our group. We see so many people who are struggling here - it is a hard thing to move to a different culture! So I pray that God will give us many opportunities to minister to others and help make their time here a little easier. (with the selfish motivation that it will be company for me too!)

--Our ocean shipment arrives tomorrow!! It will be so good to finally have all our belongings back together again - though we are scrambling a bit today to figure out where to put some of the bigger things that are coming :-). The weather has been very warm at times recently, so it will be very nice to have our summer clothing, Katie's bike, our coolers etc. And my parents will be here on Wednesday, so it will be nice to have a few extra sheets and towels! There had been no word at all on when it was coming (originally they told us it would come shortly after March 26!) and then Thursday morning in Dublin I got a call saying they would like to deliver it Thursday afternoon!

--My parents are coming on Wednesday to visit for 2 weeks. We are so looking forward to seeing them! Jason has business in Valencia next Tuesday, so we are toying with tagging along with him. We'll see. I had hoped to have things all unpacked when my parents got here... but instead I'll have some good help with that job :-).

More on Dublin soon!
Becca

Small Group, School, Ireland

quick post this morning...

1. Small Group
We had our first informal small group meeting on Tuesday night (8th). We had 3 families come to our house and the time was very enjoyable and relaxing. We spent the time just talking about why we are in Spain and telling about how long married... how we met... etc. I think it was a success and we´re looking forward to continuing the relationships and growing the group, potentially. Thanks for praying for us!

2. School
Katie started her school on Tuesday and Wednesday morning... and is loving it. I´m sure Becca will post more on it another time... but she ran into the school and never looked back. On Wednesday morning, she POPPED out of bed talking about her friends and how glad she was to be going to see them. :-) We´re thankful that she´s happy and I´m very thankful for Becca´s hard work and diligence in finding the right school for her. She has worked, prayed, stressed on this decision for our girl. Katie´s good start is likely due to Becca´s care and attention to this decision... :-)

3. Ireland
I´m writing from a conference room in IBM´s development lab just outside of Dublin. We arrived separately yesterday and after my meetings I went out to dinner with my colleagues last night at a traditional Irish restaurant. There was singing, dancing, great food and fresh Guiness. It was a great time. Katie and Bec made it in about 9pm and were still sleeping when I left the room this am. I think they are going to go out and about today. I´ll join them tonight for dinner and can´t wait to hear about their adventures!

BTW, it´s really nice to be in a place where everyone speaks English. Greatness!

Jason
- a guy who is (at least) average height here... maybe even a little bit ¨tall¨. :-)

School!

Ya Hoo!! Rejoice with us! We have found a school for Katie!

I really had wondered if we ever would get an appointment at a school that had an opening, much less find a school that was what we were looking for. (since what I was looking for is rather specific... ) I was afraid I would have to either keep her home with me or cave in and put her in full time.... or be fussed at whenever we needed to keep her home or travel... But God knew :-)

We went yesterday to visit the Scandinavian School in La Moraleja (the area we live in). This is not ever a school I would have known about, much less investigated (given that we are not Scandinavian :-) ), but we have a new friend who lives on the street behind us who did extensive research into English speaking schools & has her son at this school. We loved it - they were totally on the same wavelength as I was - even complimenting me on wanting to keep her home with me more - completely not what I had been told elsewhere! Basically they will let us put Katie in as much or as little as we want! They are very laid back and truly will work with me for whatever we need. They do speak and teach in Swedish :-), but they all also speak very good English and Katie will be in the International section of their preschool. Her teacher is American (from Kentucky), but there is also a co-teacher in the classroom who speaks only Spanish to the kids (though she understands English as well). They have 2 separate classrooms, one all in English and the other all in Spanish. They have circle time in English for 40 minutes a day in the English room (and seem to spend most of their other time there), and 20 minutes for circle time in Spanish. There are at least 5-6 strong English speakers among the other kids - and all of them understand English. At the other "bilingual" schools I visited, maybe 1, maybe none of the other kids spoke English at all, even if the teachers did. I think the main difference is the emphasis - the school comes from more of an English slant b/c they don't speak Spanish as a 1st language either :-).

One of the things that made me feel most comfortable - at the other 2 schools we visited, Katie was very clingy, hiding behind me and not wanting to engage at all. (NOT at all her usual confident self!) But at this school, she ran off to explore w/o me, and wanted to stay and go to school there immediately :-). She has been talking about how she is sad that she has missed the fun things she heard them talking about that were going to do today. So I think she will fit in just fine!

They have some great activities - they have weekly time in the kitchen cooking :-) (we'll see what that entails!), Swedish/English music time called Musiclandia, art time, gardening time - should be fun! They are very dedicated to outside time - they go outside 2 times a day, rain or shine! They encourage the kids to dig in the mud, splash in the puddles, etc. So that should be good for our little princess. And they worry about sunscreen - made me laugh since you know that's due to them being fair Scandinavians!! They have 2 little turtles in the classroom which even get to come home with different families each week. :-) We'll see...

So tentatively, we are planning to put Katie in the school for Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, and we will just see how that goes. Their day is a little shorter (tho still not short!) - they go from 9-3 or 3:30. So I figure if all day those 3 days doesn't work, we might try a short day on Wednesdays. The great thing is, I know they will let us decide and we won't be criticized for whatever we decide! Also, they will transition her in slow over the next few weeks (partly due to our schedule :-) ), so she'll go until 12 on Tuesday and Wednesday this week, then a little more the following week.

I am still going to keep my appointment on April 15 at another local school that is a more academic preschool - so we haven't decided 100% what we'll do for next year. But I figured that it's better to get her in this laid back program as we are still transitioning into living here. I'd prefer not to switch her, but at least we have something that is a wonderful option for now. Thank you, Lord!

Thank you all for praying for us as we waited and searched!
Becca for us 3

Israel and Jerusalem Travels...

OK... I can delay no longer. One reason I've been hesitant to post on this is because it's hard to know where to start. I'll do some bullets and fill in the blanks with a story or two.

The excitement:

1) I highly recommend when you're flying to Israel, that you get to the plane VERY early. I'm a million mile traveler and for the first time ever, I missed a flight. I was at the airport 90 minutes early and it wasn't enough. Instead of a flight that arrived at 6pm to Tel Aviv... I took the red-eye that arrived at 5:30am. Made for a long day, but it was ok. I can sleep anywhere!

2) On the cab ride from the airport to my meeting, I had left my laptop bag and camera in the trunk. (mistake). We are on the freeway to Tel Aviv and we pass a minivan (if you can call it that) with a big open trailer with a camel riding in it. It was unreal. Sorry... no pic.

3) Our meeting was in Haifa (yeah, that's where the enemies of Israel were landing rockets 2 years ago from Lebanon!). On the way... we stopped and had coffee in Cesarea. (!!) The IBM lab where we were meeting the customer and the research staff was on Mt. Carmel. They don't know exactly where Elijah called down the fire for the alter, but it was somewhere on the mountain. Haifa looks out over the Mediterranean and it's a BEAUTIFUL city. It was very smoggy the day we were there so none of my pics gave an accurate view of the place. Still, to be near where Elijah demonstrated a small fraction of God's power was very special.

4) Customer meetings ended in Tel Aviv at about 8:30pm... so I crashed in my hotel and slept, slept, slept. I did kick on the TV and enjoyed essentially American TV. Israel is surprisingly western. I had Fox, CBS, CNN, ABC, all with Hebrew subtitles. Strange!

5) The next day was all business meetings in our Tel Aviv office. I had an hour-long presentation on my product and LOVED giving the pitch. Good customer meetings after too. Very productive time.

My business day was wrapping up about 5:30pm, so I called the concierge at my hotel and a colleague and I arranged a trip to go to Jerusalem from 7pm till midnight. It was $200 each and WORTH EVERY DIME.

Our guide (Eli) was a French Jew. He's lived here for most of his adult life and he had some interesting perspective on things. Very interesting. I got a good history of 1948 and 1967 wars that I believed was accurate. His opinion of who was responsible for killing Jesus was not so credible. His view is that when the crowd was calling for someone to be released they were saying Bar-Abbas, which in Hebrew means son of the father. He believes the Romans didn't understand what was meant and released a man named Barabbas. Seems like if they cared enough... they would've cleared up the misunderstanding before the allowed him to be killed. Eli's views were creative, to say the least!

We had dinner and then walked a few blocks to the old city of Jerusalem.

There are too many things here to paragraph out. Bullets.

- the city walls were so amazing at night. Many of them have only been unearthed in the last 40 years. It's special to see how many "new discoveries" they are making all the time here. The sense of time is overwhelming.

- the old city is full of muslims! It's the strangest thing, honestly. As many of you know, it's divided into different quarters of Armenians, Jews, Christians and Muslims. All of them living near one another like regular neighbors.

The Via Dolorosa.

It's really hard to write this, but they have commercialized this walk so much, that it takes away from the meaning. It's about 10 feet wide and likely 1/4 of a mile long. It winds back and forth up the hill. It was 9pm when we were there, so the tomb area was closed. Disappointing. I can't say it wasn't still an emotional time. Hard to describe how it felt to be in the place where Jesus walked (generally speaking, I believe) and died. Even with all the shops and the commercialism... it was still a very special place.

One of the neatest things about it was that I was there the Thursday before Good Friday. There were Christians (many carrying candles) walking the path and singing. Some of them were priests dressed up in long robes (their normal attire, I'm told). I'll post the best picture I have of this. Very special to see.

I really don't know how to describe how special and sad it made me feel to be here. It 's a somber place.

(we walked backwards on the path. starting at the tomb and ending at the start of Christ's walk)

So we then came to the steps where Pilot stood and washed his hands of his condemnation.
Then we came to the place where they scourged him. It was very, very strange and sad to be in this place. Very strange to think of God being beaten in the place where you're standing. Strange isn't really the word... but it's how I felt. Numb. Sad. Thankful that he didn't stay in that tomb!

The Wall

After weaving our way on the Via Dolorosa, we made our way through security to the Western Wall of the Temple. The day I was there was a Jewish Holiday called Purim. It's their celebration of Esther's actions that saved Israel from destruction by Haman. There were many, many men dressed up in their traditional outfits and praying at the wall. Tons of slips of papers stuffed into the cracks of the wall. The men praying were rhythmically swaying back and forth as they read and prayed. (Eli said it was because they wanted to stir up the heavens with their prayers like a candle flame stirs the air around it.) This was a very special place. They are continuing to excavate under the temple mound and we went back into a 'newer' section. I was talking with Eli and he and I were both enjoying talking about all the things that had occurred in this place. He was very happy to be there... because this is a holy place for him too. We talked about David bringing the Arc of the Covenant here, Solomon spending 50+ years to have it built, etc. etc. It was AMAZING. Then, Eli reminded me that the temple is in the region of Moriah... and I remembered that the Temple is the place where Abraham brought Isaac to sacrifice him to God. I don't know why it was that fact... but it's what impacted me the most. Abraham. Here. Willing to kill his own son because he trusted God to raise him from the dead. Abraham had faith in God's promise to make his descendants more numerous than the stars, even if he killed his son. I can't describe how real it made everything to me. What faith. I stood alone at the Wall for a long time.

Mount of Olives

Can you believe this? We then left the temple mount and drove to the Mount of Olives. It looks over the city of Jerusalem. It's not far at all. On the way, you drive past a cemetery. Many of the prophets and important biblical figures are buried there. I'd love to walk through the cemetery someday.



We went up on the Mount of Olives and I took some slightly blurry nighttime pictures of Jerusalem. To think that Jesus spent a lot of time here praying was amazing. It was all overwhelming by this point. Amazing.

Hotel/Airport/Madrid

In addition to $200 for the trip... I paid one night's sleep. We arrived back at my hotel at 1:00am and I had to be at the airport at 3:30am to make my 6am flight. (no being late this time!) So, I paid Eli 50euro ($75) to take me to the airport and I hung out there till my flight left for Madrid. Seeing Jerusalem was worth not sleeping for one night.

Thanks for reading the REALLY long post. It's taken me over an hour to write it... and it's now past 11pm. To bed!

Thankfully for this amazing life God has given me,
Jason

So... how´s that Spanish coming??

(posted in btwn meetings on my "lunch break" at 2:40pm)

I´ve been having a terrible time keeping my cellphone operational. All the international travel and roaming charges are causing problems and they have shut down my service at the moment. I spend a lot of time on the phone and it´s surely very expensive.

This morning, I get this message on my cellphone:

la caixa. abonament. nomina (TRF) 2.063,23 euros compte acabat en 731. Consulti el seu saldo a linia oberta mobil, a mobil.lacaixa.es

I have no clue what this is all about. No idea! I did check my Spanish bank and made sure that a big chunk of money hadn´t been taken out. :-) I plan to send this to my assistant in a moment to determine what´s going on!

Oh... and I met with our supervisor of the cellphone plans later in the day and all is fixed. No more limits for the traveling salesman. Whew...

Jason

P.S. Please note that there´s a new and MUCH more interesting post today from Becca.... it´s below...

Easter pics

Good morning everyone!

Sorry we haven't posted as much recently - not so much unusual going on. I've been hearing the murmurs of discontent though. :-) My mom has been asking for Easter pics so I thought maybe you all would enjoy them.

Katie got 101 Dalmations in her Easter basket - plus a Cinderella Barbie and some dress-up jewelry from Grandpa and lots & lots of candy! Candy to last a good while I think :-).

It was cold cold here on Easter - we all froze at church!! (the church is not heated. :-) ) So we wore sandals and tights :-) (not too unlike last year in Dallas!) And the craziest thing - all afternoon it was sunny - but with snow flurries at the same time! I've never seen anything like it! I've seen sun & rain obviously, but never sun & snow. And it was like that off and on for a long time! I tried to get a pic of it, but it didn't work. Oh and we ate lunch outside :-). It was an unusual experience!

We're just having an uneventful week - hopefully our sea shipment will be here soon. We know it has arrived in Spain, but don't know when it will be in Madrid and through customs. I'm hoping it's sooner rather than later! Next week Jason has a conference in Dublin, so Katie & I will tag along with him. It should be fun. I think it's going to be pretty chilly there so we'll bring along our long underwear :-). We are also flying RyanAir for the 1st time - it's a discount carrier here in Europe. I think it may be even more stripped down than Southwest - they charge for everything "extra"! Checked luggage, check-in at the airport... it should be interesting. It's very cheap - but most so if you pack light! (yeah, right!!) We'll do our best!

Love to you all!
Becca