Today we went on a little family adventure. Since we've been here we haven't had a moment to go and learn about and experience Spain. So today we went to the Manzanares el Real. One of the best preserved and restored castles in the Madrid area.

The construction of the castle began in the year 1475, at a time when Madrid had little more than 100 houses and about 300 citizens. The castle has a quadrangular plant with four towers on the corners. Three cylindrical towers and a larger one known as Torre del Homenaje (Homage Tower) with a squared layout. Each of the three cylindrical towers is crowned with smaller towers, and the "Homage Tower" is finished off with another smaller octagonal tower. The body of the castle has sides of 30 meters and the cylindrical towers have a diameter of 6.5 meters at the base. The central courtyard (called Patio de Armas) is surrounded by corridors with arcades as an example of the late Gothic style with Mudejar influence. Finally, the castle is surrounded by a barbican wall with a single entrance through a beautiful gate facing the west side and flanked by two solid towers. All the walls of the barbican have arrow loops in the shape of the cross of Jerusalem.

The castle of Manzanares el Real appears in the movie "El Cid" (1961) featuring Charlton Heston and Sophia Loren.

(I'm not that smart, I looked up all that info online)

Every Day is an Adventure...

Every day is an adventure. Just going to the grocery store we learn something new! This time we found out that they have Spanish Chitlins!

That's Lamb intestines wrapped around two crosses sticks and fried. Dude, they are sticks! As in the kind you go out in your yard and get sticks.

I like to try new things, but I think I'll pass on this one for a bit...

Back to School

We had a few days off from school. Thursday and Friday were holidays. In Alcala where the school is located is the home of Miguel de Cervantes the author of Don Quixote. It is widely recognized as the first modern novel and is the second most translated book in the world (the Bible is the first). Anyway, Thursday was the celebration of Cervantes christening so the entire town was converted into 1500's Spain. There were booths with vendors with historic costumes and everything.

So today classes were back in session and boy did they hit us hard with the homework. Time to go back to work. My next assignment is to "Escribe que haces un dia normal". Please forgive me for not putting the stresses over the letters but my keyboard is having issues I need to resolve. Enjoy the pictures.

We Passed!

Anna and I passed our final in our language course Vuela 1 and graduated to Suena 1. I'm proud to say I was in the top seven of our class! I should probably point out that there were only seven students in our class...

Our new class has about 15 students from around the world, the class we just completed was tough but it, for the present, it puts us ahead of the curve. The classes are taught in Spanish and if you have a question it's answered in Spanish. They say immersion is good. It must be, becasue it seems that Spanish is sinking in to my dense skull.

The above picture was taken just before our "graduation" ceremony. In the center is Soraya our conversation teacher. To the left Shawn and Deb Gaylen missionaries to college students and on the right Anna and I.

Our Container Arrived!

Our container finally arrived! We had a lot of help unloading it from the Masters Commission at IC: Madrid, and a bunch of Spain Field Missionaries. A big thanks to Kevin Prevost, Jon & Bonnie Cooper, Shawn & Deb Galyen, Dana Santiago, Ellen Cannon, and Jacki Jenkins

Unloading went without a hitch. Our house is small, but we didn't realize how small until our stuff got here. Our queen size bed was too big to go up the stairs so we had to be a bit creative to get it in. In some photos you can see some of the kitchen items that we brought with us. Those items are very expensive or unavailable here in Spain.