Did I mention we live beside a palace?

If you googled Bethel in La Granja, you may have noticed a rather large property right close to us. That's right, it's a palace. It was the "Summer Home" for the Royals of Spain, as La Granja is a signficantly higher elevation and, therefore, cooler than 40-degrees-Celcius-Madrid in the summer.

We've walked around in the gardens a fair bit already, but on Thursday, we had a day off, one of the many Fiesta days. So we went and toured the inside of the palace and then another one, the Hunting Palace, just a few minutes away in Rio Frio.

We took lots of pics outside, but, unfortunately, we were not allowed to take pics inside either of the palaces. So we bought some souvenir picture books and took pictures of the pictures in the book to post (still with me?).

So here we are outside our back door...we walk up our street...around the corner...

 

and there it is!

Some of the gardens are fancy like this...and there are lots of fancy fountains that for some reason I didn't get a picture of yet...

 

but then other parts of the gardens are left natural like this...

 

When you get to the furthest point away from the palace, this is the view:

And this is us (yes, the flowers are still blooming here):

 

And here are some from the inside (from a book, remember?...no rules were broken!)

 

Almost every ceiling was elaborately painted.

This is the church connected to the palace.










This is the much less elaborate Hunting Palace...that's right ~ out in the boonies where the Royals stayed when they wanted to hunt deer, foul, foxes, rabbits, etc.

However, the inside was anything but rustic...almost as elaborate as the Summer Home, but without the humongous tapestries and murals on the ceilings:

 

All in all, a great field trip day!

Where We Live Part Dos

Our house is old (at least 160 years) ~ that's older than the country of Canada, itself! ~ and large. The kids (oh, who am I kidding? Emery and I, too) are giddy about the mini balconies, shutter-type (pretty sure that's not the correct name) windows with towering draperies, marble floors, 12-foot ceilings, ornate woodwork and large staircase. For us bungalow dwellers, just to have a second floor is kinda fun! And we'll soon have quads, calves and buns of steel from walking up and down all those stairs!

At the top of the stairs, is a long hallway with a bathroom at the far end and all the bedrooms and our living room on the left:

These are our bedrooms:

Our Living Room:

At the bottom of the stairs is what was probably the formal dining room at one time. For us, it is our school room! Shouldn't every classroom have a chandelier?!

    

Our house is very very quiet. There is no forced air, no furnace/air con/fan sounds, no water softener cycle noises, no pipes banging; the house doesn't even creak at night, unless someone is walking on the floor upstairs:) Should be great for sleeping, but last night was the first night I (some of the others have adapted quicker) slept during normal sleeping hours...like from midnight to 9 am, instead of from 3 am to noon or from midnight to 3 am...you know, jet lag!

Stay tuned for "How We Live" and much, much more.

Where We Live

Of course we're on Google!

Bethel Bible Centre

in La Granja de San Ildefonso (our village)

near Segovia (capital city of the province of Segovia)

north of Madrid (capital city of country of Spain)

Here is our house.

All of our bedrooms and "living room" are on the second floor. This is our view from those rooms.

This is the Conference Building which houses lots of bunk beds, bathrooms, the kitchen and dining hall. It is beside our house.

 This building faces our house and the other building. It contains the chapel, the office, Isabelle's house on the main floor, and then some more bedrooms and bathrooms on the second floor.

 Raking leaves, just like home...except there are far less leaves here than at our house in Canada. Our kids think this is a piece of cake!

Oh, and did I mention we have walnut trees? That's another job the kids are already loving. We pick up a couple of handfuls of walnuts every day. We will dry them a while to crisp them up.

Enough data for today. There is so.much.more. Wait until you see our school room! Later!

Where To Start

I guess the Lord rewarded our perseverance with the whole visa thing by providing the smoothest 20 or so hours of travel.  From the time we walked into Winnipeg airport to when we landed in Spain, there were no baggage weight issues, no connection panics, no flight delays, no security complications, no lost luggage, no whiny kids (or adults). From Winnipeg to Ottawa to London, England to Madrid, we were all relaxed, in good spirits, enjoying the journey and even slept a few hours here and there as we travelled through the night.

We arrived in Spain to a very warm welcome, instant magnificent sights of the area where we will be living (which we hope to see again in more daylight, but even as it was getting dark it was gorgeous!), beds ready and made up for us to fall into, a fridge and cupboards full of food, and each of us our own personal welcome note and treats in our rooms. We were overwhelmed by our generous host who made us feel like we truly had arrived at our new home, not some foreign, unfamiliar place across the ocean.

Speaking of our host, let me introduce Isabelle. She is the full-time missionary at Bethel Bible Centre. We may mention her often as we thank God every time we think of her. She is a fellow Canadian, but has been in Spain for 27 years. Therefore, she has already been and will continue to be an immeasurable help to us being able to function here - she will be one of the only people around us that speaks English, but she knows Spain - I mean KNOWS Spain :)

I really don't know where to start. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and it would probably take several thousand words to tell you everything we have learned, seen and experienced here already in just 48 hours. So tomorrow we will post some more pictures to help cut down on the words.

Many of you mentioned as we good-byed that the kids will probably all be a foot taller and you joked that you may not recognize them when we return. So, another introduction: the new one-tooth-less Rayna. The transformation began just 24 hours after we arrived in Spain.

Personal Welcome Treats

Today is the Day!

I've loved this song for a long time, but today, it's been on repeat in my head and heart since 6:15 am when I just could not sleep another minute :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B300gQkgDS0

We picked up our passports, complete with visas, at the post office yesterday morning, walked into our travel agent's office, and said "Can we please have 5 tickets to fly to Spain TOMORROW?" And she said, "Sure, no problem!" (That conversation really happened that way! But, of course, she had been working on the tickets for some time already and was just waiting for the OK. She is the BEST travel agent ever and we cannot thank her enough for everything she's done. Here's a little plug, MJ!)

http://www.holiday-travel.ca

So, our bags are packed - that was no easy task, let me tell you - and we're ready to go. By early afternoon (Manitoba time) on Friday, we should be in Spain.

The kids are excited for the most part, with a few moments of "Whoa! Is this really happening?" and "Are we sure about all this?" mixed in. And actually, us parents have a few of those moments too. Sometimes it feels like we've been planning and talking about this for so long...then all the delays...that it is still a dream To Do Someday...that it's hard to believe it's actually happening TODAY! Nephew Carl (veteran missionary/world traveller) gave us some very good advice: it's perfectly normal for it not to feel real, even after you get there, maybe even for quite a while after that yet!

Not sure how long it will be until we're all wired up and online again, but don't worry - even I can hardly wait to see what we'll put in the next blog post!