5/8/10

Pretzel was a no go.  Hard, and not very good to eat.  Made pancakes with some chicas from UNI and University of Massachusetts (UMass) last night.  Abbi, Kate, Alexis and I were over at Joelle's apartment and had a good time of it.  Alexis's boyfriend had sent her a box of pancake mix and some Aunt Jemima's syrup back in February and she wanted to make the pancakes before the semester was done.  After the pancakes, I went back to my piso (apartment) and made a pizza pie iron on my madre's plug-in frying skillet thing.  She was fascinated at the fact that I could put a pizza in a sandwich.  Although it didn't taste anything like the real campfire-cooked thing, it still tasted so good!!!!

Madrid was fun.  We got to see a bunch of awesome sights.  The day after we got there, Ashley, Abigail, Joelle, and I went to the Prado Museum to see the famous painting by Velasquez "Las Meninas" (Portuguese for "The Girls").  Got the Christmas puzzle from a gift shop in the museum!

Later we met up with some friends of Joelle's who had recently moved to Spain for missions work, Katie and Tiago.  They led us all around Madrid and showed us some of the more popular sights, including the post office, which looks more like a palace than a post office.  I've decided that I'm never going to be impressed again by anything in the States.  Everything awesome there pales in comparison to all the sights I've seen while over here.  Later in the day we met up with Bill, who was from Canada for the same reasons as Katie and Tiago.  As we were resting from checking out a cathedral, we "stalked" a wedding part with some outrageous outfits.  There were a lot of women dressed in prom-style dresses, and were ghastly.  There was one lady who had an orange dress, purple jacket, and an orange and purple headpiece.  That combination took the cake.  We stayed until the bride came out of the limo and went into the church.  We didn't feel awkward watching the people since other people had begun to gather around and watch the scene too.

The next day we took a day trip to Toledo, where we saw the cathedral there and did some shopping for the world-renowned Toledo steel.  Abigail bought a couple of sword-shaped letter openers while I got some gold necklaces.

After we got back from Toledo, the four of us played some Phase 10 and recuperated from the sunburn acquired the previous day and the exhaustion from walking nearly everywhere.  The last day, Monday, we took an early tour of the royal palace, which was amazing!  We found out that one of the many kings that lived in the palace was a fan of clocks, and that at least one can be found in every room that the tour went through.  Then we went to the bus station and returned to Oviedo.

Today, since Joelle has gone off to Ireland with Kate and Abbi, I'll be heading later to Gijon with the jóvenes (young people, ranges from 13 to 30) for the service and supper.  I was told to bring something to share, so I bought some Tex-Mex Doritos to bring to the shindig.  Have a Skype date on Sunday after church with the fam.

15 days, 16 hours, 40 minutes till I land in Moline International Airport!