Well, well, well.

Hey, look, I'm back and on time. Welcome back, and please enjoy your stay.

Monday, as usual, was my host mom’s day off and so the day that we did some tourism. This past Monday we went to Ávila with my host brother (who was off of school for Easter Break) and my host Uncle and Aunt. The most impressive part for me was the huge wall surrounding the whole city. Here are some picures :)

Arrival, and things outside the city wall.

Obviously, this is the wall.

An Abby/Church thing that was outside the city. I'm not really sure what it was.

Look, it's me!

The main big gate, though the actual door was pretty small. But it even comes with a defense arch from which you can drop things on anybody trying to break down the door.

The Abby/church thing as seen from the front gates

One of the wall pillars/towers.

Some modern adaptions onto the wall.

The edge of the city cathedral, which was built-in as a part of the original wall.

 Now from up on top of the wall.

The other end of the city cathedral, it's main tower. 

A view of part of the wall from on top of the wall.

The cathedral.

Just a bit of all the gorgeous mountain range views surrounding the city.

A little church thing in the city. I believe they said it was the church the wall guards would attend. (There will be a bit more of this later from a different angle, it's just that the program uploaded my photos in a different order than I had them and this program isn't the best to work with).

The view from under the "defense arch" of the front gate I showed you just a bit ago.

An old set of stairs used to reach the wall top. They're now blocked off.

Hey look, it's me again, what a surprise!

Looking down at the wall from up on the arch.

A view of the Cathedral from up on the arch.

My host brother coming down the stairs.

Pretty much all the roofs were these good old fashioned ceramic tile things.

Asher (a.k.a. Me, the one writing the blog)

The bells of the Abby/church thing.

To me, it looks like a gaping, surprised mouth.

A close up on it's doors.

On top of one of the wall towers was this old sun dial. Unfortunately it was too overcast to use at the time.

My host mom, her sister and her brother-in-law.

The Wall Guards' church again, this time with some close ups. There were four or five crane nests on it.

Such an old, long-lasting wall requires maintenance. These guys are working on two of the many, many towers. It must take forever. Probably by the time you finally finish all of it, it's time to start over again.

They have to chip out the old mortar and add new mortar.

If you look closely you can see the wall in the distance making its loop around the city.

Down one side.

Down part of another. It was really big.

 Now back on the ground.

The front of the city cathedral, partially under construction.

Lions surrounding the cathedral.

Host aunt, host mom, host brother.

And me :)

Inside the Cathedral. Again, I'm an average photographer with a decent camera in a building without flash, so they're not that great. Also, I don't have much to comment on most of it, just enjoy it's shear size, grandeur, and magnificence.

A view of the courtyard.

And a focus on the net that keeps the birds from flying from the courtyard into the cathedral.

Even though wood is probably one of the cheeper materials in most of these places, I think it's my favorite, partially just because is so graceful and can be intricate and yet simple at the same time. It has such a natural beauty.

Came home and took a nap and passed the rest of the day in a normal, relaxed way. Good day.

Tuesday consisted mostly of writing my last blog update, and a trip into Madrid to visit with J.B. Nothing really to report there. I did get to sleep in, which was nice after a busy Easter weekend, sunrise service, losing an hour of sleep with time change, and a day of tourism and walking. I do like sleep :)

Wednesday contained the usual English class with the kids. It was our first day back after Easter Break and the kids were definitely a bit more rowdy than usual. Oh well, it does seem like they are learning and improving in their English.

Thursday morning I started by doing some planning for Friday’s English class since I wasn’t going to have much time Friday morning to plan. Then I got a call reminding me that we were meeting with B. and M. for our team meeting. Oops, forgot about that. Headed out for that without a shower, but it went well anyway. We talked some about where we are right now, how we’re feeling, different types of set backs, how to deal with those set backs. A good reminder that we talked about was that we are not our defender, God is—in spiritual terms, in reputation, in all aspects of life. He’s got it, nice to remember!

Spent the afternoon fasting and talking with God and contemplating what I will/should be doing after I’m done here in Spain, primarily thinking about college and Major/Career choices. I’ve still got some thinking and praying to do.

Had a good house group that evening. One of our member’s sister and brother-in-law was visiting. We had some good conversations, and I was actually able to mostly keep up with the Spanish.

That evening at home my host brother taught me Mus, and card game that is sort of a type of Spanish poker. It took a while to catch on because it was hard to understand his Spanish explanation. I didn’t really like it that much because it had some odd rules that sort of seemed pointless and unfair to me, I’d rather play something with a bit more logic and strategy.

Friday started with Spanish class with “Carl” (I keep forgetting to ask him if I can use his real name on my blog). I feel like I’m learning, but at such a slow pace, there is still so much I have no clue about. The worse for me is verb tenses, there are just so many conjugations and forms. Poco a poco, I guess.

I got to Skype with a friend before lunch (for me), it was early morning there in Wisconsin. It is always good and refreshing to talk to and see familiar faces.

The English class went well. We made pinwheels out of paper, pencils, and thumbtacks. The kids loved it. Success!

I then stayed for the youth group, which went pretty well. We saw a funny Spanish video of different animals and their sounds, and then we did a karaoke to it. Let’s just say I’m not the best at Spanish Karaoke, especially with this song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhsy6epaJGs

It’s a good video to watch if you want to learn the Spanish names of some animals and the sounds they make. For example, a chick doesn’t say *cheep* but *pio.*

Had dinner in the kitchen of my host Uncle’s restaurant, El Vagón, again. Very good and very filling, as usual.

Saturday I got to sleep in and have the morning off, which, of course, was nice.

At about 5:00 Reneé and I had been invited to a friends house to hang out for the evening and have dinner together. We mostly played Wii games with them; it was fun and included a delicious dinner.

Sunday was a normal, good Sunday. In Hoyo I got sung to for my birthday that is this Saturday, along with someone whose birthday had been last Saturday, and someone else who shares a birthday with me. Had a good time playing with the kids afterwards, as usual.

Most evenings, while my host mom is doing work or preparing dinner and my host brother is doing homework, I do stuff on my computer. Well, when I came home that evening, my host brother noticed that I wasn’t getting on my computer right away and said something along the lines of “If you want to be on your computer for a bit, that’s fine, we won’t be eating dinner for a while,” and I immediately knew that there was something waiting for me in the laptop. It was that kid-ish sort of way of hinting at something in a “stealthy” way to try to get someone to do something. Well I was correct, when I opened up my laptop there was an envelope waiting for me. But the real surprise was what was inside. They got us tickets to see El Rey León (The Lion King) live on stage. I am so very excited and happy, we’ll be seeing it this Thursday. I actually really wanted to see this musical, well, I actually want to see most all musicals, but this one especially because of all the great dancing in it, which also won’t be hindered by my language barrier. Yep, so I’m pretty pump about that! So thankful to my host family, I guess they know me pretty well. Happy birthday to me :)

Monday (yesterday, the 8^th of April) was a pretty normal day off for my host mom and I. Instead of going somewhere to sight see, we went for a long, three-hour walk in the area. The countryside around here is precious and we had a great, though a bit tiring, walk.

Came home and took a two-hour nap after a nice big lunch.

Pretty lazy, normal rest of the day.

And there you are. If you have something to say, just leave that here on my blog or send it to my Communications Girl Extraordinaire, Hope, at constanceh.95@gmail.com. You can also get my snail-mail address from her. For prayer updates contact Mike at biblebeach@hotmail.com.

With a lot of Loves and Misses,

Adios, Amigos

~Asher Fickett~