Spain!!

We really loved Spain, it is our favorite place in the entire world. The culture is amazing, the food is incredible, the scenery is beautiful, the people are super-friendly. When we went two years ago, we went to Sevilla, the previous capital of Spain and is located in the part of Spain called, Andalusia. Andalusia, is the southern part of Spain and really has its own dialect and culture. Granada, where we went this time, is another town in Andalusia nearer to the coast. And again, we had an amazing time, here's the last of our pics:

Granada

About a 1000 years ago, Spain was occupied by the Muslims. That is when they built the Alhambra, the most well preserved castle/fortress in Spain. In 1492, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella gave Columbus the go ahead to explore for the New World, in the Alhambra. In the 1900s, Washington Irving was staying at the Alhambra. At the time, it was abandoned and inhabited by homeless people (gypsies) and donkeys. But the book that he wrote about The Alhambra became world renowned and convinced the Spanish government to reclaim this ancient structure and make it into a national monument.
The Alhambra
The Alhambra looking out over Granada

You can see the snow covered tops of the Sierra Nevada mountains
The Alhambra Summer Palace
One of the typical Andalusian foods, almost every restaurant/cafe has these legs of ham that have been cured years ago. They take a leg, slice the meat very thin and serve it with different chesses and bread. It is our absolute favorite tapa (appetizer), though it was a little unsettling to see pig legs hanging out everywhere.
Me & my favorite Spanish food, churros. They are like funnel cakes made out of potatoes and dipped in hot chocolate. So incredibly good!!
While we were there, they were having a week long celebration of Korpus Kristi (body of Christ). And how they celebrate is festivals, carnivals, fireworks, parades all day and all night. This carnival started at midnite and lasted until 6 am and everyone was there dressed in flamenco dresses, riding rides, eating, dancing and partying. It was a total blast!
Flamenco
Us walking down one of the streets in Granada, at about 3:30 in the morning! Look how crowded it is!! :)
Us looking out over the Alhambra at sunset
Our hotel receptionist told us about Salobrena, a beach town that is known as a "White Town". Southern Spain is known for it's towns with all white buildings with terra cotta roofs. It was a beautiful town set on a hill, looking out over the Sea.
On top of the castle in Salobrena.
Brian posing out of a window in the castle
The best meal we had in Europe: Tapas (the ham & cheese) and fried fresh fish, and Sangria (my absolute favorite!)
The beach, it was gravel and rock, ouch! The water was super cold, so we baked on the rocks but couldn't cool off in the water...And our hotel lady neglected to tell us that it was a "clothes optional" beach! We just walked head down till we reached an empty part of the "beach". Oh well! It's Europe!
Us on the beach in Salobrena
A parade when we got back from Salobrena at midnite. The guys at the parade were dressed in traditional Spanish attire, vaqueros and flamencos on horseback.

All in all, we really did have an amazing time. We've been glad to be back this week, and have enjoyed seeing friends and family and sleeping in our bed with our puppies. But we are so grateful to God for blessing us with the opportunity to visit Albania and the beautiful people there as well as play for two weeks, just the two of us!

ITALY!! :)

After Albania we spent a week in Italy. We had gone backpacking in Europe for two weeks together in 2007 and when we were planning on where we wanted to go, we wanted to hit some places we'd never been and go back to some places we wanted to spend more time in. We got a hard time from some that we were going to be gone for a whole month, and it really was a long time to be gone. But I feel so incredibly blessed to have been able to go away with my husband, not for work (though I thank the federal govt. for sending us to lots of great places), for an entire month. It made our marriage stronger and I enjoyed every second of it.

Straight from Albania we went to Venice. We really enjoyed Albania, but there was so much traffic and pollution. It was so incredible to go to Venice straight away. Venice is like no other place, it is eerily quiet because there is no street traffic except for walkers. And the only transportation is by foot or boat. And we love the food and drink and culture of Italy so much, it was just relaxing to be there.


In St. Mark's Square, the cafes on all sides of the square that have been there for hundreds of years, have dueling orchestras. So we got a coffee and listened to fabulous music echoing around the ancient walls of the square.

One of the Venetian islands, Murano, is famous for it's hand-blown glass. This is a haybale (for you Mom:)) made out of little pieces of glass.
YUMMM GELATO! We got at least one gelato a day, how can you be sad when you have gelato every day?
We totally don't have $120 Euro to hire a gondola for an hour, but couldn't miss riding one. So we got on a traghetto ($2 Euro), which is basically a gondola that takes you across the Grand Canal. We met a gondolier that was an Italian that met his American wife while she was on holiday in Venice, they are now married, living in Venice and just had a baby. Now that's Amore!
Aaaahhh Venice...
Rialto Bridge

After Venice we trained to the Cinque Terra (Five Lands), which is just north of Florence on the Meditteranean. The Cinque Terra is made up of five towns on five different cliffs hanging over the Sea. Up until about 50 years ago, there was no road that connected the five towns. But now they are connected by a road, but more famously a trail that is cut into the cliffs on the sea. It is unequivocally the most beautiful place I've ever seen in my entire life. One of the days we were there we took a boat to the furthest town and hiked to each town. At every turn, we gasped because the views were amazing. And there were low spots on the trail all day that we just dropped our shorts (we had bathing suits on underneath...) and went for a swim in the Sea. It was perfect temperature, super deep, super clear (you could see to the bottom) and so salty you could float with almost no effort. It was the most romantic place we'd ever been to and a perfect way to celebrate 6 years of wedded bliss. :)
My hair was super poofy while we were there, pardon the frizz...
On the trail between towns
In between 2 of the towns, the trail was not for the faint of heart. Though it was doable for 2 late 20 year olds in moderate shape, there were parts that were super high and the only thing keeping you from cliff diving into the sea was a rail...
The trail from two of the towns is called Via Dell Amore (Lovers Walk), named for the relationships discovered and committed on this trail between towns. Finally people had a way of meeting and interacting with the townspeople from next door. So tradition started that at the place where you meet, you graffiti your love on the walls and symbolize your everlasting love with attaching a lock to plants, nets, whatever you can find.
Locks on the Via Dell Amore
One of our stops for a swim
Brian eating squid on the trail, a delicacy there on the coast of Italy, though I'm not a fish eater, even I ate some squid, though it was frita (fried)!
View of Vernazza on our way home on the hike. We stayed in Vernazza and if you look closely towards the water, the tower sticking up out of the cliff is right above where our hotel was, built into the cliff/city wall.
This is the view from our balcony off our room. It was literally cut out of the cliff and looking down, you can just see the moon reflecting off the crashing waves and water. So amazing.
Us looking out over Vernazza from the church and cemetary
Out for a swim in Vernazza, there was a beach and sunning rocks, we chose a rock and had a great view of all of the young families and old men in speedos. In truth though, it was still not nearly as crowded as other places we'd been. So it was still relaxing and peaceful.
Dinner our last night at sunset

After we sadly left the Cinque Terra, we headed to Florence for shopping. FYI the best shopping is in Florence, the markets are great and you can haggle with most everyone because the booths mostly carry the same merchandise!
Us in front of the Duomo in Florence

Albania #3

So I decided to post the rest of the trip in parts. And I figured I would wrap up Albania first. It's amazing to me to think about it being a month ago that we arrived in Albania, not knowing what to expect. We've talked non-stop about the connections we've made there and have already enjoyed getting to talk to some of our new brothers and sisters over facebook and skype. Thank goodness for today's technology!
Here's the story of the rest of our trip in Albania:
This is a picture of the outside of the church building and the church van. Now, the Americans (Brian and I) argued that the van was blue, the Albanians argued that the van was green. We finally settled on that the van was blue-green. Brian decided that the van needed a good name, so he named it the Blue Bomber. They argued it couldn't be that name because it isn't blue, but after talking to Flori last night, the Blue Bomber has stuck, at least for now...


On our last Sunday after church, we took the Blue Bomber an hour away to the coast town, Durres. It was a lot of fun and reminded us of the beach in Texas. It was very relaxing and I'm never going to hate a trip to the beach.
Vjola & me
The group that went to the beach
That day was actually our sixth anniversary. It is so hard to believe that 6 years ago we were just starting out on our life as a married couple. We talked in Durres how we never would have expected to be spending our 6th anniversary in Albania of all places...God has a plan.

After church Wednesday we went to a bar/cafe to watch a soccer/football championship game between Manchester United and I already forgot the other one...I'm sure it's in my journal. We had a lot of fun and just enjoyed extra time spent with our new friends.
Koli & Brian at the game

Thursday Koli & Flori took us on a trip around Albania in the Blue Bomber. They took us to the castle not far from Tirana up in the mountains in a town called Kruja. It was really awesome, neither of us had been to such an old castle before and the view was incredible. Brian says his favorite part of the entire trip was driving in the van with everyone and the great talks we had.

Brian, me, Flori & Sokhol
Koli, Flori & Brian in traditional Albanian hats

During the day on Monday, Wednesday and Friday we spent time with our students that came for English through the Bible studies. It was such a great experience to be reading God's word with these young people. It was pretty amazing that they just would accept the word as truth since it was in the Bible. The kicker was the Word requiring a life change to follow God, I wish we had more time to spend with them, but we look so forward to talking with some of our readers over Skype and look forward to hear about how God will water the seed planted.
Two of our readers, Enida (top) and Mina (bottom) were roommates and reminded us so much of two of our favorite University students back home, Lauren and Kaycee. Hopefully we can keep in touch with them over Skype or email.


The last night Brian taught the youth class (the 20 year olds) and we had snacks after class in the basement. We are going to miss the great discussions we've had with these Christians and have learned so much from their genuine sincerity for the Lord and their love for each other.
Ellen, (the resident missionary) and us. We learned so much from Ellen, this was the purpose of the trip, to shadow a missionary and see if God would want us to ever be missionaries. She is truly a servant of God and has a great heart for the people of Albania. And they have a great love for her too.
Vjola and me
Bledi & Brian
Brian with our favorite drink in the entire world that we can only find in Albania, Fanta Exotic. Man I miss that stuff.

After the snacks we went out again with some of the youth to the same music club that plays 90's American songs. It was fun to be spending more time with them again, we are really going to miss them, though we kinda started feeling old in the idea of partying every weekend. But hanging out with our friends would make it worth it.

Vjola, Ridi & me

We had an amazing time in Albania. We didn't know going there that they were looking for a young couple to come and work with the youth. As we were leaving, we were asked to consider coming there to work with the youth. There is a lot to take into consideration about this decision, we have always wanted to do mission work, but we weren't thinking of it being right now. We have just recently moved to Granbury and settled into our new house. We both have great jobs and are knee deep in fertility treatments. But we keep telling ourselves we are not going to be a couple of Jonahs. If things keep falling into place, we cannot ignore God and will just trust that this is the right decision. Please pray for us as this is a huge decision and we are going to go ahead and finish with treatments this month and next. It will definitley be a summer for God to move in and we hope that at the end we will have a clear picture for what God wants from us.