Pictures from Spain

Here are a few pictures from our trip to Segovia with the Spanish Bible Society Director and his wife.







And a few pictures from our visit to El Parque de Buen Retiro in Madrid.

Final Spain/First Turkey

Thursday evening the General Secretary of the Spanish Bible Society, Jose Luis and his wife took us to the historic city of Segovia. We drove through the mountains and enjoyed gorgeous scenery. The city of Segovia was incredible - buildings hundreds of years old, a castle complete with moat and towers, a palace based on the palace in Versailles, the historic Plaza Mayor, streets so narrow we weren't sure his compact car would even fit, even ancient aqueducts!

On Friday afternoon Brian finished his work with the Spanish Bible Society. He was very happy with what they accomplished this week, as were the individuals he worked with during the week. Their work revolved around four different editions of the same Spanish translation. One is an interconfessional version for Spain's Protestants and Catholics that includes the Deuterocanon. Another edition is the same Bible for Latin America (the Spanish is somewhat different between the two areas). The other two editions are primarily for the Protestant churches - one for Spain and the other for Latin America. These versions do not have the Deuterocanon and have about 90% less footnotes than the others. This reduces the number of pages from 2,000 to 1,500. Brian's role in all of this was to get them ready to be printed (or reprinted, in the case of the two of the translations).
Today (Saturday) was travel and transition today. The taxi picked us up at 4:00 a.m. to take us to the airport. Our first flight was to Rome, where we changed planes for our flight to Istanbul. After getting visas, waiting half an hour to get our passports stamped, picking up our bags, changing money, and catching a cab, we were finally on our way to the hotel. The taxi driver didn't know where the hotel was, so after a few detours and the help of some very friendly waiters at an outdoor restaurant, we finally checked into our hotel at 3:30.
This afternoon we walked around some and got a feel for the old city. I promised not to write about food, but if I did, I would have to mention the phenomenal shish-kebabs we ate at a neighborhood restaurant. We're planning on resting tomorrow, possibly doing some more sight-seeing, and then getting ready for the week. Please pray for our time here. Donna

More Madrid

It's hard to believe we've been in Madrid for four days already. Things have been going well and the time has really gone by quickly.
Monday morning Rachel and I went with Brian to the Bible Society office so that we could meet everyone. The people were extremely friendly and immediately made us feel right at home. That's one of the reasons Brian was particularly excited about our coming along with him this year - so that we'd have a chance to meet the incredible people who work for the various Bible Societies.
Brian got right to work with Ricardo and Gisela, and Rachel and I did our school work in one of the open offices. For lunch we walked over to a cafeteria that served the menu del dia, or the menu of the day. This is very common in Spain, and we've seen the same sort of thing in many different restaurants. You get a first course (usually some type of salad), a main course, bread, a dessert, and something to drink, all for about 10 euros ($15). Not exactly cheap, but a lot of food, much more than we typically would eat for lunch.
Tuesday evening we had quite the adventure as Ricardo and Ines, two employees of the Bible Society, gave us a tour of downtown Madrid. It would take too long to write all of the information they told us about the Royal Palace, Plaza del Sol, Plaza Mayor, Cathedral de Almudena, Gran Via, and so on. It was fascinating not only seeing the historical buildings, but hearing the stories behind them as well. It definitely made us want to go back downtown again!
For supper, we stopped at two different restaurants for tapas. Typically in Spain, breakfast is quite small, lunch is a very large meal around 2:00, then tapas around 7:00, followed by dinner at 9:00 or 10:00. The first place we went to for tapas was called El Museo de Jamon - The Ham Museum. It wasn't really a museum, but a chain of restaurants that has more kinds of ham then you could ever imagine! (see picture) We stood in front of the meat counter and had a delicious ham sandwich on a crusty roll.
We walked around some more and then went to another place for more tapas, again sandwiches with various kinds of meats and cheeses. I don't know how they have dinner after that because at that point we were already pretty stuffed. After walking around a bit more, Ines brought us back to the hotel.
Today Rachel and I did go back downtown and got to revisit some of the sights we had seen last night. But the first thing we did was go to the Chocolateria San Gines, which supposedly has the best chocolate in all of Madrid, Spain, and possibly the world. We each ordered a cup of hot chocolate and churros. The chocolate is so thick you really can't drink it, you just dunk the churros in it. It was incredibly delicious.
With all of that sugar surging through our veins, we had plenty of energy for shopping. And I think we managed to hit most of the souvenir shops in Madrid. What fun.
Sorry about all of the food references, but tonight around 7:30 we went to a restaurant for what we thought would be our dinner. The waiter asked if we wanted the regular menu or the snack menu, since it really wasn't dinner time yet. So trying to be good Madrilenos, we each ordered off the snack menu and got 3 tortitas (pancakes) with chocolate. Yes, we had chocolate again today! With all of that sugar in our systems, we walked around a local neighborhood that had apartment buildings, a movie theater, restaurants, and some high-end shops.
Thanks again for following us on our travels. Next time I'll write more about the projects Brian's working on here in Spain. If you ever have any suggestions or recommendations about what you'd like us to write about, please let us know! We'd love to hear from you. Take care, Donna

Monday in MADRID!!

Madrid is going very well!! We went downtown yesterday for the first time, exciting!! We took a train that's very close by our hotel. It took about half an hour to get there. It was quite fun. The first part you could see the city, but the second part was mostly tunnel, very scenic. :) After the train ride we walked around a little, then we got to see all these bikers passing us. Apparently there was the Festi Bike competition going on. They went by really fast!
We went to the Prado Museum, and it was very interesting. We were there for about 2 hours. It was awesome because at 5:00 pm, it was free to get in. Outside, it seemed like a lot of people were there, but it was actually quite nice. Not everyone was at the same place at the same time when we were there, so it was good. It was really amazing because the museum has about 8,600 paintings!! But it only shows up to 2,000 of them because of limited space. They not only had paintings, but also sculptures. They have painting made by people from Spain, Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands. All in all, it was very fun.
The Retiro park was the next stop. They have tons of low bushes, flowers, and trees. It was very pretty. There were a lot of people when we got closer to the middle of the park. They were selling things like ice cream, DVDs, jewelry etc. Some people were playing music. They have a good diversity in age; young couples, families, and older couples (you get what I'm talking about) After that, we went to McDonalds. :)

Here is a fun factoid about Madrid, try to figure it out! (by the way, the language it's in is Catalan)
Abans de Madrid es diu Madrid es Ursaria, que significa "Terra d'óssos".

Pictures

We thought we'd post a few pictures we've taken the last few days. We'll try to take some more today when we go to downtown Madrid.

In Madrid

Hola from Spain! After nearly 23 hours of travel from home to hotel we made it safety to Madrid. The flights all went well. Alec and Becky took us to the airport in Sioux Falls, and were able to have lunch with them and Lori. It was Becky's birthday, so that was fun to be able to celebrate with her before we left. We had a 3-hour layover in Minneapolis, so Brian got is in the Northwest Airlines lounge. He's only supposed to have one free guest, but they made an exception and let both Rachel and me go in with him. Those lounges are great - so much more relaxing than sitting at the gate. Plus there's coffee, juice, cookies, TVs, work areas, comfy chairs, etc.
The 7:30 p.m. flight to Amsterdam took right at 8 hours. Rachel was all excited about having a personal on-demand entertainment center to watch movies, TV, play games, etc. Well, it didn't work very well and was out of commission for about 3 hours of the flight. But she was still able to watch a movie and some Disney Channel shows. I think we each slept 2 hours at the most, so we were dragging when we got to Amsterdam. Our layover there wasn't very long, so that was great. We were all pretty much wiped out for the 2 hour flight to Madrid.
After a short taxi ride to the hotel, we rested (again!), and then went for a walk. There's a huge department store, Carrefour, close to the hotel, so we checked that out and got some bread, water and pastries. Rachel felt so European walking out with two baguettes sticking out of her bag!
Now, even though it's 2:00 p.m. "body time", it's 9:00 p.m. local time, and I think we'll head for bed soon. Brian doesn't have to work or meet with anybody tomorrow, so we have a day to catch up on sleep and get prepared for the week. We may take the train into downtown Madrid as well.
Thanks for your prayers for a safe trip. We're excited to go to the Bible Society office on Monday morning and see what the week holds for us! Take care, Donna

Back from Alaska

We're back in Iowa for a few days between trips. Our time in Alaska was fantastic. Someone asked Rachel if she had learned anything, and it was hard to even think about all of the things we had learned in our two weeks there. Here are just a few of our discoveries:

- We can have school almost anywhere - on the bed at the B&B, at the desk, in the hotel's breakfast room, in the library, etc. As long as we have the computers, textbooks, and a pencil, we're set!

- People not only survive, but thrive in places with what we would consider less than ideal living conditions.

- Alaska is amazing and the land of superlatives - biggest state, 3 million rivers, most shoreline and volcanoes of any other state, northernmost point in the U.S., and so on.

- Going along with Brian to a translation project is nothing like him going alone and hearing about it later. What a blessing to be able to meet the translators, hear their stories, share their concerns and frustrations, and pray with and for them.

- Just because a particular food is new or different, doesn't mean you won't like it. Moose, Eskimo ice cream, caribou, reindeer, salmon jerky, even road-kill ptarmigan are all quite tasty!

- I really can't sleep that well on an airplane, even when it's a red eye flight. I hope that changes soon, because we have lots of long flights coming up soon.

- It would be hard to get used to paying $9 for a gallon of milk, $7 for a bag of potato chips, $6 for a box of cereal, and $3.50 for a dozen eggs. I can see why they hunt, fish and eat road-kill!

It was a great couple of weeks, and we look forward to the upcoming trips. This Friday (Sept. 18) we leave for two weeks in Europe. The first week will be in Madrid, Spain, followed by a week in Istanbul, Turkey. Fortunately we know some Spanish, so that should make communication go well the first week. We don't know a word of Turkish, so that may be a bigger challenge. We'll let you know what happens! Thanks again for coming along with us as we visit and help as many translations projects as possible. Donna