Young Life and Potential Electrical Fires

Well the last few days have been eventful, in good ways and a few not so good.

On Saturday, our friend Shaunna called and told us that she was walking by Palacio Liria (which is just a block away from us) the other day and she saw that they are opening it to the public for people to go to the top and get a view of the city. She was going and wanted to know if we wanted to tag along. It was pretty cool! We were about five stories up and had a pretty good view of the city.

That evening we attended a Young Life International meeting. The students all speak English among other languages and I believe most of them have American citizenship. It was the first Young Life we had both ever been too. The age of the kids is 11-15 years old.  We had a lot of fun and want to start participating as leaders. We started off with some tapas and then a few mixer games. From what I have gathered from talking with other leaders is that Young Life is there to meet kids where they are in their relationship with Christ. Most of the kids who attend this particular group come from Christian families but a few come because their friends go so not all of them have a Christian background. In order to make kids feel more comfortable we started off the singing portion of the night with “Party in the USA” by Miley Cyrus, “Firework” by Katy Perry and “Breakaway” by Kelly Clarkson. It was kind of funny but the kids were totally into it! We followed up later with some traditional worship songs. We had fun getting to know a few of the kids and hearing why they are in Madrid.

Later that night we were walking back towards our piso with Shaunna when she told us that another teacher in the program lived just two blocks from us. As we walked by his apartment building she was trying to point out which window was his and ended up just yelling his name really loud because she couldn’t remember exactly which was his. A couple seconds later he stuck his head out and we went up and chatted for a while. He lives right above Ben’s favorite bakery where he always wants to stop in and get “pastas”. They are little cookies for just 0.20 euros. They are pretty tasty.

This morning, (Sunday) Ben and I were finally going to get to go to church! This is only our second Sunday here but it feels like ages since we have been to church! As I was blow drying my hair, all of a sudden there has a loud popping noise and all the lights went off! We tried flipping the switch but it didn’t work. Then we started smelling a burning smell. There was another switch in there that had flipped down and when Ben tried to flip that, sparks flew! So, we knew something was seriously wrong. We called Virginia, the sister of our landlord and she said she would try and get someone over there. So we waited around a few hours and then our landlord’s brother-in-law showed up. He tried a few things but he couldn’t get it to work either. His father-in-law (who he said, with a hint of sarcasm, was the cleverest man ever) called and said to un-plug everything and try flipping the switch again. Well the only things plugged in were the washing machine and microwave and unplugging them didn’t help. They hope to get an electrician out tomorrow because he thinks there is a break in the circuit. Hopefully the electrician can fix it because in the mean time we have no lights and we can’t open the fridge or all the cold air will be let out! We are crossing fingers that our food doesn’t go bad!

In the meantime we are going out to tapas tonight with friends at a place Ben found near us. On Sundays and Wednesdays with the purchase of a drink you get to go through a tapas buffet! We will try to spend as much time there as possible so we don’t have to sit in the dark at home. Our apartment is on the inside track of the building so we don’t get a ton of street light pollution. Which normally is quite nice but a little light pollution tonight might have been nice. J

Here are some pictures from the restaurant we went to. It was a Mexican restaurant.


Jesus is looking over the wrestlers.

Notice the Corona chandelier.