The Mayer Family

Evan just had his last day of school for the summer on Friday. We are proud of him for the great job he did adjusting to all the newness. He is certainly picking up the language faster than we are.

His teacher Patricia. He really enjoyed having her as his teacher. She did a great job with him. He is looking forward to having her as his teacher again next year. She gave Evan nothing but high praises for the work he did in her class, and said she loved having him as her student!

His school- Ave Maria Vistillas

This was taken about a month ago…as you can see by Evan’s clothes. Summer has arrived now, and it is HOT!

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My sister Catrina and her husband Scott came to visit us for two weeks. It was so good to spend time with them, show them around the city and give them a peek into our lives. Our time together was packed with visiting lots of places and just being together. Here are a few of the things we did together.

Couples date night…thanks to Pablo & Judi for babysitting! We went to one of our favorite Arabic restaurants and to a flamenco show which was a first for us as well as Scott & Catrina.

We celebrated Ellie’s 4th birthday… (and Scott’s birthday as well as our anniversary)

S&C’s favorite restaurant wasn’t Spanish, but the Arabic Kabab restaurant where our friend Hadi works, as is the case with many of our visitors.

A day at the beach. Evan & Ellie had so much fun running in and out of the water. They didn’t want to leave.

Sisters…

A day in the mountains (the Alpujarra). Thanks for coming Scott & Catrina! We’ll miss you!

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I ended my month-long intensive language study at the University this week. It was a great month, and I really enjoyed studying there, and loved my teachers and class.
Out of about 15 in the class, here are the faithful few who showed up on the last day. My teacher Carmen is the 3rd from the left (the shortest).

Here is my other teacher, Pilar, who was a fantastic teacher!

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Some exciting news…after 5 trips to the work department, and 3 trips to the police station, over a period of 4 months, we finally were able to have the proper documents in hand for our applications to be accepted for the renewal of our residency cards. Of course, now we need to wait for a month or 2 to find out if they will choose to renew our cards (we hope so!)

One interesting story…on the day Kevin was waiting in line at the work dept. (where he had a lot of trouble in the past getting them to accept our documents), it just so happened that a friend of his (C.P) who works for the government in another part of the city, happened to be delivering some documents to that office just then. On C.P’s third trip into the building, Kevin’s number was called and C.P, who was just walking through at the time, directed Kevin to the desk of the lady who had denied Kevin’s documents four previous times. He told her “now, this is a good friend of mine. You make sure you treat him right!”, and left. She smiled, and after just a bit of hassle, finally approved the application and documents! It’s good to have friends in high places (or at least at the right place at the right time)!

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We decided to brave it and take Evan and Ellie, along with Evan’s friend Miguel to the fair. We knew it would be for their enjoyment, not ours, and yep, we were right. We thought we’d get an early start and beat the crowds, but we forgot we were in Spain, and things happen at night, NOT morning. When we arrived around 11:00, there were just a few people there, and no rides going yet. So we left and walked to the nearest McDonalds (where we waited until they opened at 12:00…yep, we are still in Spain). We ate and the kids played for about 2 hours before we returned to the fair. By then, a few rides were going, and the kids loved them!

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Here’s a little clip of the parade. Before we went, Evan had been telling Ellie all about the guys with the big heads that hit little children, so when the parade started coming, Ellie started crying loudly, scared of these guys Evan told her about. (Thanks Evan)

For more pictures and information about the holiday, check out Pablo and Judi’s blog at http://kauffmans.rosedalemennonitemissions.org/

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