Friends, Kitties, and Fiesta

A lot of our post are mostly about the trips we take, but we know its about time that we updated everyone a little bit about life here in Sevilla and it's about time we introduce you to our new friends Wesley and Emma.
We came into contact by email through friends of friends of friends as we were helping them with information about apartments in Sevilla. They got jobs to teach English in a pueblo outside of Sevilla but wanted to live in the centro like us. After a million (according to Wesley) emails we finally realized that they were finally in Sevilla and staying in a hostal until they found an apartment. We decided to invite them over to dinner to see if we could help them out at all....and then they didn't leave till 7 days later.

Here is Wesley demonstrating his nifty travel hammock off our loft.

It's fun for us that the apartment that they ended up in is in the same building as us, across the way and one floor up. Wesley is from Alabama and Emma is from Texas. They have been married for about 2 months now. Check out their blog HERE. They are also really good photographers. You can see their work HERE.
This is what we get to see from our door every day.

Sarah and I also decided to finally take the dive into pet ownership. After coming into contact with a good cat shelter, we made a visit and fell in love with Rayas. She was by far the most loving of all the cats that we met there.

About a week later after she had been checked out at the Vet, she got delivered to our door. We had to do a little bit of work on the apartment to kitty proof it, but she is at home now.

Emma likes to come over to visit her.

This has become her favorite place to sleep during the day.
We'll see what the couchsurfers think about it.

We were really excited with the news that Plaza España had finally be finished after years of restoration. We had always heard stories of how the moat around the plaza was once filled with water and you could rent row boats to float around in but it was empty even since Sarah was a student in 2006. We met up there with a few friends but unfortunately the boats had already closed down for the day. It was still just really fun to see it all restored to its original beauty.

Did you know a scene from Star Wars episode II was filmed here?


We also want to share about where we have been going to church on Sunday mornings. For a couple months now we have been leading at a church in the pueblo of Bormujos called Comunidad Aljirafe. You can check out their blog HERE. It has been fun for us to put together worship sets of all Spanish songs.

David Acton, on the right, is the church planter. He is originally from Miami, but along with his wife and 4 kids, also planted a church in Germany while living there for about 15 years. They were then called to Sevilla and have been here for about 4 years. Hendrik, on the left, is here with his wife as missionaries. They are both from German but crazy enough, I recognized his wife Maggie from when she went to college at Fresno Pacific University at the same time as me.

Here is another German from Wittenberg named Albrecht. He has recently moved to Sevilla with his wife Francesca to study. He has been playing percussion with us on Sunday mornings and even started helping us on Wednesday nights with our time of worship with the students. It is fun to talk to him because his Spanish is better than his English, so since we are both still learning Spanish we often have to get creative in how we communicate.

Here is a shot of the church building filling up. On some days the room gets pretty packed.

A few nights ago we headed over to Noche Entre Amigos (or night among friends) at the Baptist Church in Sevilla Este (the far other side of town from where we live) to play a few songs. It is the church were are good Cuban friend Marcos (which you can see in earlier posts) is the youth pastor. On the last Saturday night of each month Marcos asks a few bands to come and share some music. Wesley joined us to help bust out some 3 part harmonies on a rendition of Hank Williams "I saw the light" and then Sarah and I sang a romantic diddy by Bob Dylan called "If Not For You." The people seemed to really enjoy it, especially because it is a different kind of music that they usually see live. I was really happy to be able to bust out my mandolin.

Here is a picture of the little Halloween party we had at the school on Friday.

Sarah and I found a sweet thrift store (which until now we didn't think existed in Sevilla) to put together some pirate costumes.

Last night we had a little Halloween fiesta at our house. We couldn't get any Spaniards to go, something about dressing up and carving pumpkins makes them nervous. But we had a great time carving pumpkins and eating.

Theresa, another German friend, made some delicious pumpkin soup for everyone.

Sarah and I stuck with the pirate theme for costumes and pumpkin.

El Fin!