Arrival in Spain

Welcome to our blog. After a fun summer of many travels we are now in Spain for eight months (at least). Here are the details:

Amy flew standby to Paris the last week of September, hauled her heavy bags around Paris for a day and then took the train to Madrid. I was still at home waiting for my visa. I was supposed to start my 8 month position as a Language Assistant in Valdepeñas October 1st. My visa was finally approved the 2nd so I ended up flying out the 4th.

Amy had been staying with a group of girls who live in Madrid. Two of whom are Trinity grads. Amy and Jody found me at the airport in Madrid, I was having a coffee (breaking change so I could use the pay phone to call Amy). The café con leche was amazing.

The next day (Saturday) Amy and I caught a bus to Valdepeñas. It is about a two and a half hour ride from Madrid. (The train takes about two hours and doesn´t cost much more.) Saturday we hit the tourism office and found the hostels. We then walked all over looking at the town and finding for rent signs. We actually looked at two apartments that day and found a church to attend.

Valdepeñas is a town of about 28,000, in the province of Ciudad Real in the autonomous region of Castilla La Mancha. It is surrounded by vineyards and fields. The main industry is wine. They were harvesting grapes when we arrived so it was very common to see tractors on the streets with a trailer full of grapes. Certain streets have that pungent smell of fermenting grapes. The town is small enough that you recognize people on your street and run into people from church around town, but it still feels like a city because it is old and compact and they tend to build up here rather than sprawling out. We do have a windmill in town and a Don Quixote de la Mancha statue.