Mallorca

We went to Mallorca this past week and it was so fun! The water was so clear and we could see all kinds of critters--Sea urchins, Sea anemones, soft corals, fish, shrimp, barnacles, sea snails, hermit crabs, limpets, and some sort of small fishing bird (by the way, that's representatives from 5 of the 9 major animal phyla, which is pretty cool-- especially since we would be unlikely to see a nematode or a platyhelminthe free swimming without a microscope). It was awesome!

The first day we were there was pretty cold for getting in the water, but our AirBnB host had a two person kayak they let us take on the water. We're not completely sure, but we estimate where we were the water was about 25-30 feet deep, and we could still see the sand ripples at the bottom! I can't get over how clear the water was.

I don't think you can really see it, but we could see the bottom-- It was really deep too!

That night we went out for dinner. I was excited to try cuttle fish, so I got calamari and grilled cuttlefish. The calamari was great! The cuttlefish was disappointing. I think squid remains the only gastropod worth eating. I would put the cuttlefish below octopus, which is quite a ways after squid. 

The next day we went hiking and had a bit of a beach day! It was much warmer and really fun to be out in the water. The water was warm near the shore, and really fun to see all the sea critters, skip rocks, and jump around in the waves.

My favorite view

Avila

Ella and I went back to Avila. It was a really fun trip! We made a new friend on the bus, and got to spend the day with her. The walls are so magical. It was especially fun since much more of the walls were open this time than last time I came.

We liked wandering through the alley ways and exploring the city. The alleys are twisty and curvy,  and very narrow. 

Avila has some pretty cool history, as it is the birthplace of Catholic mysticism, a major movement within the religion, especially in Spain. We visited the Encarnación convent where St Teresa was visited by Christ.

Back in Spain

When I first met Ella, I had just come back from a study abroad in Spain that seriously changed my life. When I introduced myself to Ella for the first time, I said "Hi! My name's Robert. I'm a biology major, and I'm from Albuquerque, but I just got back from a study abroad in Spain." 

I'm sure I talked her ear off about Spain, and it only took a few months after we got married before we were applying to come back! So now we're both here teaching English. We live in the community of Madrid in Alcala de Henares again, and teach English in an elementary school in a nearby village. It's so much fun!

I'm just with the 4th grade, and Ella teaches grades 1-3. I help with science and english lessons, and have the best time.

It's really great to be back in Spain, especially now that I'm in a different spot in my life, and have already been here once. I love the culture, the history, the oil, the food, and the people. This really is the best time of my life, spending almost all of my time with my amazing wife Ella, going on trips, playing and working with kids, and getting immersed in a culture I love in a way I haven't before.

One of the funniest things about being back here is seeing how little my wardrobe has changed since the last time I was here. Living in the same city, going to many of the same places, has led to a couple of repeat pictures I didn't expect.

  

Granada!

Ella took me to Granada for my birthday. It was so much fun! We arrived late Thursday night, but still had time to go out for tapas and seafood. We went to a place called "Diamantes" right off of Plaza Nueva that was really tasty.

The next morning we went to the Alhambra first thing. The palaces were spectacular. Moorish Architecture is just incredible. One of my favorite things was the Myrtles Court with the beautiful reflecting pool.

I also learned that the exquisite ceiling of the Hall of the Ambassadors was made from jigsaw like pieces-- over 8000 of them.

The grounds were beautiful, the palace was amazing, and I'm blown away by this totally different style of building. It's incredible. My favorite spot was the Arabic baths with perfect acoustics in one spot. It sounded like I had a microphone and great speakers. Ella and I could whisper to each other from across the room.

After the Alhambra, we decided to go to the grocery store for lunch. We realized on our way, however, that the way to the grocery store was almost the same as Rick Steve's walking tour! So we did most of the walking tour on the way to the grocery store and had a lot of fun wandering the back alleys and streets of Granada.

The Cathedral was impressive. It towered over the rest of the buildings, with a relatively simple, triumphant baroque facade. There was a fun market just to the side of it that was the site of an ancient fortified market during the Moorish kingdom.

The next day (My birthday) we walked through the Albaycin, the moorish quarter. It was beautiful! We enjoyed a smoothie on our way to lunch. We got a big sampler platter that was very fancy.

After lunch we went to learn how to make arabic sweets. They were really tasty! While we worked on them, the host helped us see the difference between spices and ground and whole spices. It was a much bigger difference than I expected! The one that was the biggest deal was nutmeg. The whole nutmeg smelled so much better than ground nutmeg!


 That night we went to a flamenco show! It was so much fun. This was definitely a birthday for the books. Ella really out did herself again.

Princess Ella

Before we were married, Ella used to work for a company "Ever After," where she'd go to birthday parties and other events dressed as a princess and help little kids have magical days.

This one is from a charity event she worked at

The more I think about it though, the more I realize she really is a princess.

1. Last week we were on our way to the bus stop early on a cold morning. I was still waking up, a somewhat unpleasant experience made better by listing to Ella sing cheerfully beside me. She loves the music from Mama Mia!, and on any given day that's usually what she's singing. As I started to listen closer, I realized it was not "Here we go again!" but her own invention. She was singing a song about her morning and how much she loved her boots she was wearing, and yes, she'd made it up on the spot.

2. Ella grew up on a large 13 acre plot of land, and loves the country side and "her woods and her river". Her favorite memory from growing up on said land is Prince Charming. Her dad gave her the chance to bottle raise a calf, and of course, Ella knew if she was going to spend so much quality time with a male every day, he'd better be Prince Charming, ruminant or not.

3. Ella loves animals, and they seem to love her in almost a Disney kind of way. This past summer we went to a really great zoo in Columbia, SC, and went into an open flight bird enclosure. We had a little bit of nectar for the birds to eat. After I had held it for a couple minutes, waited, and then gotten impatient and chased a couple birds around (stealthily?), I finally got one bird to take a nice little drink. I asked Ella if she'd like to try. I'd scarcely handed it to her when this happened: 

First there was one

Then there were two

And then three (And briefly a fourth)

4. Ella is super upbeat. Optimism is one of her shining and defining virtues. After a particularly challenging couple of weeks for both of us a few months ago, I was feeling down and worried if we were making the right decisions or if we needed to make some serious changes to our routines. Ella instantly pointed out all the great things that had happened, and how we had crossed off so many things from our to do list. For a few days, I kept finding sour patch kids and Salt and Vinegar chips set out for me and my lunch made, even as Ella was at least as busy as I was.

5. Ella is a friend to everyone she meets. I'm constantly blown away by how kind and friendly she is, always giving the benefit of the doubt. At times when I have found myself frustrated with someone, Ella always speaks up to offer her counsel (And the Savior's counsel) "Judge not". She offers lots of tenable explanations for what someone might be thinking, or how they probably just need more kindness. Even when I'm feeling frustrated that I feel like she's been mistreated, she always takes the higher road. 

6. Also, Ella decided that coming to Europe she needed to change her wardrobe a little bit. She mostly brought more of her dresses and left more of her casual clothes, but it honestly isn't too different in that regard. The biggest difference has been an enormous bag of ribbons that has started braiding into her hair and trying to incorporate into everything she does.

Ella performing as Snow White in a play

I could go on and on, but the truth is Ella is magnificent. I love spending time with her. This past year has been the happiest year of my life. I absolutely love my wife Ella, and she is my very best friend. 

Magic Momma

This is my Momma.

She's pretty cool.

 

 This summer, I got really sick and had to go home to recover from mono. I had been planning on staying at school, and so while my plans had to change quite a bit, I got to spend a whole lot more time with my mom.

We went on hikes

 Saw waterfalls

Visited 1000 year old settlements

 Saw less successful 1000 year old settlements

 Went to a brand new temple

 Saw old churches

 Played Yard Games

 Took Selfies

 Saw Piñatas

 Ate delicious food

 Went to a pharmacy

(And got drinks there)

 Saw elephants and a lot of other animals

(We were really excited for the Tapir)

 Attended the temple (but not this one, unfortunately)

 Ate more yummy food

 Picked and ate lots of berries

 

And a whole lot more! We went to Rebel Donuts, Voodoo donuts, whale watching, went to a concert, a hilarious opera, a number of tours, saw trucks, played board games, listened to music, did puzzles, watched movies, played putt-putt, and all kinds of fun things. (I don't have a lot of pictures of those, especially because the camera on her phone is easier to use).

Mom is really cool. She's such a great example to me and I'm really glad that I got sick with mono, because it gave me the chance to spend time with my mom. She has been a really fun adventure buddy this summer, and I'm really grateful for this time we've had to hang out, get to know each other better, and I'm especially grateful for the good friend she is to me.

So far, she's been Popo to her grandkids, but I don't want to call her that since I speak Spanish and I also love her. Towards the end of the summer, we were talking, and mom mentioned the name "Magic Momma". I think it's the perfect name to describe my wonderful mom.

I dreamed a dream

Last night I dreamed a dream. In my dream, we were in Oregon, and mom and Dad had just decided to adopt three muggle children. That’s right. Muggles. Because we were all wizards and witches from Harry Potter!

We were somehow related to the Weasleys, and were good family friends with the Potters. I think mom and dad were curious about the effects of close proximity to magic in muggle children (which is partly why they adopted them, but they also know them from church).

Within the LDS community, there was no secrecy about magic, and all the wizards and muggles lived together and everybody knew who could do magic and who was a muggle. I’m guessing that most home teaching companionships had at least one wizard so that the difficult home repairs could be done with magic. Chris was the only one of us who wasn’t working a wizard job, he was working for a muggle company. All of us thought it was weird at first, until he showed us that he used magic to get all his work done, and was already a senior manager after less than a couple months at the company. He expected to be CEO within a year!

Meanwhile, I was attending BYU Hogwarts. It was mostly for magical LDS students, but nonmembers and muggles attended too. I think I was majoring in Chemistry, but, of course, that meant a lot of potions classes. At the same time, I was the star of the Squidditch team. Squidditch was a broom sport like quidditch, but in the same ways that quidditch is similar to basketball, squidditch was similar to football (and was therefore a contact sport). I was really good and got an offer to play professionally, but somehow that translated into me getting drafted into the (muggle) airforce to play normal football.

When I got there, I was excited to see that my friend Brooks was also on the team. He and I were standing together on the first day of practice, and the coach started going on and on and on and on about balanced meals and healthy diet, and we both kind of zoned out, but then the coach called us all to attention to have a competition to see who could find the healthiest breakfast in 45 minutes. Brooks immediately wanted to be partners, partly because we were friends, but also because he knew I was a wizard. We decided to divide and conquer, and while he worked on cooking up some eggs, I went to Walmart to find protein muffin mix.

It was tricky though, because I looked all through that store and with each walkthrough, the Christmas display got larger and larger. Eventually it overgrew the whole store, and I couldn’t find anything but Christmas trees and ornaments. I went and complained to the manager, especially since it was only September in my dream, which I thought was ridiculous since there wasn’t even any Halloween stuff!

Well, while I was complaining, my friend Bailey from my freshman ward overheard me. She told me she was going to the secret upstairs of Walmart. She told me when she couldn’t find something she needed she would go up there. I got excited and figured that’s where I’d find the mix I needed. We walked and walked and walked and finally made it up to the sixth floor which was a dead end. I asked her what she was planning and where the things were she was looking for. She looked at me an said “Didn’t I tell you what I was looking for? Peace and quiet. When I can’t find it, I come up here.”

“But what about products? I thought it was going to be something you could buy!”

“Robert, you can’t just pull everything off a shelf.”

Desperate to not be late, I hopped on my broom and flew down through the stair case, weaving in and out of each flight of stairs, and rushed back to the building, with just 5 minutes before we needed to report for practice. Brooks got frustrated with me for coming without the muffin mix, and when I explained I couldn’t find it, he said “Can’t you just accio muffin mix or something?? You have magic don’t you?”

I guess this is what I get for rereading all of the Harry Potter books this year!