Madrid, SPAIN !!!

About thirty-four years ago our family went to Madrid, Spain to live and work. We lived in the center of Madrid for the first four years and then in 1979 moved to La Poveda (Arganda) on the outskirts of Madrid where we bought an apartment. That was our home for the rest of our time in Spain. We've owned that apartment for thirty years now and recently decided to sell it. Matt, my second son who lives in Mexico now, has been helping me during the last two years with all the paperwork, phone calls, legal aspects and information. We needed to go to Spain to get the apartment ready to sell and to sign many papers with a lawyer (inheritance issues), notary, a bank, a realtor. It took several days to do all that, but we perservered and got most of it done.

Well, since we love Madrid so much we just could not help but enjoy ourselves to the max ! We both arrived the same day (April 16)...Matt from Mexico City and I came from Beijing. Many of our dear Spanish friends offered places to stay, a car to use, cell phones, and invited us over for meals. We are so blessed. Needless to say, we still love Spain and the Spaniards. A beautiful country with beautiful people and customs. It had been five years since Matt had been in Spain, and it had been eight years for me, so we were super excited about being back. I loved being in a country where I was not stared at for looking so different, and where I could speak and understand the language. Many of our old friends welcomed us with open arms and hugs and kisses. And many of my friends are now Grandmas (Yayas !) like me, so of course we all wanted to talk about our grandkids.
I've known Gemma since she was a young teenager and now she is the mom of three precious boys and wife of our dear friend Carlos who became a Christian when he was a teenager. I stayed with them for over a week and we got to catch up on many years of being apart. She treated me like a queen all the time ! I loved it.

We were able to attend the Arganda church and share about Mexico and China. Here we are with good friends, Jesus and Esme.
I've known all these ladies way over twenty years now ~ they still meet occasionally for brunch (without me !!!) All have lived in Spain for a long time. I was so happy to be able to get together with most of them and we all got to share our stories.