Things haven't been quite so crazy this month, just almost the slog of the usual week and starting to find a more general routine. Work has picked up even more, praise God! I was working Monday through to Thursday but have picked up some more private lessons which are on Fridays so finally I'm working a Monday-Friday job!! :-) does an hour on Friday constitute as a full working day?? Well, I count it as since it's been such a long time since I had a full week! So anways, work is going well. I'm still meeting up with people once or twice a week so thankfully friendships are slowly but surely building up. Our weekly church meetings are going very well too. We recently had Mike and Jess Shore over from Portugal for 10 days and they were a real blessing to us and shared so much of their wisdom and insight into church planting in the Iberian peninsula -- Mike and Jess Shore planted their church near 30 years ago!! So they came with a LOT of wisdom and experience :-) it was great.
Apart from that, not too much has been going on this month. Oh yeah, one of my housemates moved out. Thankfully, I understood (just about) that it was nothing to do with me moving in! :-) he just wanted his own place after sharing for the past 18 years...but that was a bit sad as I'd got on really well with him. But he now wants English lessons from me sometime next year so I may still see a lot of him! But for now, we're down to the 3 of us which is actually quite nice, there's more space! But hopefully someone new will be moving in in the new year.
Oh and I'm not sure I've mentioned him before but there's been this English guy called Tom living in Madrid (studying) for 3 months. He was with us right from the beginning but this morning he returned home. It's been fun hanging out with him recently -- I've done a few day trips with him, visiting a monastary in the mountains called El Escorial and going to the King's palace in Aranjuez. It's been great having him here so was a little sad to see him leave but who knows, he may be back someday -- hope you're reading this Tom! :-)
But no time to be too sad about it, coz in a few hours time I'll be heading off to the airport too to spend Christmas with my family and friends! Very much looking forward to saying hi again! Yet in a bizarre way, actually a bit sad to be leaving here. I guess coz it would be interesting to see what Christmas itself is like here. I hope they're not all like this guy who thinks you should dress up as tree...he doesn't even look Christmassy for goodness sake!
But then I'm back in Madrid for Reyes (King's Day) on the 6th of January so can't wait for that too!
Anyways, so hopefully I'll see some of you when I return later today! And for those I won't see, merry Christmas and a happy new year! :-)
