Welcome to the Family

I woke up to a crazy wind storm this morning. Our clothes were out on the balcony drying, so I got out of bed and brought them inside so they wouldn't blow away. It was seriously the strongest winds I have seen in a while. When I woke up for real, it was pouring out. It eventually calmed down but remained a rainy windy day.

Today was a great family day; Javier took the family (and Nicole and I) to his parent's house in Illora, Spain which is a small town outside of Granada, about a 30 minute drive from the apartment. The ride there was beautiful; we went up through the mountains and passed fields and fields of olive trees used to make olive oil. It was amazing! I had never seen so many fields in the mountains, I was extremely intrigued.

Olive Trees (this is hardly anything in comparison to the rest of the drive)

We went to Lola and Pepe's house (Javier's parents) for lunch. Lola had me and Nicole try wine for the first time. Apparently Pepe makes his own wine, so we tried his "vino negro" and "vino rosado" (red wines). They had a very very veryyyy strong taste, wayyyy too much for my liking. I tried to drink my little glass to be polite, but I suffered through it. We also ate cheese with pepperoni and chorizo and bread for our tapa with the wine, and then ate paella for lunch. It was actually very good; I tried a shrimp and everything (yes, with the eyes...but you take it out of the shell thankfully!!). As if I wasn't full enough, Lola brought out custard with cookies and cinnamon and muffins. Saying no was not an option, so I had to try everything. Aprobar means to try, and Pepe kept saying "aproba un poco, solamente un poco" meaning "try a little, just a little."

Homemade Wine

Paella

Yumm, shrimp! It was actually good!

Pepe, Nicole and I

Lola, Nicole and I eating lunch. She kept feeding us so much food and saying she wanted us to go home weighing more than we did when we arrived. Also, the table we are eating at is one of the heated tables with couches around it. We really need these in the US. You stay warm, eat, and then when you're stuffed and don't want to move, you can just go to sleep on the couch!

Lola and Pepe's house is beautiful; it's very European looking with tile floors and curved wooden framed doors. Both of them are also very artistic, they showed us some of their artwork (paintings) which were really pretty. Lola also showed us the scarfs she has started to knit for Nicole and I, it's the perfect color blue, I'm so excited!!

One of the rooms in the house. The rest of the rooms look architecturally very similar yet are styled differently. 

The two paintings on the ends were done by Pepe; he has many many more, he does them for fun, not to sell, and has been painting for just three years.

After lunch Ana played us some "music" on the guitar. She played "Jingle Bells, which is "Navedad" in Spanish, but she sang the English version as well, she was very cute.

Ana playing the guitar

We finally left and went to Javier's second house which is right next to his plastics factory (in the same town as his parent's house). The house is beautiful and has great views of the hills with olive trees. Apparently we will be going back for a weekend someday, Javier showed us our room and everything. He then took us to his factory, which was really cool as well. There are only 3 plastics companies in Spain, and very few in neighboring countries, so Javier's company is very important. He showed us his drawings and all the machines, it is a huge factory! It was originally his father's, and now him and his brother co-operate it. I didn't want to take pictures in case it wasn't allowed, but this is the website for his work, it's in Spanish but check it out anyway, it's pretty sweet!

http://xn--matriceriapea-tkb.com/

Little Beatriz finally got in a picture!! 

The house in the countryside

Las Hermanas Espanolas

It was pretty rainy so we decided to head back to the apartment. On the way home, Ana drew pictures on the window. She drew everyone and labelled it the Matriceria Pena family, it was really cute.

It was a lazy Saturday night for me; I spent the night looking up Spanish music to download. The Bruins start playing tonight, I hope it's a good game. I will not be watching but I'm sure I'll be updated on the final score.