Valencia! Well...a smaller town close to it...

After trying in vain to attend church in Barcelona Sunday morning (it must've been Stake Conference since we found the building at the appointed hour and it was locked up tight!), we headed south along the coast toward Valencia.

Spain looks a lot different than what I expected --think Albuquerque meets Miami. It's desert, but with huge mountains like the area around Albuquerque, New Mexico. In addition, though, there are palm trees everywhere and you can see the deep blue of the Mediterranean Sea running along the coast. The cities we saw were clustered up next to the coast, some had high rises and modern-looking buildings, others looked smaller and more picturesque.

We were welcomed with open arms by María and Will upon arrival at their apartment in Carcagente.  María is a friend of The Linguist's from his mission days. Since she visited the United States right around the time The Linguist proposed to me, I count her as my friend, as well. We've kept in touch via e-mail and letters, and she was so happy when she heard we were coming to Italy and immediately invited us to visit and stay in her home! I was a little nervous about bringing our family of 7 to her apartment for a week since we can be a little overhwhelming, but we had such a wonderful time together!

She had prepared paella for what we thought was dinner! Paella is a traditional Spanish dish with rice, chicken, seafood and vegetables kind of stir fried together. It's one of the Linguist's favorites, and the kids and I like it, too, since it has a mild flavor and not too much seafood! We stuffed ourselves and then she brought out a delicious (and beautiful) chocolate cake...so we ate some more. While she was clearing the table, she started talking about what we were going to have for "la cena," which is dinner -- apparently what we had just eaten was lunch!

Paella for all!

Yummy Austrian chocolate cake

We THOUGHT we were being European in our eating habits when we had dinner close to 8 p.m. in the hotel in Ferrara. That's fairly standard for Italy, but in Spain it's more like 10:30! I put the younger kids to bed before dinner since they were exhausted and the rest of us stayed up and enjoyed a delicious second dinner with María and Will. It was a salad composed of potatoes, peas, carrots and bits of crab. After putting it on your plate, you added a heap of mayonnaise and stirred it all together. I confess, I don't remember a lot about that night because I was so tired things were starting to feel dreamlike.

Before we go further, I have to introduce María and Will's dogs. Dana (pronounced Donna) is their dog. But María, who has a tender heart, also fosters dogs that need homes. One of her puppies had just been adopted, but she still had Kahli when we visited. At about 6 weeks old, Kahli is adorable (see the pictures below). The kids fell in love with both dogs immediately and didn't want to do anything but sit on the couch and hold the dogs! I'm not sure how many requests we had to adopt Kahli, and I confess, for about a minute I seriously considered it, but I just feel like it's unfair to an animal to bring it into our crazy world where our surroundings change so often.

Dana enjoyed sitting on The Net's lap.

Kahli sleeping.

Songbird and Kahli became best friends instantly.