on the road again

11 of us had the pleasure of venturing to Madrid this weekend to support our dear friend Juanjo as his band Viejo Musical competed in a battle of the bands sort of a gig at CARACOL.

antonio, shannon, elaine, cheryl and myself are thoroughly enjoying ourselves in this picture.


and this is juanjo and his other 9 band members enjoying themselves performing for our listening pleasure. they were amazing. they only have 5 songs and they are somewhat short, so do not fear, to extend their performance they placed two of their songs twice.....excellent! you cannot quite tell but pictured here in the back is the brass section and all four of them had on black pants, black button down shirt, red ties and red hats....they, besides juanjo, were my favorite.

Shannon Smith came to the show! can you believe it? for those of you who do not have the pleasure of knowing Shannon she is a dear friend of mine from Texas A&M who is interning for a missions organization in Madrid. how fun! she let Elaine and i stay at her house.
no big deal. she was quite hospitable if i do say so myself. it was kind of difficult deciding which room i wanted to stay in, but let's face it, all of them were nice.

this is actually the palace. rumor has it that they current king has decided that they king and queen and whatnot will no longer live in the palace, so they don't. i have no idea where they do live, but it isn't here. and shannon doesn't live there either.


elaine, shannon and i enjoyed a wonderful and beautiful day in madrid together. we had coffee and calamari sandwhiches (though not together...a different meal times) and we went to two museums. did you know that after 2:30 on saturday and during open hours on sundays the musuems are free. that's a treat!

and as a treat for you:


this it the beautiful woman i had the pleasure of sharing my bus ride home with. this picture does not capture the vastness of her smile or the twinkle and gleam in her eye. or the fact that she mutters in hushed tones to herself constantly and smiles when she isn't muttering....it would have been creepy for me to take a blatant picture of her....this is just a sneak peak!