España Experience: I'm BACK! And Mesquita

I'm back!!!! It was so sweet to see a couple of comments, "Where are you? Are you blogging elsewhere? I pray for your family!" Thank you. I tried to finish out our Spain adventure, but then February came. In February, my husband flies to the USA for several weeks, and I fly solo here at home. I would say that this year in teaching has been the most challenging to me. It's going SO well, but it is just harder than any other year of teaching for me. I took on three high school classes which I had not taught previously. Teaching Middle School English the last several years did help to prepare me, but there is still so much reading, prepping, writing quizzes and tests, grading. I ABSOLUTELY love high schoolers! I'm glad I accepted the challenge, but my little pockets of down time have somewhat disappeared. However, for me, writing is one of the things in life I enjoy so much. So, I don't want to give this blog up! I'm going to attempt to get caught up, and I thank you for being so patient!!! 

So, on to finish out our Spain adventures! Our time together as a family of seven was quickly drawing to a close! Oh, what fun days we had together. We wanted to do and see things together and enjoy this wonderful gift of hospitality to get to see southern Spain, but I believe it was the small things that we enjoyed the most. Christmas morning....watching each others' faces as we opened small thoughtful gifts. Digging into my cream-of-whatever-we-found-in-the-grocery soup! Early mornings by the fireplace. It just gave us a whole bank of memories together. 

But CC did want us to go see one more "biggie" in Spain, so we loaded up and drove to La Mesquita, the "Little Mosque." 

We tried to pinch pennies by packing lunches!

The mosque was originally built by the Moors in the 8th century. In 1236, it was converted into a Cathedral under the conquest of Ferdinand III. They just could not bring themselves to tear it down, which was the original plan, so they built the cathedral around the mosque.

 And it is really breathtaking. The traditional look of both remain. And it was MASSIVE. We just kept walking and walking and walking to see it all.

And just when I thought we had seen it all, CC found us (he tends to read the plaques more than the rest of us!) and said, "Just wait until you see the inner cathedral!" We followed him to this....

It was stunning and beautiful. My favorite part of the entire structure was likely this. Just before the altar there were two sculptures, one on each side. We quickly recognized them as the 4-fold prophecy in Ezekiel, which we believe is represented in the tone of the 4 Gospels which represent Christ Himself: human, lion, ox, eagle. I was overwhelmed to see these, as I had taught that very concept to my Middle School Bible students. Seeing Scripture represented in this place was my favorite part.

And just before we left, we saw another beautiful nativity.