Brendan's Blog

I Love Corella

2011-09-08T09:20:00.000-07:00

This summer I lived in Logroño and taught at an English day camp in villages mostly in the south of Navarra. We taught at a different village every week. It was a demanding job, but overall it was a great experience. I feel more confident than ever as a teacher.

Every village was unique in its own way, but our last one, Corella, will always have a special place in my heart for two reasons. First, I probably had the best relationship with my students that week because they were my oldest, most mature group. They even gave me and Jenna "I love Corella" t-shirts. The students were disappointed when I told them I can't go to Corella's festival on September 23 because I'll be in Germany that weekend, but I promised to wear my Corella t-shirt in Germany. The second thing that struck me is Corella's bike friendliness. The number of bike lanes is astounding for a village so small. Unlike Pamplona, all of them are painted on the street rather than squeezed on the sidewalks. The school's halls were adorned with posters promoting cycling around every corner. I definitely want to ride down there some time and actually use those spacious bike lanes.

Now I´m back in Pamplona. I don´t start my conversation classes until next Monday so I have almost nothing to do for the next week. I´m going to try to make the most of my "vacation" first and foremost by putting some quality time into studying Spanish. I thought there was no way I could pass the DELE this year, but I figured that if I study consistently for two months, I might have a shot. If the Spanish government continues the program for full time visiting teachers from the United States and Canada next year, a DELE C1 certificate would make my application far more competitive. I think that my level is already good enough, but the certificate would really prove it.

It May or May Not Be the End of the World as We Know It but I Feel Blessed!

2011-08-17T11:00:00.000-07:00

Seeing the people, he felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd. Matthew 9:3

Monday being a holiday in Spain, I had three whole days this past weekend to read, pray, reflect, and very briefly describe my experience over the past year and this summer.

I had two short-term paid internships this past school year- as an English TA at a high school/middle school and teaching (really more listening and correcting) English conversation classes at a language school for government employees. I learned a ton about Spanish people and culture in both places.

This summer I’m working at summer day camps in villages all over Navarre. I’ve really enjoyed getting to know a different group of students every week- most of them, anyway. I’ve finally gained the confidence to apply for a full time teaching job in Spain if the visiting teacher program is extended for the 2012-2013 school year (though I really need to buckle down and improve my Spanish enough to survive an interview). I moved to Logroño for this job.´It´s a nice town. The coffee is certainly better here, but I´m definitely looking forward to moving back to Pamplona.

Another highlight of the summer was the Into the Wilderness retreat in the Italian Alps. Anthony Testa taught on foundational principles in Christian living that week through climbing, hiking, whitewater rafting, and other activities. I’d heard several similar teachings before, but never quite like these. The one on fear really got me. I’ve been afraid to tell anyone that I plan to stay in Spain a few more years because I don’t know what curve balls the government will throw next. But I’ve finally been able to let go of that fear of being disappointed. After all, I have a visa for at least one more year.

As a foreigner in a country with a 21% unemployment rate, God has blessed me immensely with my two pseudo-jobs. Now that I know what to expect, next year I can more effectively balance my schedule so I can spend more time on the university campus we're committed to serving.

I’m really looking forward to getting back into ministry in Pamplona because I think we as Christians have a unique opportunity- actually, more of a duty and privilege- to be a light especially now as the world goes nuts (again) -the indignados still at it in Madrid, deadly riots in London, and political crises in the United States and Europe with the possibility of another financial crisis.

John Piper wrote that it is important to “develop a wartime mentality and lifestyle.” I agree wholeheartedly, but nowadays I see this “wartime mentality” channeling itself primarily into civil wars- it saddened me when I read that Sojourners and the Family Research Council, two Christian political organizations with opposing viewpoints are running competing television ads, very much like secular political campaigns. Over the last few years, it seemed that the church was learning from its mistakes and refocusing. Books that like UnChristian and Jesus for President that challenged the status quo were really encouraging to me. But now it turns out that there is nothing new under the sun.On the other hand, once in a while a Christ follower makes such an impact that even a prominent non-believing columnist cannot resist praising him, though he usually stops short of trusting in and following Jesus himself.

I’ve focused much more on reading than writing lately (just started Donald Miller’s A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, good book so far). These gloomy reminders of the sorry state of the world are what brought me back to this blog. We have a spiritual crisis on our hands for sure. We always have one in a fallen world. I also firmly believe that the intellectual crisis inside and outside the church which I wrote about last year is dragging us down. Christians, myself included, are clearly not immune from the divisions that Bill Bishop describes so well in his book The Big Sort. I know that keeping an open mind is a constant struggle for me.

The world has always been burning, and I'm not excited about the especially intense recent reminders, but I am excited to see what God will do through it. I think that God will teach me and many others very much through it. I look forward to sharing what I learn and the joy of another year of ministry in Pamplona. Stay tuned.

Oh, and I email an update letter every two or three months so if you're interested in getting that, let me know.

Pamplona Capítulo Cinco

2010-04-16T07:58:00.000-07:00

I couldn’t afford to travel during Holy Week this year, but it was just as well because I got quite a bit of reading done. I’m on chapter eleven of the Gospel of John commentary from biblegateway.com. Most chapters fill about twenty pages in a Word document. I’ve learned quite a bit from it, but it’s starting to bore me. Bruce Metzger’s Breaking the Code: Understanding the Book of Revelation is far easier to read and fascinating. It’s nice to know that not every Bible scholar thinks that John wrote Revelation to scare the crap out of us and turn us into neocons to counteract the UN’s overnight transition from little more than an idea into an oppressive police state.

It’s a beautiful day and I really needed a break from reading so I decided to take a stroll through the Casco Antiguo (“Old Town”), where I now live. I sat in the Plaza del Castillo for a little while with my one scoop of mint gelato in a cone. Actually, I prefer the richer, chunkier Ben & Jerry’s ice cream over the smooth gelato. They just opened one three streets over from my flat. I know that’s not very European of me but oh well.

The plaza’s always full of life on weekends and holidays, with children running in the middle near the kiosk and parents and elderly people seated on the surrounding benches resting on their canes. It seems even busier this week because spring brought warm weather and many tourists, mostly from Spain.

On days like these I want to stay here forever. On other days, dwelling on the awful experience in December, I can’t help thinking, “If they don’t want me here, I don’t want to be here” and dreaming of an embarrassing account (for Spain and the EU, I mean) of my deportation buried in the New York Times. I often hear, “Ah, you’re American, they don’t care.” The only advantage of American citizenship is that it’s very unlikely that they’ll deport you. Still, I could save a few hundred dollars by turning myself in on the day after my visa expires.

When I came to Pamplona in December, I actually found a school that wanted to hire me, but the director told me in the interview that the Ministerio de Trabajo (Labor Ministry) would not let her hire any teachers from outside the European Union even though she needed more native speakers and the American business requested American teachers. After the obligatory joke that I get married, all she could do was recommend that I go to the immigration office and hope that they give me residency because I studied here once already. I went to the office, and, as I expected, they told me that I would have to be here for three years before they could give me residency. They sent me to the Ministerio de Trabajo to look into the work permit process.

I stumbled over my Spanish there an hour later, but I was able to explain that I found a school that wanted to hire me and asked how it could happen. In hindsight, I don’t why I thought I could accomplish anything by going in there. The girl at the reception desk walked me over to a desk nearby, explained the situation to the man seated there, and he said simply, “No.” Not only that, he proceeded to rub it in with a slight smirk on his face, “There are Irish and English teachers that live and work here. It’s not us; it’s the European community.” That last sentence was the most insulting. Maybe they would have to ask for permission from Madrid to approve a work contract, but I know they don’t need to send it to Brussels. My Spanish isn’t that great, but that doesn’t mean I’m that stupid. I was so angry that it finally made sense why crazy people occasionally shoot up government offices.

I signed up for a Spanish class the Public University of Navarre’s language center and returned in January with a student visa and very little money. The plan was to supplement my parents’ help with some private classes. Thousands of non-EU teachers in Spain make their entire living that way, but for me it was a disaster at first. I felt (as the Spanish government told me and other Europeans implied) that I didn’t belong here and that I had made a huge mistake in coming back. When the immigration office refused to give me a document that I needed to open a bank account, I was visibly upset, and the lady said, “Take it easy.” Easy for her to say. The people who work in these offices know very little about life outside their doors. Even though I have a valid student visa, I got a taste of what immigrants- legal or not- go through. When you move to another country, you are no longer a person, you are a problem. In the United States, if I work hard to qualify for a certain job, and a company decides to hire me, I can take the job. Work ethic here doesn’t really matter.

Things gradually improved. I no longer think that coming back was a mistake, but I would have a hard time recommending it to anyone else. I completely lost control of my life. Of course, God is in control, and even though I feel that I am more in control in my own country, it is essentially an illusion. After this experience, it will be much easier to be content in the future. I look forward to working any job, teaching English or not. If a Subway opened downstairs, I would be thrilled if I were allowed to work there. If I get stuck working at a Subway in Orlando this summer, that’s fine too.

Since I haven’t been able to rely on myself much lately, God has drawn me closer to Him. I started reading The Spirit of the Disciplines by Dallas Willard when I arrived. When I pulled the book off my dad’s shelf, I thought it was a rehash of Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline, but actually Willard focuses not on the practice but on the purpose of the disciplines. His main point is that individual lives and nations will not change until Christ’s followers incorporate the disciplines into their daily lives and give Him control over everything they do. He goes very deep in connecting the physical and spiritual realms. I had heard and read challenges to live like Christ before- but none of them touched me quite like this one. I downloaded The Case for God by Kathleen Armstrong a few weeks later. Actually it should be titled The Case for Spiritual Relativism. She is clearly not a Christian, but I found it interesting that she agrees with Willard in the importance of the disciplines in the spiritual life. It’s interesting that my reading of both books coincided with one of the most challenging seasons of my life.

The past couple months have forced me to really reevaluate my life. What does a life completely devoted to Christ look like? On Thursday night I rented the film Brothers from iTunes. It tells the story of a soldier who is thought to have died in Afghanistan. He escapes his captors and then totally loses it back home when he finds out his trouble-making brother was romantically involved with his wife while they thought he was dead. It is the first movie I saw since returning to Spain and a powerful reminder of how broken the world is.

Being in a season of life with very few commitments, this is a very good time to think and pray about that. Living “comfortably” is far less important now. I just want to earn my own income. It doesn’t need to be very much.

Now that the disciplines seem more important than ever, I really want to make an extra effort to incorporate them into my life. For the past few weeks I’ve wanted to get into a morning routine of one hour of prayer and Scripture reading at six o’clock followed by a run and then breakfast. I started this morning. Hopefully I can keep it up once my classes and prayer meetings restart next week.

CELTA

2009-12-02T14:22:00.000-08:00

Before I back came to Spain, I was excited, but more than anything I was afraid of being in class all day for five days a week. The CELTA course has been every bit as much work as I expected, but I will almost certainly pass.

I arrived on November 2 without incident. I was most worried about the layover in New York City- I noticed just a week before that I was scheduled to fly into La Guardia and out of JFK. I caught the bus to JFK with plenty of time to spare. Even though it was just a layover, it was cool to just be in New York City. Only one thing- I thought the bus driver was going to kill somebody. But when we got onto the freeway, I saw that his too-close-for-comfort driving technique had plenty of company out there. Amazingly, there was a lot of honking, but I didn’t see anyone get hit.

I sat next to an imam on the flight from JFK to Madrid. God has a knack for placing me next to interesting people. It took me a little while to figure out that he was not Spanish, though the fact that he was the only person around speaking English on his cell phone should have been a good clue. We had a good conversation about interfaith dialogue, which he promotes through organizing trips to the Middle East and Europe for students of diverse religious backgrounds. He told me, “The future is not just Muslim or just Christian. The future is interfaith.” Interfaith dialogue is a good thing, but it could lead to relativism. I wanted to ask him if he thought all the major world religions are as true as Islam, but I thought it was best not to go there. I’m pretty sure the honest answer would have been “no.”
I actually kind of felt at home in Madrid. Hearing those Spanish voices and just the overall feel of the Madrid Barajas Airport just gave me an indescribable sense of familiarity that I had forgotten while in Orlando but which returned quickly. Ryanair also brought back memories. I really felt like I was in Europe again when I opened my copy of their complimentary magazine.

I found the right bus at the Palma de Mallorca airport and took it into town. The walk from the bus stop to my flat was much longer than it needed to be because I did not plug the whole address, c/31 de desembre 9, into Google Maps. Most street addresses don’t have a number before the street and after so that confused me. The lady from International House arrived at exactly the moment I set my bag down on the sidewalk in front of the door. I had braced for the worse after reading a document from the school, “Accommodation in Palma is expensive relative to the rest of Spain. However, it is not necessarily of a higher standard. Whilst International House tries to make accommodation as comfortable as possible for CELTA candidates, you should be aware that in Spain it is not necessarily normal to have a lot of space, natural light, central - heating, air-conditioning or total silence at hours we may consider to be quiet times, in your bedroom.” The flat looked very old, but it was much larger, cleaner and in better shape than I expected. I met my flatmates later that afternoon- Madelyn from Sweden, Erica from New York City, and Douglas from England.

The course started two days later. I really wish I had known what I learned here in the first week alone when I taught the English Clubs at UPNA or at the CNAI camp in Lumbier. For example, asking, “Do you understand?” is not the best way to find out if your students really grasped what you just taught them. Also, reading aloud in class (which I’ve done several times as a student and a teacher) is not effective because the students get terrible pronunciation stuck in their heads. There has been a lot of focus on giving brief but clear instructions and achieving specific aims in your lessons. We spend the morning in TP (Teaching Practice- yeah, that cracked me up at first) followed by a feedback session in which we give and receive feedback on the lessons taught that morning. We all had to teach a total of nine lessons, two or three per week. The first lesson was twenty minutes long and the next six were forty minutes. I have to teach one more time on Monday for sixty minutes. I really can’t complain about how it’s turned out. The instructors are excellent, the class only has ten students, and I love my classmates.

Of course I expected a diverse group, but I was still captivated by my classmates. Danielle, who is originally from Illinois but has been bouncing around the world her entire adult life, walked straight to class from a boat that brought her from southern Spain just that morning. Matthew, who showed up in the middle of the first day of class, had come straight from volunteering at an orphanage in Mexico. Erica has worked for the Pew Center and done volunteer work for the Red Cross cleaning up after Hurricane Katrina. She’s been living in Ireland for the past five months. Douglas is from England but has lived in Germany for fourteen years and taught ski lessons. This group reminds me of a documentary I saw a few days before arriving in Palma called Encounters at the End of the World. Part of the film focuses on the people who work at this base in Antarctica. I love how their occupations were labeled: “cook/filmmaker” “forklift driver/philosopher.” Possibly unknown to most of suburbia, there is a subculture of globetrotters who don’t really call one place home. They move from one place to the next to experience a smorgasbord of cultures. I knew coming in that it would be a very secular group as, though they are not as hostile to Christians and Christianity as is widely believed. Nevertheless, I thought it was best to tread likely.

With most of my lessons behind me, I finally don’t feel so crunched. A few times over the past month I’ve felt extremely frustrated so I’ve had to stop and remind myself why I’m doing this. Matthew gave me a pretty good reminder at the end of the second week. When explaining his convictions to one of our classmates, he showed me that I was not the only person in the class living for God. Everybody at the table was floored by how well he knew the Bible. I’ll have that knowledge and experience to draw from someday, but for now I have an hour-long lesson to plan.

Summer '09

2009-10-22T22:02:00.000-07:00

I was hoping to be teaching English in Spain by now, but during my last short-term mission trip in Pamplona in May I discovered that the process is far more involved than I originally thought. I talked to a guy at a language academy who wanted me to get some kind of training before he would consider hiring me so when I returned to Orlando, I looked into an English teaching course called the CELTA. For a number of reasons, I decided to take the course on Palma de Mallorca, an island off the east coast of Spain. I will be leaving Orlando November 1, and the course begins on the fourth. After the class is over, I will stand a much better chance of getting a job in Pamplona. But before heading over there, I’ll stop in Barcelona for three days because I can’t get anything done in Pamplona during the holidays and I’ve never really explored Barcelona. I will spend the following two weeks in Pamplona looking for a teaching job. Then, with a work permit and all my required documents in hand, I will apply for a visa at the Spanish consulate in Miami. Barring a major holdup in Pamplona or Miami, I will be back in Orlando December 17.

Of course, all of this requires money so I had to find a job when I returned to Orlando. I probably filled out about a dozen online applications and never heard anything, but SeaWorld granted me an interview the day I walked into the human resources office and hired me a week later. You know those people who ask you to stop and take a picture when you into any theme park? It is my job to sell you the picture. It turns out to have been a real blessing. I love the people I work with, especially the Taiwanese who were there over the summer. In the meantime, I joined H2O Church, which meets in downtown Orlando. I joined a “life group,” which is pretty much what Gator Christian life calls a “home group.” Overall H2O is very different from GCL for a variety of reason, but I have met some awesome people there and have continued to grow alongside them.

Orlando now feels like a big playground because as a SeaWorld employee I get free admission to SeaWorld, Aquatica, both Universal parks, and Busch Gardens. Thursday was my last day before I quit so I went to Islands of Adventure to ride the rides I’d skipped in the past and sneak a peek at the Hogwarts castle that now rises above the rest of the park, albeit covered in scaffolding. The Back to the Future music brought a tear to my eye because it simultaneously moved me and reminded me that the ride no longer exists in Orlando.

When I haven’t been working or at a theme park, I’ve been reading. My parents’ house does not have cable and lacked internet access until about a week ago, which was mostly a good thing. I will have read twelve books by the time I leave. I’m finishing the last of the Harry Potter books now. I figured that I should read them now that the theme park is being built and I’m about to take a class taught primarily from a British perspective. I think it is awesome how the wizards are able to live with mobile phones, televisions, computers, or even ballpoint pens. After reading a New York Times editorial by columnist Nicholas Kristof, I picked up The Life You Can Save. The author makes the case that extreme poverty can be eliminated if only a fraction of the residents in the wealthy countries donated a negligible sum. It really forced me to think about all the luxuries I enjoy and how I can be a better steward of what God has blessed me with.

The other half of the books I read has strengthened my walk with God. A book called Pagan Christianity? caught my eye at the library because of the title and George Barna’s name on the cover. The other author’s name, Frank Viola, sounded kind of familiar. It made sense when I found out he lives in Gainesville. In a nutshell, the book promotes something called an “organic church,” a simple house church just like in the first three centuries of the church. The authors argue that most of the commonly accepted church practices- worship teams, sermons, seminaries, tithing, etc. - were man-made inventions that came about centuries later. Reviews have suggested that church history is not as cut and dry as Viola claims so I am a bit skeptical of those sections, but there is a very good chapter on interpreting the Bible. Because we only have Paul’s end of the conversation of between himself and his church plants and those letters are arranged in order of length in the modern day Bible, the context is often lost. Lifted out of their cultural contexts, you can make Paul’s letters say anything any number of things. That’s how we got the entire Left Behind series. Viola has written a book intended to provide a context for each letter, but I would like to find a book by a different author so I am not too influenced by just one author. I’ll probably wind up picking up his book anyway just as a starting point.

Next I read The Reason for God, which I first heard mentioned at H2O about a year ago. I love how the author, Timothy Keller, reads many of the same publications that I’m familiar with such as The Atlantic, Time, and The New York Times. Furthermore, he defends the faith without compromise from the perspective of a New Yorker, not a Bible Belt preacher. In his chapter on science, he drew heavily from The Language of God so I read that too. The author, Francis Collins, who is also head of the Human Genome Project, defends theistic evolution. I loved the book, but I wish he would have been more specific. Probably attempting to keep the book short and sweet, he sums up very controversial points in a mere paragraph and hurts his case. But his critics (at least the ones I’ve read so far) don’t seem to have a very strong case either. I guess that means I’ll have to dig a little deeper. One question always leads to another. It almost seems that the more I read, the less informed I feel.

I really wouldn’t mind doing this every summer. I have a cozy little room in my parents’ house on the south side of Orlando. It is not nearly as isolated as my grandparents’ place on the east side, where I lived for two years in high school. If I can teach English in Pamplona during the fall and spring and work at a theme park during the summer, I would be thrilled. There will be plenty of ministry opportunities in both places (though, I probably didn’t pursue them here in Orlando this summer as much as I could have). Spending the summers in Orlando would be a good way to ease my parents’ pain too. My dream job for next summer is to be a character in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. But I need to try really hard not to get too far ahead of myself because I still have some worksheets to finish and things to pack before starting a possibly grueling CELTA course.

After Dark

2009-02-26T20:42:00.000-08:00

I went to an evangelical event called After Dark tonight. I wish I had been able to see the whole thing two weeks ago so I would have been more excited and bold in asking my classmates to go. I knew it would be cool, but I did not know how exactly it would differ from other presentations of the gospel. They promoted it all week on campus. I saw black and yellow t-shirts, balloons, and fliers everywhere I went.
My favorite part was the introduction to the gospel message. The main speaker, Joe White, told us he was going to talk about an important historical figure who we had never heard of and who had probably never been the subject of any book or movie- the soldier who built Jesus' cross. In the flashy video introduction, the text mentioned that he was living in the midst of a "great empire" at "a turning point in civilization." Then we saw Joe hacking chunks of wood off a beam to create a slit in which would rest the smaller beam of the cross. Debris littered the stage. While he hacked away, Joe, speaking for the soldier, told us about the brutal execution procedure and what he thought about Jesus. He said that he only knows about one Son of God, and that is Caesar, but people say that Jesus Christ will rise from the dead on Sunday, and if that happens, then he will believe. Then Joe broke character and, with clips from Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ playing behind him, described Jesus using many words but in the end decided that just one of them fit: indescribable.
This is the first time I have ever heard the gospel presented in a way that explicitly put it in the context of the Roman empire- at least the first time I can remember. I was happy to see it. This is a blog I have been meaning to write for a long time. After Dark was the push I needed.
A couple months ago I finished a book my dad gave me called Jesus for President. He loved it and thought I would too. I was not disappointed. It really brought a lot of things into perspective. I am currently reading The Politics of Jesus, which JR Woodward of Kairos first recommended to me at Colorado LT in 2007. Several other books I have read draw from it. There is a page or two in Jesus for President about what the cross meant in Roman times- it was the way to execute anyone who questioned the empire's authority and supremacy.
This brings me back to Joe's role playing exercise. As Joe was attacking the beam, I reflected not only on Jesus' sacrifice, but also on the meaning of the cross itself. Its brutality was displayed publicly to discourage dissension. When Jesus said to his disciples in Matthew 16:24, "If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me," He was not speaking metaphorically, as I originally thought. He was telling them that they could be put to death for what they stood for. Many of them actually were martyred. That makes the Christian life in the United States today look easy, not to say that going against the grain is encouraged here either.
In some ways, whether we realize it or not, we have adopted a mindset eerily similar to the empire that killed Jesus. When somebody criticizes our government or way of life, we do not nail him to a cross, but very rarely is dissension viewed as constructive criticism. The most popular terms include "anti-American" and "communist." The same goes for religion- the world often calls us Christians "bigots," "close-minded," or worse. The intolerant Romans wanted to show Jesus and His first followers who was boss. Then Jesus turned around and showed them. But he did it by rising from the dead and ascending to heaven. There is no record of Jesus encouraging his disciples (or us) to retaliate with violence, hatred, or name-calling because He wanted us to be very different from the Romans who killed Him. Let's remember that every time we see the cross.

It's Beginning to Feel a Lot Like Christmas

2008-12-07T20:10:00.000-08:00

I know Christmas is coming for two primary reasons. The first is that I am freezing my butt off. Second, I feel like I've done more Christmasy stuff in the past couple weeks than the past two years combined. Last Wednesday I joined a few dozen guys at the Hilton to serve at the girls' Christmas tea. I didn't do much because there were more guys than there were tables. My table was at the very front, but it was empty for the first few minutes. I wound up fighting Tyler for it when the ladies finally filled it. When we weren't praying or serving, Dirk wanted to argue about something; not anything specific, just something to pass the time. I thought it was funny that a lot of guys asked Jessica if we would be serving sweet tea Sonny's style. The thought never crossed my mind. This was a ladies' tea party for crying out loud, not tailgating or a barbecue. I have long felt that even though I was raised in the same country, I come from a culture distinct from that of my friends here. That only drove it home. Anyway, the tea was very nice and Christmasy. Best of all, there were plenty of leftover brownies, cookies, and other pastries for us to munch on after we were done serving.

Yesterday I joined the home group to watch the SEC Championship game at the Dicuses' house. The picture projected onto the wall was so big that the players were as tall as myself in real life. I was a little scared at first because it was a close game through the beginning of the fourth quarter. ESPN reminded us that Tebow had never won a game after trailing in the second half. That didn't help. We eventually gained and maintained our momentum. I really wanted to play Texas for the national championship so I could trade trash talk with Angie and Amy over the next month. But Oklahoma destroyed Mizzou so Texas is stuck in third place. Oh well.

I had volunteered to bring cookies for the Christmas party that followed. It was my first chance since I came back to try out the chocolate chip cookie recipe I had started using in Pamplona (I couldn't cheat and buy refrigerated cookie dough over there). I spent at least an hour gathering the ingredients that morning. Sweet Bay did not have M&M's for baking, and Publix did not carry the holiday colors yet. The cookies had to look somewhat Christmasy. I wound up buying the regular M&M's from Publix and only picking out the red and green ones for the cookies. After all that work, they did not come out as well as I had hoped so I was a little nervous about bringing them to the party. The batter was too thin. I think it was because I used light brown sugar. The stuff I bought in Spain was darker. Nevertheless, about three quarters of the cookies were gone by the end of the night. Maybe they were not so bad after all. I am really looking forward to giving it another go. Maybe I can use the orange and blue M&M's, and bring them to the Dicuses' when we play for the championship.

We kicked off the party by caroling around the block. I had not been caroling since my freshman year of high school when I went to the fancy retirement home with SCYWORD. Those were some of the nicest old people I had ever met. Anyway, our song sheets had a few errors and sometimes we did not know which verse to sing, but it did not matter. It was a lot of fun for us, and the few people who heard us really enjoyed it. We then returned for some food and a gingerbread house competition. I tried to write "Feliz Navidad" on one side of the roof. I wrote feliz in M&M's and with the z backwards. I wasn't able to fit Navidad underneath. Instead I wrote "x-mas" with the discarded gingerbread edges so it read "feliz x-mas."

This morning was Gator Christian Life's Christmas service. I cannot remember anything from either of the Christmas services my first two years except the lights lining the aisles, but I think this one will stay with me for a long time. The theme of the service was keeping Jesus in focus during the Christmas season as you celebrate as a family. The Villorias, Trujillos, and Gordons went on stage, kids and all, to tell us about their traditions. Mark Trujillo told us about a box of paper ornaments they use to teach their daughters spiritual lessons related to Christmas. Everyone laughed and awed as the girls shyly and reluctantly answered Mark's questions. If I did not know any better, I would have thought the Villorias' youngest son was trying to emulate the sound of flatulence with his mouth as his parents tried to explain their family's traditions. I had such difficulty concentrating on what they were saying that all I can remember is that their kids open one present on Christmas Eve. The Gordons showed a video of their children performing the nativity story that drew a roar of laughter. The highlights included Joseph riding on a giraffe and a dog under a white towel playing the sheep.

This emphasis on family came at a pretty good time for me. I have long been frustrated because I feel I am being told to be "content," but at the same time the whole wife and kids thing is pushed as the ideal life that a good Christian is supposed to have. At the beginning of the semester, I threw my Daylights devotional on the floor because I was so tired of it. Why would I want to read about how to raise kids? I'm not even out of college yet! I've hardly read it at all since. While my peers are virtual parents-in-training, I've been more cautious, trying not to assume too much. Having a family of my own seems like such a long way off, and not so important in the midst of classes, exams, work, football, and figuring out what God wants me to do just over the next year. But perhaps that is no excuse to just ignore any opportunity I have to learn from godly parents. I would certainly like to be one some day. It's time to take notes so I don't have to cram in the last minute. As for Christmas traditions, I will cross that bridge when I come to it. The pastors gave me some great examples, and I thoroughly enjoyed learning from them. Also, maybe it's time to give Daylights another chance. I like the cover of the winter edition. It looks very Christmasy.

Am I "unChristian"?

2008-11-25T16:41:00.000-08:00

I just finished a book called UnChristian. It was written by David Kinnaman, who lives in my birthplace, Ventura, California, and attends South Coast Fellowship, where I went to youth group my first year and a half of high school. In fact, my youth pastor, Doug Colby, was mentioned in the book and in the acknowledgements.
The central theme is that Christianity has an image problem, and if want to win the hearts of today's youth, we need to rethink some of our strategies without watering down the Gospel. Kinnaman works for the Barna Group, a firm that conducts researching relating to Christianity in the United States. They collected data regarding what teenagers and young adults think about Christianity and Christians. They found that "Mosaics" and "Busters," as they call them, are widely abandoning or rejecting the faith due to painful personal experiences or things that have been said and done by Christian leaders. According to surveys many of them believe that Christians are hypocritical, too focused on converting people, antihomosexual, sheltered, too political, and judgmental. Kinnaman devotes an entire chapter to each one of these labels. Prominent Christian leaders including Jim Wallis, Rick Warren, Chuck Colson, and Brian McLaren share their thoughts at the end of each chapter.
Most of all I felt challenged as I read this book, but I was also motivated and encouraged. The authors are saying things that have been on mind for a while now. When Dom interviewed me on the campus of the Public University of Navarra, I said that the students there seemed to be very counterculture so becoming a Christ follower would probably appeal to them because you cannot be any more counterculture than that. The book's arguments did not offend me at all because I already agreed with many of its main themes. I was very excited as some of the authors called out the church on putting too much emphasis on homophobic political activism (as opposed to building friendships with gays) and encouraged us to tackle global climate change, excessive consumerism, AIDS, war, and extreme poverty.
I finished reading less than an hour ago. Now I am pumped. I am ready to go change the world. But how? Easier said than done (and I think the authors are well aware of that). I have been saying in life group for months now that I want to reach out to people this semester, but it has been only talk so far. My classes are filled with girls, who are not as easy to reach out to. I never have made much of an effort to make friends in my classes so perhaps it is about time to develop that skill. At Subway I am constantly working so I do not have much time to talk to my coworkers. I am quitting that job so I can have time for outreach. I do not really need more money anyway. I am applying to work as a language assistant at UF's English Language Institute. Mike Hasebrook and I have been trying to think of ways to meet international students. Perhaps this can be a good way to build relationships with them. I can even make new friends through my coworkers. Then again, outreach may be more effective somewhere else. I have just a couple days to decide. Perhaps if I get turned down a second time that would be a good indicator.
The most stirring part of the book was where Kinnaman recounts a drive he took with one of his clients. As they drove past the same strawberry fields that I have passed numerous times, the client wondered aloud who is going to share Jesus with those migrant workers out there. Kinnaman admits he had never thought about that. Neither had I. Granted, I was a mere teenager when I lived in that area. I have a long way to go in developing a heart for the lost, but I think I just took a good step forward.

San Fermin Continues

2008-07-17T07:11:00.000-07:00

I was planning on taking the bus to Pamplona Saturday morning, but the night monitors Raul and Lunia offered to give me a lift in their van. Raul told me that if the police were to pull us over, I would just have to pretend I don´t speak Spanish and he would tell the police I´m a tired, lost pilgrim he picked up. I grabbed my credential from upstairs to further prove my case if needed. It´s a good thing we made it to Pamplona without having to lie to the cops. I´m a horrible liar, which is probably a good thing.

The first thing I did was head to the photo shop to print my photos from the trip to Switzerland, Germany, and Portugal. I really wanted to get those into the alblum before I get back to Gainesville, where I know I would take a long time to get it done, if I ever do it. A lady helped me who spoke English perhaps equal to or a little bit below my Spanish. Some of her assistance saved me a couple euros, but at other times she just confused me more. It was strange how the Pamplonians all of a sudden began to either speak English or assume that I could not speak or understand Spanish. Then I went to my favorite pastry shop, Beatriz. I had been in there enough times that they knew I could understand them, though they´re faces told me they probably had to think for a couple seconds before they understood what I said. The garrotes and muffins were perfect that morning.

I headed for the bus station to see about leaving my backpack in the left luggage room. Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw at the bottom of stairs leading down to the underground station. I thought the new station was the most beautiful facility I had ever seen when I first walked in there the weekend it opened, but now it looked as dumpy as any inner city public transportation hub. Everywhere I looked people were sitting or sleeping on the floor. Abandoned beer bottles stood against the walls. It was louder and smelled worse than ever before. This was the new bus station´s first fiesta de San Fermin. Let´s hope it can be restored somewhat close to its pre-tourist invasion condition. When I went up to meet Anele and Alexia outside, I saw that the grass in the open area between the bus station and the ciudadela had also had a rough couple of days. It had changed from green to yellow because the grass had either died or been worn away.

From there I took them to the Plaza del Castillo, which of course was filled with people by now. We wound our way through the plaza and the streets to the ayuntamiento, or city hall. It is easily one of the prettiest buildings in Pamplona, but green banners draped from balconies made the building even more beautiful than usual. I still had not bought a pañuelo, or handerkerchief, traditionally red. I bought one from San Fermin´s official store called kukuxumusu because I thought that the ones with the shiny Pamplona coat of arms embroidered on them looked tacky. I really like the cartoony style of the kukuxumusu apparel. The t-shirts are too expensive, starting at fifteen euros, but the handkerchief was only 4.75€.

All the restaurants were pretty crowded so I took them down to the kebab restaurant near my apartment, where I had gathered with my American friends many times. In spite of the mayhem in the old town, it was for the most part business as usual in the residential area to the south. The biggest difference was that the main drag, Sancho el Fuerte, had been changed from a four lane road to a two lane road with two lanes for parking in the middle.

By mid-afternoon Pamplona was covered by clouds and the sky was sprinkling the already damp streets. As we strolled from the park to Calle Mayor we found two guys carrying a canvas sign over their heads. They invited us to join them in their makeshift shelter to stay dry. I asked them where they got it from and one of them said they tore off of a wall and had been carrying it around all day. They were from Atlanta. Alexia said she had no idea they were speaking until we ducked under the canvas with them. I understood them just fine because, as I told Alexia, I speak guy. They told us they had ran with the bulls that morning.

Around 2 am, we started to look for a place to sleep. Nobody had reserved a hostel. We were all expecting to sleep outside. Anele and Alexia did not even have backpacks. Anele wanted to sleep in one of those rooms adjacent to the banks where they keep the ATMs. When I went into one booth in the old town to withdraw money, I noticed immediately that the floor was wet. But the repungant smell did not hit me until Alexia broke the bad news- somebody had urinated in there. I thought that even if we could find one that´s clean and and not crowded, the police would kick us out. Nevertheless, I decided we should look for a place on Carlos III, the pedestrianized shopping street branching off the Plaza del Castillo.

We found a large, clean Caja Navarra ATM room and settled down. Alexia rested her head against the ATM by the window. Anele tried to use cardboard as a sleeping pad. I did the same with newspaper, but all it did was protect me just a little from the cold floor. I switched off between wearing my hooded jacket and using it as a pillow. Eventually I tried using my shoes as a pillow. That was the most effective method, giving me half an hour of sleep. Another guy came in a few minutes after us and settled down. I had long since figured out that with so many crazy drunk people wreaking havoc in the old town, Pamplona´s police department had far bigger fish to fry than removing three otherwise law-abiding Americans from an ATM booth. Another guy came in a few minutes later and settled down in a different part of the room.

Everyone who walked by seemed determined to keep us awake. One guy came up, stood right over me, and started singing loudly as if he also wanted to wake up the residents above. Another group came in yelling through a megaphone. Countless people knocked or banged on the glass trying to get our attention as if we were caged lions in a zoo. By five o'clock in the morning Anele and I were so tired that we were no longer planning on running with the bulls, but we still wanted to see them run from a safe spot behind a fence.

We started walking toward the old town at about a quarter to seven. There were already so many people outside, donning their white shirts and red scarves as always, that it felt it like the middle of a typical Pamplona day. We saw four people still sleeping in another ATM room about half the size of ours. By the time we reached the round-a-bout about six hundred meters from the old town, I could tell there was no way we would be able to get a spot along the fence judging from the number of people already walking on Carlos III.

When we finally reached the fence separating the runners and the bulls in the city hall´s plaza from everyone else, it was about seven o´clock. The top of the fence in the front was already lined with people and a crowd had already gathered behind the rear fence. A couple policemen were arresting a young, resistant drunk man in the space in between. Anele was determined to see something so we followed her under the two fences and into the plaza. It was clear by now that we would not be able to see anything unless we were on the other side of the fence- in other words, unless we ran with the bulls.

We found a few guys talking in English- a tall, almost bald guy in his thirties from California, another thirty-something man from Pittsburgh, and a father and son from Michigan. The guy from California convinced me to stay with little piece of advice- "F&%$ the bulls, watch the people! There are about fifteen hundred of you and maybe five will get hurt. If you get hurt, buy a lottery ticket." He explained the procedure. At about twenty to eight, they push everyone into the plaza. Then at a quarter to eight, they let us loose so we can go to the section where we want to run. He told us to avoid the hard right turn from the plaza onto Estafeta because that is where most of the brutal footage of bulls slamming people against the wall is taken. The ground is slippery because they spray the streets in the morning and the bulls have (litterally) a ton of momentum as they slide around the corner. Also, don´t stop and don´t look back. If you fall, cover up and hope for the best.

I wanted to at least run with the bulls for a little while, not just run ten meters into the bull ring. Alexia went to the other side of the fence after agreeing to meet Anele and I in front of the toilets near the bullring. I walked to the end of Estafeta, about 150 meters from the bullring. Then I waited. Of course everyone was looking toward Estafeta, from where the bulls would come. People started running so I started running. But a couple seconds later I, along with most everyone else, stopped after we realized that nothing was coming. This happened three or four times. Then everybody started running so I knew it was for real. By now I was past Estafeta in the middle the road separating it from the bullring. I ran as fast as I could, never looking back. I assumed that the bulls were far behind me so I thought there was no need to look back anyway. Following some advice from the Atlanta boys, I tried to stay close to the edge but not right up against it.

About twenty meters from the door leading into the bullring, the atmosphere was total madness. Everyone was running at full speed but at the same time stopping to look back at the bulls. The crowd forced me closer to the edge than I wanted to be. I saw a brown and white bull (which I later found out was one of the less dangerous castrated ones) right next to me, so close I could have reached out and touched him. But that was the last thing I wanted to do. I tried to suppress my fear and only stare straight ahead. I hit the ground hard a second later. I had collided with one of those people or one of those people who had ran into one of those people who stopped and looked behind. The guy I met in the plaza had encouraged us to use our elbows to knock people over, but that did not occurr to me at the moment. Even if I managed to knock anyone down, I could still trip over him or he could cause somebody else to trip. The footsteps of the people about to fall on top of me made so much noise I thought I was about to be trampled by bulls. One guy tripped and fell on me and another one on top him and so on. I thought that if the bulls were coming, at least they were more likely to be trampled because I would be protected near the bottom of the pile-up. A guy pulled me out of the way a couple seconds later. Iwas quite thankful for that. My white pants were torn at the knee on both sides. The left side was stained with blood from the scrape on my knee about the size of a quarter. I was hoping to keep those pants. Oh well. Still a little shaken, I looked for a way out of there. I couldn´t find one. After about a minute, I remembered that I could jump back in and run into the bullring. Unfortunately, the door shut as soon as I started running toward it. Disappointed and upset with the people who had to stop and look back, I walked toward out meeting spot.

A couple hours later, we went to Foto Auma in the Plaza del Castillo to look for ourselves in the photos posted outside. I immediately found myself in three of them. Until I saw the pictures, I had no idea that only was there a castrated bull to my left, there were three more right behind me and a real bull just behind them. I bought one of the pictures, which I photographed wth my camera. It now serves as my facebook profile picture. I later bought three large copies for my parents and grandparents.

San Fermin Begins

2008-07-07T00:37:00.000-07:00

Whenever I told anyone last fall that I had been in Pamplona once before, they would ask me, "For San Fermin?" Everyone talked about it as if it is the best thing ever. Well, finally, I got to see what the fuss was all about. Actually, my reasons for for going back to Pamplona were two-fold and some would say contradictory. I also wanted to go to church because the CNAI camp is a spiritual dead zone. I love my coworkers, but at the same time it is very hard to stay strong in my faith everybody else is either an atheist or not practicing. I figured while I was in Pamplona, I might as well join the party. Responsibly of course.

In spite of the mayhem starting in the town centre, it was business as usual at Parroquia Cristiana Evangelica. I was very glad to see everyone again. It was far less crowded than most weeks. A lot of people had probably already fled Pamplona. After the service I met a guy named Javier who had only started attending the church a couple months ago. He asked me if I was in town for San Fermin. That was half true, but I said no. He lived in England for eight months so he knew some English and was very excited that he could practice with me. He treated me at the kebab restaurant, where even he had trouble communicating with one of the new guys there. It made feel better to know that my past problems with the new people there were not caused by my bad Spanish.

I went to Pamplona on a whim without any place to sleep that night. I wasn´t sure if I would even try to sleep. I brought my sleeping bag in case anything presented itself. After eating dinner with the youth, I told them I could walk to the town centre to look for some friends, but they insisted on driving me home. I had Ruben drive me to my old apartment on Calle Iturrama. I did not tell him that I no longer lived there. I didn´t feel too comfortable not telling my friends the whole truth but I wanted to avoid explaining my plans (or lack thereof) for the night. In hindsight, if they cared enough about me to prevent me from walking in the chilly weather, maybe one of them would have given me shelter on such short notice.

I walked from my apartment to the Plaza del Castillo tracing the same route we always took from Soleil or Brittany´s piso. As I entered the Plaza del Catillo, I saw that the party had already started. A small crowd on the right side near Calle Estafeta was drinking, singing and dancing. No surprise there. I walked over to Calle San Nicolas, where I found some Erasmus students the week before. I found plenty of people, but nobody I knew. After trying most every bar we regularly patronized over the past six months, I decided to just walked around the Plaza del Castillo. After all, watching the singing and dancing in the Plaza seemed far more entertaining than watching or even doing the standing and drinking in any other part of the Casco Antiguo.

Luckily I found some people I knew- Paige, another girl whose name escapes me because I never had any classes with her, and her little sister. Then three Italians suddenly appeared, Giorgio, Lorenzo, and Emilio. After dancing with the drunk people for a little while, the Americans and Italians went home and I thought about what to do next.

I had never slept in a public park of any kind before so I was pretty nervous about it. With my luck, I was afraid the police would find me and throw me in jail. I walked to the wall on the north side of the old town to check out the park sleeping situation. There was one large tent set up under a tree. I thought sleeping near other people would be safer because the police did not have enough room for all of us in their cars or even their stations. But then again, being near many people would increase the risk of being mugged. Two of my coworkers, Charlie and Yanna, just happened to find me near the bridge that runs high over the road and connects the old town with the park on the other side. Charlie assured me that in Spain they don´t care if you sleep outside.

This sliver of the park is always one of the calmest areas of Pamplona. It is bordered on the backside by bushes and the wall side by a little sidewalk, in front of which stands a fence that protects from the fifty foot drop below. From the fence you can see the entire north side of Pamplona and mountains on all sides of it. In between is a grassy area dotted with benches and shltered by the branches of the trees above. The beginning of San Fermin had not changed it at all. There were no empty beer bottles lying around. Many of the benches in the area were still dotted with small puddles, but I found one in the middle of the grass that had escaped the rain. I spread my sleeping bag on the bench, using it as a blanket and my backpack as a pillow. I did not take off my shoes because I was afraid of losing them while I slept. I also feared somebody would try to scare the living daylights out of me as a joke. The night was cold; I did not bring a jecket because it was so hot during the day that I thought I would not need it. A few times I could hear people walking on the sidewalk but fortunately nobody even came near me much less touched me all night. I went to bed around 2:30, woke up around 3:30 and then again at 6:30. I ate my breakfast of a bruised apple and some small donuts that had been smashed by various objects in my bag´s outer pocket.

I had nothing to do until at least 9:30, when I was supposed to call my friend Sabi, so I ordered a cup of cafe con leche from a coffee shop located kitty corner from the department store El Corte Ingles. I stayed at my seat by the window for at least two hours after I had finished my coffee. I had bought a copy of Hermingway´s The Sun Also Rises the night before so I continued reading it. It was the novel that made San Fermin famous in the first place. The first part is set in Paris, but the second part is set in the very neighborhood where I was sitting.

I finally called Sabi at 9:30. He told me to meet him in the Plaza del Castillo at ten to ten. I actually found him at ten past ten. Meanwhile, people wearing read scarves had started to fill the Plaza del Castillo. I followed Sabi and another boy I recognized but whose name I could not remember through the narrow streets of the old town. We stopped at an old wooden door with no numbers or markings of any kind. Sabi opened the door with a key and led us in. It was the kind of place that defines the expression "hole in the wall". The room was narrow, probably not more than seven feet across. The decorations on the wall included pro-Basque propaganda as well as posters of Disney movies like The Fox and the Hound. Sabi´s friends were setting up a table in the middle of the room. A couple others were smoking. Sabi introduced me to all of them. They all shook hands with me and asked me where I was from. In the back room we watched coverage of the follow-up to the official start of San Fermin on TV. The mayor of Pamplona was shown a couple times. I was the only one in the room not yelling and swearing at the screen whenever her face appeared. I asked Sabi if she´s bad and he told me she´s very bad, to the right.

Then we sat down to eat or amozar as Sabi put it. The food was very good, though a little cold. When I asked for a fork they laughed and told me that Basques use bread instead of cutlery when they eat. I don´t think they were kidding. Nevertheless one of them gave me a plastic fork which I snapped when I tried to cut the meat with it. Somebody accidentally spilled a bucket of food on the floor, which everyone ridiculed by chanting, "Español! Español!"

After lunch, we walked outside for the opening. We swerved in and out of the crowds until we got as far up as we could without having to literally push and squeeze our way through, though many others chose to do that. Sabi introduced me to his mother, who was standing near us wearing her pañuelo, a handkerchief, traditionally red for San Fermin. Many people were drinking, but not everyone. It was mostly adults because it would be near impossible to keep track of a kid in a crowd like that, but they were not all there to get drunk. Everyone held both ends of their handkerchiefs in the air, as a triangle pointed down, until the rocket was fired off. Then the crowd went wild, singing and spraying wine all over the place. Before long, I had more alcohol on the outside of me than on the inside.

Then we went to a bar that resembled a fast food joint. They served patatas bravas and bocadillos, but my new Basque friends only wanted to drink. I watched more footage of San Fermin on the TV. We sang and danced to some traditional San Fermin songs which I told myself I have to learn before I come to this party again. After we left that bar we went to this fountain that I had heard about before. Some daredevils like to jump off of it and hope the crowd catches them. And there was quite a crowd of mostly boys in their twenties. I soon found out why. One girl lifted her shirt to reveal a bikini top. I was assumong that was as far as she would go when I suddenly had to avert my eyes as she exposed her bare chest to the crowd before she leaped towards them. It turned out that every girl was expected to flash before she jumped. The boys around were chanting, trying to pressure every blonde girl in the plaza to flash, even the ones who were not jumping off the fountain. I don´t think the eating, singing, dancing, and drinking in moderation is necessarily bad. San Fermin is as much a tradition as the American 4th of July, but this flashing from the fountain is definitely something I could have done without.

Afterwards we went into a few bars. Or rather, they went in and I walked in only to walk out a minute later. When the bars are underground, the smoke gets trapped inside so it´s hard for me to breathe. On top of that they´re hot because so many people are crammed into a small space and smelly because most of those people are dripping with sweat. This was probably the second worst part of the afternoon. Finally, we went to a bar that had both the front and the back doors open and was not built underground so the smoke was not as bad. It had a poster on the low ceiling with a hundred or so postage stamp sized mugshots of Basque political prisoners.

Things I Miss In No Particular Order

2008-05-02T17:05:00.001-07:00

bagels
Honey Bunches of Oats
Kix
large pizzas for eight dollars
Gator Nights
my cat Missy
free movies in the Reitz Union
free midnight breakfast
free dinner at St. Augustine Student Center
Sierra Mist
refrigerated cookie dough
my family
movies in English
drivers who don't seem hellbent on killing me
people who wait until I get off the elevator before trying to get on
people who know how to maintain a single file line
watching Meet the Press live on Sunday mornings
the good people of FYA
not having to multiply the price of every item by 1.54333 or more
Gator Greenbacks
Ben and Jerry's
secondhand stores
Gainesville's bike lanes
UF Libraries' DVD selection
Red Vines
Reese's
the daily lunch specials at I Heart New York Pizza
talking to people without fearing a sometimes inevitable critique of my pronunciation
928's wireless internet
meatball subs

Things I don't miss:
UF Bike Police
homework
going to class five days a week

My Language Can Kick Your Language's Butt

2008-05-02T14:35:00.000-07:00

This a blog I've been thinking of writing for a very long time, months actually. While spending the last seven months learning another language, I've learned a lot about language in general and the value of English outside the United States. There is now a lack of English teachers here in Pamplona, both trained and untrained. Given that the going rate for an English tutor here is upwards of 20 euros an hour, it blows my mind that we didn't fill the room when we offered a free week-long English class at the Public University of Navarra. I got a tutoring job through an Irish lady at church. A Spanish lady in her neighborhood wanted somebody to practice with her daughter for an hour and a half every Friday. Oddly she wanted to me to give her a price. I told her ten, and she looked at me as if I were out of my mind and offered twenty. I couldn't argue with that.

We take it for granted because it's our native language, but some Spanish people would love to learn it and don't mind paying because they know its value. When I landed at Brussels Charleroi Airport, it would have taken me much longer to figure out how to get out of there if I only spoke Spanish. The guy at the information desk spoke English and probably French and Dutch. But it's unlikely that he spoke Spanish or Italian and certainly not Korean or Arabic. The same goes for most any country. Everyone speaks that country's language and many of them speak English. Of course some countries, like Germany and the Netherlands, have more English speakers than others, like Spain.

My pastor Dom once told me that you can't separate language and culture. That explains why people like the Basques and the Irish are fighting so hard to keep their languages alive. If their languages die, part (if not all) of their culture dies with it. If I grew up immersed in a culture with it's own obscure language, I would probably want to know it, but as far as many Americans are concerned, English is the only language that exists. My ancestors spoke Gaelic, but I would much rather learn German than pour so much time and energy into learning a language that hardly anyone speaks anymore. Besides, Gaelic tutors are few and far between in the States. The same goes for Polish, which is on the other side of my family. But no matter how worthless a language may seem, everyone is proud of their native language and would like to spread it. That explains the wild cheers from the Spanish group following a Dutch girl explaining at Awaken, "Well my person didn't really speak English so all I learned was '¿Como estas? Bien, Y tu?'".

I would like to say that since writing my last post over a month ago that I've been boldly sharing the Gospel with everyone I meet, but that just hasn't been happening. I finally got around to asking my friends Koldo and Sabier what they think about God a few weeks ago. I was a little disappointed but not really surprised by their answer- everything is relative. A week later I asked Joel, one of the pastor's sons, about his experience reaching out to his friends at the university. He told me that since the students try to rationalize everything, the best evidence he has is his life and his testimony. Not being a native speaker of Spanish was my excuse for being "ashamed of the Gospel" for a while by not talking about it. Did Joel just give me another one?

Yes and no. We do need to share it verbally at some point with words so our peers make the connection, but perhaps 60% of it is our lives and testimonies as Joel told me. As for the other 40%, I just realized recently that the church was built on foreign missions so perhaps being in a foreign isn't much of an excuse. The apostles stepped out of their comfort zones to preach the Gospel everywhere between Jerusalem and Rome, maybe even further. In fact, much of the New Testament, including the Gospels, was written in Greek, a second language for many of the authors. If they can be effective in a foreign land, maybe I can too with a little prayer and perseverance. It has taken me this long to adjust and even start to think about stepping out, which is normal. Now that I've been here for nearly eight months, it is time.

Two Lessons Learned

2008-03-12T15:19:00.000-07:00

Before I set off on my travels between the first and second semesters, I needed a little encouragement. I did not feel particularly on fire for Jesus Christ. At times, when the head pastor of the church here would walk on the stage, I would think, "Oh, crap! We're going to be here for three hours again!" In fact, I still feel like a dud every Saturday night in the midst of such a passionate bunch.
I heard about a book called One Thing You Can't Do in Heaven by Mark Cahill. I think I heard about it from somebody at GCM's Leadership Training in Colorado, but I'm not sure. I ordered the book from Amazon UK because it's impossible to find it in English here in Pamplona. I could have bought a Spanish copy from the church , but my purpose in reading it was to learn about witnessing, not to improve my Spanish. I'm taking four classes at the university to do that.
I finally finished the book yesterday. It is perhaps the most useful book I've ever read other than the Bible. From what I gather, the author shares the Gospel with everyone he meets. I mean everybody. In the book he gives accounts of witnessing to a lady as he was placing an order by phone and handing out tracts to everyone waiting in line at an airport. The stories he tells really opened my mind. For perhaps the first time, the fact that the Gospel is the greatest gift you can give somebody really hit me. In my mind, I think I've always seen it as an intrusion (albeit a necessary one) because that is what the world tells us.
He really challenges the reader by boldly stating that if you're not doing something to grow the Kingdom of God, then you're not living for him. It further impressed on me the importance of the Great Commission, which I've only begun to see since joining Gator Christian Life. The Christian life is all about the Great Commission.
Then there is another book that I read a little more than a year ago called Wild at Heart by John Eldridge. Some Christian websites tear the book apart (I couldn't find any criticism of Cahill's book online), but I think he makes some valid points. One of his main points is that Christian men need to follow their hearts and do what they love rather than lead a safe, church-based life that most people would call boring. But if everyone just did what they wanted, then the Great Commission would have to be forgotten, right? Possibly, but it does not have to be that way.
I've found a way to blend the lessons from both books in my own life. I've discovered what I love to do over the past year- travel to places where I've never been and meet interesting new people (I met a guy from Sri Lanka in Logroño. I had never met anyone from Sri Lanka before!). In the book, Cahill describes many conversations he has had with people while traveling. He always tries to talk to the person in the seat beside him on an airplane and approaches total stranger in airports. Since arriving in Europe in September, I have been on eight flights and have never initiated a spiritual conversation with the person sitting beside me- or any conversation for that matter. I have at least six flights left including my return to the States. Hopefully I can make them count. God has given me this opportunity that many people would kill to have, and at times I feel as if I have blown it. But I don't think I could have learned everything I am writing here had I not left the United States.
This leads me to the second (not quite as important) lesson I've learned here. I wrote a blog a few months ago titled "Writer's Block". I really wanted to write a great story, but couldn't think of anything. It's only come to my attention recently that most writers don't just pull their stories out of their butts. I learned from a documentary I saw in England that even elements of the Harry Potter books were inspired by J.K. Rowlings' life. For example, she gave Harry good father figures like Hagrid and Dumbledore because she never had one of her own. Bottom line- I need to have some interesting experiences of my own to draw from if I am ever to write anything good. But how?
I was just skimming through a Paris travel guide in preparation for my trip on Tuesday. There is a page in the back listing books describing or set within Paris. I didn't know that both Ernest Hemingway and George Orwell both spent some time in Paris and wrote books about their experiences. Hemingway also spent some time here in Pamplona and wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls in the Plaza del Castillo, one of my favorite spots in Pamplona. I saw another documentary describing the many writers that have journeyed to Vienna. I joked with my extended family that I want to go there and be inspired too. I have not completely ruled that out.
I still cannot say that I'm a very a bold witness for Jesus Christ, but one day I will be. I think it's kind of like jumping into a cold swimming pool. It's freezing when you simply touch the water, but when you jump in and stay for a while, it begins to feel warmer and you're glad you jumped in. I'm going to look for opportunities to witness to my Spanish friends, Koldo and Sabier, and to people I meet all over Europe. Unlike the YMCA of the Rockies, lost people are not difficult to find here. Now more than ever I really want to take up an English teaching job in Pamplona after I graduate. Maybe growing the Kingdom of God while doing what I love will give me enough experiences to be the next Hemingway.

Two Weeks, Two Pilgrimages

2008-02-02T04:59:00.000-08:00

I have a pretty nice exam schedule this semester. Globalization, Cooperation, and Development does not require an exam. My history professor told me to read a few books in place of the exam for her class. I took my first exam, Spanish language, January 23rd. Since then, I've been translating notes for "Introduction to Social Work". I'll take that exam on Tuesday. The next semester does not officially start until February 14, but since I will not have classes on Fridays and few students attend classes in the first week anyway, there is no point in going until the 18th. What am I supposed to do with all that free time?
That question has been on my mind for some time. The answer was obvious- I'm going to ride the Camino de Santiago (Way of St. James), almost in its entirety. My grandmother first told me about it four years ago. It's a hiking trail of sorts that stretches more than 450 miles from St. Jean-Pied-de-Port in the southwest region of France to Santiago de Compostela in the northwest corner of Spain. Cyclists use freeways that run paralell when the actual trail is too rough to ride on. Legend has it that the body of James, brother of Jesus, was taken to Santiago from Jerusalem. A version of the legend that I read in Spanish said that the body came back to life, acending to the sky and startling a group travelers.
I have changed my itinerary for the trip mutliple times. At first, I wanted to start the Camino from France so I can say I actually have ridden the entire thing. That would require me to take a bus to San Sebastian and then at least two more trains to St. Jean Pied-de-Port. In the end, I decided it was too much of a hassle on top of the extra cost.
Besides, I already rode the second stage stretching from Roncesvalles to Pamplona, where I live. I wanted to test my readiness for the Camino. I figured out once I started that I had already ridden part of the route back in October. I felt fine until I got over the first major hill. Then I really had to push myself just to reach Roncessvalles, about 28 miles from Pamplona. I took a break for an hour once I got there, trying not to think of the trip back. I was hoping to buy the pilgrim's credential there, which is required to stay at the hostels that line the Camino. It's a little pamphlet that you need to have stamped at each town along the Camino. I couldn't find the guy in charge of the hostel and pilgrims' office. Actually, he found me. He pointed to my bike locked outside his office. At first, I thought he was telling me I was parked illegally. I was relieved that on the contrary, he wanted to ask me if I was sleeping there that night. He was obviously willing to help in any way he could.
The way back, going the direction in which the Camino is meant to be walked or ridden, was much easier. After that test ride and my next one to Puente La Reina it hit me why the Camino is only marked going one direction. The answer is that while many people think riding or walking the entire westbound route is crazy, going eastbound would be self-torture, pure and simple. I faced nasty headwinds coming back up to Pamplona from Puente La Reina. Also, the eastbound way on average seems to be far more uphill.
I decided after the first test ride that starting from Roncesvalles is good enough. That ride took quite a bit out of me. The average day will be much easier than the Pamplona-Roncessvalles ride, but I still wanted to give myself as much time as possible. I managed to pull the average day down to about 54 miles, with the exception of the last day being 25 miles. That should give me enough time to explore the cathedrals and other landmarks along the Camino and give me a cushion for any unforseen incidents. Here is the final schedule:

February 5
Pamplona-Logroño
55 miles

February 6
Logroño-San Juan de Ortega
55.8 miles

February 7
San Juan de Ortega-Frómista
53.32 miles

February 8
Frómista-Reliegos
53.94 miles

February 9
Reliegos-Rabanal del Camino
56.42 miles

February 10
Rabanal del Camino-O Cebreiro
51.46 miles

February 11
O Cebreiro-Ribadiso
57.04 miles

February 12
Ribadiso-Santiago de Compostela
25.42 miles

I was planning on riding some of Spain's northern coast in the following days, but I found a better idea. As I was scanning the website of budget airline Ryanair, I saw that they offer flights from Santiago de Compostela to Rome. A visit to Rome sounded a whole lot better than cycling even more after what can be a tough week if the weather isn't nice to me. I'm going to find a safe place for my bike in Santiago de Compostela and fly to Rome on the night of the 13th. I'll fly back to Santiago de Compostela on the 17th and take an overnight bus to Bilbao. Then I'm taking another bus from Bilbao to Pamplona. It'll arrive at noon, just in time for my 1:00 class.
I do have another, certainly more important, reason for riding the Camino. At Leadership Training in Colorado in 2006, a couple of the speakers and a book we read, Celebration of Discipline, encouraged use to spend extended time alone with God on a regular basis. For example, one of the speakers told us of his experience camping by himself. I have never done anything like this. I won't be completely alone on the Camino de Santiago, but I think I can call this my pseudo-solitude time. I will not have access to my computer that week. I'll have my cell phone for emergencies, and I'll use it to call my mother in the middle of the week to let her know everything is going well. Other than that, I will be cut off from my everyday life. I'll have my Bible, the prescense of Jesus Christ, his Creation, and possibly a person or two to talk to in the albergues. I'm really looking forward to it. If you can pray that I can get the most out of this time, I would really appreciate it.

First Impressions of Awaken and My Resolution

2008-01-06T14:55:00.000-08:00

Originally written January 3, 2008.

John Hever, the pastor of H2O in Orlando, is the main speaker of Awaken 2008. Isn’t that ironic? I came all the way to Europe to listen to a pastor from Orlando. After speaking with him briefly this morning, I learned that his oldest daughter is a senior at my high school and is hoping to go to UF next year. Another speaker, Joe Dunn, also lives in Orlando.

The ironic proximity of the main speaker aside, the conference has been well worthwhile so far. The theme for Awaken 2008 is the Story of God. Last night John gave us an outline of the Story of God from the Fall all the way to Christ’s return. The title of this morning’s session is “Waking Up to the God of the Story.” He gave us some advice on how to grow in a relationship with God. He said something toward the end that I’ve heard before but forgotten. John asked the speaker at his first conference a question, and he answered with, “Read the Scriptures every day, and I promise you it will change your life.” That was not what he wanted to hear, but he’s found years later that it’s true.

I almost never read the Bible on my own until I entered the University of Florida and got involved in Gator Christian Life. In the past two years, it certainly has changed my life. The problem is I’ve never been able (or maybe willing enough) to read it every single day. I often read it daily for a two or three weeks and then start to fall apart. Then I’ll stop for maybe two weeks until I finally get to a point where I just have to do it. It’s not out of guilt. It’s because I genuinely want to. That’s a sign of major change because that never happened four years ago. The feeling is intensified in Spain, where I do not see GCL comrades around every corner and hear the Gospel preached loudly on campus.

I actually made a New Year’s resolution for this year. I don’t think I made one for last year. If I did, it must not be very important because I can’t remember it. I’ll certainly remember this one because I’m writing about it now, and those of you reading this can remind me if I ever appear to forget it. I actually didn’t think of making a resolution until New Year’s Eve. I was at a party at the home of Daniel Goering, the pastor of The Bridge in Cologne. They put up three paper Christmas trees. The plan was for everyone to cut out an ornament and write on the back a wish for the new year. I thought “wish” and “resolution” were synonymous, and I needed to think of a resolution anyway. On the back of my lousy attempt at a Gator-shaped ornament, I wrote this, “to maintain contentment and focus on God.”

In other words, I want to never forget this year that I only need Jesus in my life. I never want to lose focus on Him or lose sleep over something trivial because I forget He is in control of everything. I could have made a resolution to read Scripture every single day, but I know that will not happen. Also, I don’t want to find myself reading the Bible just to read it and then immediately forgetting what I just read. In contrast, prayer, friendships, and other books can help me maintain focus on God. Scripture is very powerful, but I often find that I need other things to supplement it. That is why God gave us the church. Nevertheless, sticking to my resolution will no doubt require more reading of Scripture, more prayer, more of everything really.

Atonement

2007-12-30T12:49:00.000-08:00

I had watched a movie in a theater only once since September, and it was not a great experience. Perhaps I’ll write about that later. One of the reasons I was looking forward to England was to watch a movie in theaters (or in the cinema, as they call it here) in English. I went to movie theaters so much in the United States, at the Reitz and Regal, that I was having withdrawals. In Spain they like our movies but in their language. Subtitles are the norm in the United States, but the Spanish for some reason prefer awful dubbing. The Spanish voices usually sound nothing like the authentic English voices they replace. The Spanish voice acting is not as good either. I did not know any of the actors in the British movie I watched in Spanish so it was not so bad that time.
Atonement was just released in the United States, but it’s been playing in the United Kingdom since September. Yesterday I watched it in Odeon Leicester Square, the only theatre in London where it is still playing. The ticket was £9.50 or about $19, but I think it was worthwhile. At least my withdrawals have subsided.
I might have enjoyed it more had I not watched the trailer so many times. I knew the general outline of the plot. A little girl makes a false accusation against her sister’s lover Robbie which results in his sending off to war. It seems that their lives have been ruined. The film boasts some spectacular shots of war-torn France, but as far as the story, there isn’t much more to it than what I just described and what is shown in the trailer. If you are going to watch the film, watch it on a big screen because that is how the war shots are best viewed. I might like it better if I see it again. I was very disappointed with Casino Royale the first time I watched it, but it grew on me.
There are a couple themes highlighted in the film and probably the book as well. First, I’m glad I don’t have a little sister, and my brother has not ruined my life. Second, the film shows that love (or feelings for another person that we call love) can not only bring out the best in a person, but also the worst. It’s not something anyone likes to be reminded of, not even in movies, but it’s true. Third, I’m very thankful for modern day word processors. But at the same time, the film makes typewriters look very classy.
Atonement will probably receive well-deserved Oscar nominations for cinematography and art direction. The musical score was also unique. I’m not sure about the more important categories (best picture, screenplay, acting, directing). It already cornered a few Golden Globe nominations so it’s a possibility. Atonement is at least as good- I think better-than The Departed, which won everything last year.

History Lesson

2007-12-19T07:00:00.000-08:00

I'm going out of order. I'm sorry- for some reason I want to write this one first.

The lectures in my history are the hardest to understand, but the professor is the nicest lady ever. She talks so fast that I can't pick out many details from the lecture. I can tell you whether it's about economics, culture, social class, etc., but that's about it. She could tell I was completely lost in the very beginning so she gave me a list of books to read and write about in place of the exam. One of these books is about the Camino de Santiago, in which I took a special interest. I told her that I want to ride the entire Camino, and she printed off a list of hostels in each of the stops for me.

She wanted the class to meet in front of the historical archive in dowtown Pamplona for a little field trip last Wednesday. I was the only one who showed up so it was just a one-on-one time with her. I think I learned more that day than in all the lectures up to this point. She didn't allow much time to stop and read everything in the museums. She knew it all so she explained it verbally. I'll never look at the shield of Pamplona the same way again now that I know what it means. I saw some seals dating back to the medieval period, and learned that there cave men in Navarra, so to speak. After leaving the first museum, we went to a bar (remember "bar" has unlimited meanings in Spain) for coffee. I don't normally drink coffee. I think this was the first time I actually enjoyed the coffee instead of tolerating it. She said it would be "rapidísimo" (very fast). We were actually there for ten minutes. She asked me if I could translate a paper she wrote into English because English is the international language and whoever she's giving it to wants it in English as well. I'm really looking forward to doing it to repay her kindness a little. I'm also touched that she's given me this responsibility of faithfully representing her work.

The people of Navarra are obviously very proud of their history, and rightfully so. Navarra is probably as significant as the rest of Spain combined because it borders France. I wondered before how my professor could know so much about history that she doesn't even look at notes when she lectures, yet she does not speak English. While we were touring the museums, it occurred to me that when you love your country (or nation, rather) so much, you don't feel a need to learn another language and/or culture, even if it is the international language. After all, non-native Spanish speakers are few and far between in the United States.

The Netherlands part 3

2007-12-03T11:04:00.000-08:00

I thought the the trip from Brussels Charleroi to Brussels Nord would be a quick few minutes through the city. Instead, the train left Brussels (or what I thought was Brussels) and cut through open country. I was in the middle of nowhere. But everyone from my bus was on this same train. All these people couldn't be going to some place in the middle of nowhere. Could they?

As the guy walked down the aisle checking tickets, I pulled out 15 euros to pay for the ticket. I assumed the metal box strapped to his waste was for change. He checked the people sitting behind me and then walked past me and the elderly man snoozing in the window seat across from me. "Oh, well" I thought. I got off at Brussels Midi having no idea where I was and thinking I might have taken the wrong train. I explained this to the man running the information window. He told me which train to take, but did not tell me where to buy a ticket so again I assumed I needed to pay for the ticket on the train. By the time I reached Roosendaal, I figured out that I was supposed to buy a ticket beforehand. Oops. When I reached Roosendaal, I bought a ticket to Tilburg.

Then I made a mistake that I still deeply regret. I was so anxious to get out of there that I boarded a train that was close to the right platform, but not quite there. It was the wrong train. The word "Amsterdam" written on the wall in red lights should have immediately caught my eye, but I didn't notice until the train was already moving. I got off at Dortrecht and took another train back to Roosendaal. When I was in the bathroom in Roosendaal, I noticed my camera was no longer in my pocket or in my backpack. I tried to catch the train I left it on, but missed it. My camera was never recovered.

I finally reached Tilburg at about 5:00, I think, four hours later than I expected to be there. Poor Brother Edward had been waiting for me at both of the times I could have arrived. He returned home, of course, and I called him on my cell.

The Netherlands Part 2

2007-11-28T10:34:00.000-08:00

Until I reached the Madrid International Airport, I thought that sleeping there was not allowed. I thought they would kick out anyone who dozed off, like in a public library. I was wrong. There were people all over the place- against every pillar and in every corner of the lobby. I arrived near my entry point around 1:30 am for my 6:00 am flight so I had a lot of time to kill. The checkin counters had not yet opened. I sat in the cafe (where most of the tables were occupied) and wrote about the first leg of the journey in my notebook as I munched on the chocolate donuts I had bought in Spain.

I tried to sleep because I wanted the next three hours to pass quickly. I was tired, but not tired enough to fall asleep. My chosen corner was probably as perfect as possible. It was shaded, unlike other places where the lights would have beamed directly in my face. But it didn't matter. I couldn't sleep on that floor. I envied the dozens of people in the hall who somehow managed.

Ryanair touts itself as a budget airline, and they're not kidding. I was not assigned a seat- you choose your own like on a Greyhound bus. There are no complimentary refreshments. There is no in-flight entertainment, not even a little stereo built into the armrest. Everything about the cabin was pretty much identical to every other airline I've ever used. Only the chair couldn't lean back. Maybe it could, but I couldn't find a button for it. The only amenity was the free Ryanair magazine, which was quite entertaining. It gave me some good ideas for other places to go.

I expected to be landing at a large international airport like Madrid. I was planning to take the train from there. Actually, I wound up at a smaller airport more like Pamplona. It was not Brussels. It was Brussels Charleroi. I showed the guy at the information desk my itinerary. He told me to take the bus, and wrote the stops for me on the paper. It turned out I would have to make two more stops than I expected. From now on, I'll make sure I make sure the names match exactly, as it seems that big cities sometimes have more than one airport.

When I reached the train station, I had no idea what to do. None of the names on the platforms matched the names on my itinerary. I went to one window, and showed the guy my itinerary. It turns out I was at the bus window, and I needed to go to a different one for the trains. I conjectured that from his motions and tone of voice. I did not understand a single word from his directions, but he spoke to me in French as if I did. Many of the people from my bus got on one train so I jumped on too, guessing that it must be the right one. I didn't see any place to buy a ticket so I just boarded the train figuring you pay on board like the bus.

Thanksgiving in Spain

2007-11-23T00:59:00.000-08:00

I'll continue the story of my travels in Holland, but first I want to fill you in on Thanksgiving.

You might be wondering if Spanish people celebrate Thanksgiving. Actually, they don't. School and work continued like any other day yesterday. Luckily I did not have any real class anyway- just a week-long class about volunteer work. I ran into two people I know (one from church and one from class) as I walked through campus yesterday on the way to the Velts' house. Neither one of them knew it was Turkey Day. There is a translation for Thanksgiving Day, but it's kind of a mouthful- Dia de Accion de Gracias.

A lady at church told me about the Velts, an American missionary family. She thought it would be nice for me to hang out with them because I an American as well. I hung out at their house twice in the following month. Then on Tuesday Jodi, the mother, called me to invite me over for an authentic American Thanksgiving feast.

The food was great. I never touch mashed potatoes voluntarily, but they looked so good I took a spoonful (which prompted, one of the daughters, Amber, to remark, "You got enough potatoes there, Brendan?"). I had six things on my plate this time instead my usual two or three. Thanksgiving is never a meal I really look forward to. I guess I was so fed up with bocadillos (sandwhiches) that I was thrilled to see something else. That being said, the food was a real treat.

I enjoyed the conversation (entirely in English) just as much. One of the guests teaches English to elementary school students. My dad has struggled to keep kids under control who understand him. According to Katie, it is near impossible to keep her Spanish students' attention. Jodi and Kelly, who was also there with her family, had their own horror stories about trying to teach in Spain.

Luke Velt is a funny guy. I can't remember how this came up, but he gave me some marriage advice. He said, "Find out what a woman wants to do, and make her do it." I had to think for a few seconds to process that. Then I responded, "But that doesn't make any sense. If a woman really wanted to do something, you wouldn't have to make her do it." Apparently common sense doesn't really apply here. Luke said that you have to make them do it. The last piece of advice I remember was from the main speaker at a Crusade retreat last year- "Guys, when you get married, you need to learn to say 'I'm sorry' even if you don't know what you're sorry for." Jodi seemed to think that was ridiculous. She laughed loudly when I said that I want to write all this stuff down.

Then the party moved to the living room area, which is actually the same room as the dining room. We talked about running for a little while. I had learned about an annual 5k foot race on New Year's Eve in Pamplona. Luke said that they require to be half drunk before the gun goes off, and you couldn't pay him enough to run it. He said that a lot of people run it in costume because Spaniards will dress in costume for any occasion. I just couldn't stop laughing as I tried to picture dozens of drunk Spaniards in various costumes running a five kilometer race in the center of Pamplona on New Year's Eve. I really hope to be outside of Spain at that time this year, but it sounds like a good time to me! Then the Velts and the other family exchanged airport security horroe stories and anecdotes about traveling with children, which were also entertaining.

I skipped both my class and the Thursday night church service to watch football at Scott and Kelly's place. I was watching it with three Michiganites who were of course rooting for the Lions, whom the Packers slaughtered. Luke said that the Lions somehow manage to be a bad team year after year after year. I didn't particularly care who won. Kelly put out chips, cheese, taco meat, tortillas, cheddar cheese, potato wedges, Rice Krispie treats, and Oreos for us to devour during halftime so I was happy.

It was one of the best Thanksgivings ever. It easily beats all four Thanksgivings in Florida. It ranks somewhere near Thanksgiving 2002 at a UCLA sorority house (no, the girls were not there) and the one where we went camping. Was that 1999? 2000? Something like that. I can't remember.

The Netherlands part 1

2007-11-23T00:18:00.000-08:00

I have experienced quite a day. After I left the campus at 11, I had only a couple hours to hang up my wet clothes, wash and dry another load, eat lunch, find a hostess gift, work out some last minute details, and pack my backpack.
I left my apartment at about 1:30 to pick up a kabob for me and a gift for my host, whoever it may be. I was hoping to find some kind of fancy Spanish candy. El Corte Ingles, a department store, did not have anything affordable that looked good. Everything else was closed for the siesta not to reopen until 4:30, when my bus was scheduled to depart. I brainstormed desperately dreading the thought of walking hope empty-handed (except for my kabob) only to walk all the way back to the same area.
I finally spotted an open gourmet store across the street from El Corte Ingles that looked promising. I told the lady that I need a gift- something typical of Spain- for about ten euros. She knew exactly what to do. Instead of pushing me to spend twelve euros, she showed me a box of carmels for six and a half. She even wrapped it in nice tissue paper and wrapped a string around it. I couldn't stop saying, "Perfecto! Muchas Gracias!" (Perfect! Thank you very much!)
I made it to the bust stop fifteen minutes early, my backpack stuffed to the gills. The bus stop had just opened. It might have been the first day, actually. I'm not sure. It is beautiful, like Madrid's airport- a far cry from the vagrant magnets in the United States. The bus was equally impressive. There was a little tray on the seat in front of me and a place to plug in my headphones, just like on an airplane (though I could only pick up two channels). The headrest felt very nice. I would like to see the same concave design on all planes, trains, and buses.
Upon arriving in Madrid, I met up with Zac and his "friend-almost-girlfriend" Valentina. We walked around for a while. At my suggestion we ate at a little bar that did not allow us to sit at the table with our food and drinks. I showed them that was a mistake by spilling my hot chocolate all over the bar and my khaki pants. I did not want to change my pants, but I changed at the airport once it sunk in how ridiculous I looked.

Erasmus Party

2007-11-09T14:06:00.000-08:00

You might be tired of reading my ranting about what I cannot do in Spain. But before I go into the details of the Erasmus party, I have to do it once more. In Gainesville, if you want some kind of dessert, there is a Krispy Kreme open twenty-four hours, a Ben and Jerry's open until at least eleven, a McDonald's open until at least eleven, and countless other options. Here in Pamplona, the only thing you can buy after ten o'clock, even on a big party night like Thursday, is alcohol.

The students who came to UPNA through Erasmus, a university exchange program for Europe, hold a party pretty much every Thursday. I tried to attend one of them about a month ago. The flyer said "a partir de las 22:00" (opens at 10:00) I showed up at 10:40 thinking I was late. I entered the bar only to find a group of four guys I did not know. I talked to the bartender until almost 11:30, when I got tired of waiting and left. After that, the invitations read "a partir de las 24h." I guess the bartenders were tired of waiting too.

It was not a complete waste of time. I enjoy meeting a variety of people. The bar itself is tiny, but pretty cool. There is a lot of walls artwork on the walls of a style that I have seen before in the States. Too bad the bar is too dark to really see it.

I walked into the bar at about 12:10 last night. I didn't recognize any of the twelve people or so mingling. I left and walked around the empty dark downtown streets again hoping to find some other sign of life. When I reentered around 12:25, I found a girl I recognized from my Spanish language class. Her name is Ladia, I think. It was so loud in the bar that she had to punch it into her cell phone so I could understand. Everyone seemed to walk in at the same time at about 12:32. Pretty much the entire bar was a dance floor, but only if you wanted it to be. The three types of people there- drinkers, the dancers, and those who were drinking while dancing- were all pretty well mixed up.

I talked to Ladia a little bit, a guy from Sweden, and a Spanish student who was not with Erasmus, but really wanted me to hook him up with an American girl. As you can see in the picture, it was packed. Getting to another part of the bar was quite a chore so I tried to stay in one place and dance a little bit. It seemed that most everyone couldn't dance any better than I could. That made it much easier. Half the students in the bar were probably too plastered to notice anyway. A few of them were smoking too. It blows my mind that Spain has a life expectancy of eighty years now. It is a miracle that all of Spain doesn't have lung cancer- or all of Europe for that matter, given that at least three quarters of the smokers were not Spanish.

One Adventure Leads to Another

2007-11-07T07:01:00.000-08:00

I have not read a whole book in English since August so I thought it was time to pick one up. Neither the university's library nor the public library have much. I looked around for a used bookstore downtown, but I did not find one that looked big enough to carry a few English books. I wound up buying a copy of Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls in a department store. The story is set in Spain, and he supposedly wrote it here in Pamplona so it was a good choice.

I did not really another book, but I was still determined to find a good used bookstore after class yesterday. I had to visit the tourism office anyway, which is in the same area. My search was fruitless once again- at least in the used bookstore department. I did not accomplish my mission, but I had a ton of fun riding up and down the bumpy streets, dodging the oncoming vehicles, and pedestrians. I had been through the neighborhood several times, but never enjoyed it as much as I did yesterday. It really fits my image of a European town (I'll post a picture here later). The cobblestone streets are very narrow and filled with people. It can be frustrating trying to avoid a collision at times, but the area feels really dead when the streets are empty.

I noticed a few stores and bakeries that I somehow missed on my previous excursions. There were a couple spots where something smelled really good. Tracing its source is rather difficult. I found a good bakery by sight. A small independent bakery (unfortunately chain grocery stores and bakeries monopolize the market here as well) had some great looking chocolate chip muffins in the window. I only had ninety cents on me, but the muffins looked kind of small- about the same size as a typical cupcake- so I figured they should cost less than that. I waited in line for at least five minutes to find that it would cost 1,04€. I apologized and turned to leave, but the lady gave it to me for ninety cents. It was the best cholocolate chip muffin I had eaten since our favorite place in California closed down at least eight years ago. I will definitely return to that bakery for more muffins, and maybe even some of those good-looking cookies.

Church in Spain

2007-11-06T12:13:00.000-08:00

I knew there was something important I wanted to write about, but it slipped from my mind until last night. I don't know how- after all, it is the very thing that brought me to Pamplona in the first place!

The "Parroquia Cristiana Evangelica" is different from Gator Christian Life in several ways, but I'm proud to report that the people here love me just as much as my beloved friends in Gainesville even when they barely knew me. I still miss my Gainesville friends dearly, but my Spanish friends make it more bearable.

I met this guy named JuanJo back in March. I mentioned him in my last post. He is a true man of God with a godly family as well. Dom, Christine, Allison, and I had the privilege of dining with his family during our mission trip. I sat next to him and talked to him for a couple hours. That was all my experience with him. He barely knew me when I arrived here, and he doesn't know me extremely well even now. Nevertheless, when he saw me for the first time at church (I don't know whether or not he knew I was coming), he was overjoyed- at least as thrilled as my parents when I reunite with them. He spouted questions faster than I could answer them "How are you?" "Are you studying here?" "How long will you be here?" The ecstatic expression on his face will be forever etched into my memory.

Dani, another friend I made in March, is four years older than me and works as a mechanic in a factory. I asked him about living in his apartment, but it was too expensive so I found another place and never told him about my decision. I still feel kind of bad about that. If that phased him, he has not shown it all. He very willingly picks me up from my apartment and drops me off. On my second Saturday night here, he and another friend Jonathon rung my apartment and asked me if I wanted to eat dinner with the youth group from the church. I wondered how they knew which apartment I live in. Actually, they didn't know; they rang four apartments before mine. I was really touched by that.

The church as whole feels much different from anywhere I've been before. Apparently the church's doctrine is Baptist, but the services are far more charismatic, like a Pentecostal church. The services are very worship-centered and about twice as long as GCL's. This is not in any way bad; it is just different. It has required some adjusting on my part. On my third Saturday here, the service ran over two hours and forty-five minutes. There was at least an additional half an hour of worship at the end. I felt like a dud in the midst of such passionate people, and I had a difficult time concentrating on God with this spectacle in front of me. There were people at the front of the room in every posture imaginable. There were a few lying on the floor. It reminded me of the services on TV.

They certainly display their passion for Christ during the worship services, but they funnel this passion into their daily lives as well. JuanJo is just one example, albeit a good one. Felix mentioned during spring break that the pastor's sons, Josué and Joel, are two young men who are really living for God. I've had the privilege of talking with both of them quite a bit over the past month. I'd really like to get to know them better. I already have some great role models in my life, but it never hurts to have a couple more.

Weekly Conversations about One Thing.

2007-11-04T14:59:00.000-08:00

At least two people every week ask me how I'm doing with my Spanish. I don't really mind answering the same question at least twice every week, but I think they could probably answer that question better than I could if they would just ask me something else and then evaluate the quality of my answer themselves. My answer is usually, "Esta mejorando (it's improving)." I never know what else to say.
One of the guys who asks me that question nearly every week is JuanJo, one of the nicest guys I've ever met in my life. He asked me the question again after church last night. I told him that it's difficult to understand my professors, yada yada.
Then Felix, the founder of the church and Dom's father-in-law, walked up. He always talks to me in English, probably because I'm the only chance he ever has to practice his English. Then JuanJo objected, "No no no! You can't speak English! He's here to learn Spanish! You have to speak Spanish!" I actually cannot remember whether he said that in English or Spanish. Felix asked me if I understood his sermon, which I did. It was about our dependency on God. I was very proud of myself for understanding nearly all of it. He is probably the easiest pastor to understand.
Once I filled them in on my liguistical progress, JuanJo told Felix that I'm living with Spanish nonbelieving students, and that it's a good thing because I can be a light to them. Felix asked me what I think about the youth in Spain. I told him that everyone just likes to drink, and there are no alternatives. His response kind of surprised me. He told me that the United States is still sort of a city of God, but that Spain is nearly completely lost. There is so much talk in GCL about UF being spiritually dead that I had never thought of my homeland as a godly place. But he was right, and I'll tell you why in another blog. He reminded me that I am light out here for the other students. I had heard the same thing before from several people over the past few months, but it was especially encouraging to hear it directly from the big guy.
My Spanish education wasn't quite done yet- after I explained what I thought about my counterparts in Spain, JuanJo remarked, "Habla muy bien!" or "He speaks very well." He sounded genuinely impressed. That also encouraged me, but in a different way. My Spanish is always hit or miss. It is easy to speak with somebody I'm comfortable with, like Juanjo, Felix, or the other college students in the church. My professors and classmates are patient with me as well. I have the hardest time when I talk to somebody in a store (they're often the least patient and understanding). When I talk to my roommates about cooking and don't know a word or two, I completely stumble. But my roommate and people from the church have told me that I have improved so I know I'm getting somewhere. If nothing else, answering the same questions about my Spanish over and over reminds me that I should be constantly working on it.

Writer's Block

2007-11-02T14:39:00.000-07:00

I can't think of anything interesting to write about at the moment so I thought I'd write about how I can't think of anything interesting to write about. Aaron Shust does pretty much the same thing with his song "Give Me Words to Speak," and I think it turned out quite well. I found a copy of Orange County, one of my favorite movies, at a supermarket today for five euros (luckily the DVD's here have English audio tracks as well). It tells the story of high school senior who asprires to be a writer. I was reinspired today.

One thing I love to do in my spare time is watch movie trailers on apple.com- especially here, since all the movies in Spanish theaters are dubbed with Spanish voices that sound strange to me. I've seen a couple good trailers in the last couple weeks- The Music Within, Black Irish, and August Rush. Sometimes I watch the Pride and Prejudice trailer just for fun. (Most of you know my taste in books and movies is a little strange so I don't think I'm embarrassing myself any more than I already have by making this public.) I really want to write something inspiring like these movies.

But I have a little problem- I have no idea what to write about. Many writers do it the easy way and write about their own lives, but I don't think my life is interesting enough that anyone would want to watch it in a movie or read about it. At least not yet. Then again, do I have to experience something to write about it? I think it helps, but Jane Austen managed to write a bunch of love stories while she remained a bachelorette her entire life. Perhaps she just had a vivid imagination.

I'd really like to read a novel in English to spark my imagination, but they are difficult to find in Spain. As soon as I get to a bookstore in England, I am going to go crazy. Until then, I have my history books in Spanish and my Bible in English. I think a story about the apostles would be cool. There is something awesome about Paul traveling all over Europe preaching the Word. Maybe I can write a modern version of Acts, though that has probably been done. I don't know. I'll think of something, and I might even post the opening chapter right here.

Spanish food

2007-11-01T13:12:00.000-07:00

In my last entry I touched on food a little bit, but I have quite a few interesting food stories so I think it deserves more attention.

In the United States, you can look at a resaurant and know exactly what they serve just by hearing the name or quickly glancing at the exterior. Over here, it's not so easy. Everything is called a "bar." Even places that we would call a restaurant or coffee shop, they label a "bar." It confuses me when I'm looking for something to eat and all I can find are bars. One trick I've learned for finding actual food is to look for Coca-Cola signs.

Pamplona seems to be the least diverse city I've ever lived in ethnically and culturally speaking so I guess it makes sense that the restaurants all look pretty much the same. Most of the ones I've visited serve bocadillos (sandwhiches) and platos combinados (literally, combination plates with meat and a side item). One of my roommates told me that different bars serve different things, but I still can't see any difference. Maybe it just takes time to get to know the places.

I'm not a huge fan of Spanish food so I started making American food that I never made for myself back in Gainesville. I made french toast for one of my roommates once because she shared her tortilla (omelette) with me on her first night here. "Mucha grasa," she said as she watched me dip the bread in the egg and then drop it into the melted butter on the frying pan. I never thought of french toast as an unhealthy dish. I thought that whole wheat bread is healthy, donuts are bad, and french toast is just normal. She had told me a couple times that she thinks Americans are unhealthy. This is coming from the girl who eats Frosted Flakes for breakfast and adds chocolate poweder to the milk as if the cereal itself does not have enough sugar.

Culture Shock

2007-10-26T10:41:00.000-07:00

I got up very early on my first night in Spain- around 6:30, I think. I just couldn’t sleep. I had no food of course except for candy and cookies I had brought from my homeland. To my surprise, all of the grocery stores were closed. “What the heck?!” I thought. It was almost seven and there was no sign of any workers even preparing for opening.
Being forced to eat out, I finally found a little coffee shop/bakery (called a cafetería or panadería). I bought a chocolate donut and milk. When I ordered the milk, I assumed the lady would pull a cold pint out of a refrigerator. I had never seen it served any other way at a donut shop. Instead the lady served me steaming hot milk in a glass. It wasn’t what I had in mind, but at least I was able to sort of make hot chocolate with the little piece of chocolate that came with the milk.
After breakfast, I walked back to the grocery store. I thought it had to be open by eight o’clock. Most people are out of bed and their way to work already, at least in the United States. No such luck. There were lights on, but it was still closed. I continued to walk around not knowing what else to do with myself and always staying on one street so I don’t get lost. Many stores did not have any hours posted. What’s up with that? Do they just go to work whenever they feel like it? That would be a really sweet job!
Most everything in Spain seems to be more relaxed. I think people trust each other more. My cab driver at the airport didn’t ask me to show that I had cash; he just drove. I fully expected to have to pay for the container of cinnamon I accidentally dropped on the floor at a grocery store, but they didn’t care. They let me take another one, and they were not annoyed or upset at all. After I ordered a sandwich in Olite last week, I stayed by the counter so I could pay for it. I felt a little awkward when woman just stood back. After a month, I still hadn’t figure out that you pay for food after you get it, even in a very casual place. I’ve been in class for over a month, and I still haven’t registered for my classes. You guys at UF are already registering for the spring.
I can go on and on about examples of the relaxed nature of Spanish life. Everything opens later and closes earlier. There’s a “siesta” that falls somewhere between 2:00 and 4:30. It’s great for the workers, but not so great if you’re an American accustomed to getting whatever you want whenever you want it. I’ve adjusted by now, but it was a real pain in the butt at first.

Bringing Heaven to Earth

2007-08-05T08:30:00.000-07:00

On Friday night I talked to Jeff for an hour once again. I told him that I have no idea what I want to do with my life, and he suggested that Scripture has the answer. Huh? Scripture? I don't know any verse that says, "Brendan, I want you to do this..." We all read the same Bible, so we wouldn't we all pick the same career path. Just in the past day, I've been able to see what he meant.
This guy named J.R. Woodward, who pastors Kairos in Los Angeles, spoke at LT this week. He spoke about how Jesus came to earth not only to be the Savior of the world, but also to preach a message of social justice. For example, when he says in the Lord's Prayer, "thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven," he wants us as Christians to make earth like a foretaste, or to use a California term, a movie trailer of heaven. Jesus also said that he brings good news to the poor, as should we.
Paul says in 1 Corinthians 9:19 "Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible." Then in Acts 20:35 "In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: 'It is more blessed to give than to receive.'" I think Scripture is pointing me to telling me to be a part of bringing heaven to earth by helping the poor or anyone who is underpriveleged. I wanted to do this through politics, but recently I've been trying to think of other ways. I may not have that answer for a little while, but I'm now halfway there at least .

I Saw Rebecca St. James!

2007-08-01T09:58:00.000-07:00

On Monday night, I went to a Gospel Music Association concert. Our hike had worn everyone else out and Jeff was tied up with his project group so I had to go alone. I did not see anyone my age that I knew from the Y staff. I was one of two people under forty buying tickets on Sunday. There was a surprising number of empty seats. I guess the staff either didn't know or didn't care. Who would pass up an opportunity to see Rebecca St. James and others for $5? She was the only artist on the list I had heard of. Because her name was listed first, I thought I could just see her and walk out if I did not like the others. They made a good decision putting her up last.
The others were definitely worth hearing. The first artist was a guy named Aaron Shust. I did not realize that he was the guy who wrote and sang "My Savior My God," one of my favorite Christian songs. He said he came in 1998, and the GMA critics ripped his music apart. Now look at him. It was an inspiration to hear that. Then there was Shaun Groves, the funniest Christian speaker I've seen anywhere in quite some time. He also sings a song I had heard a million times, "Welcome Home." He introduced Rebecca St. James, remarking that she "kissed dating goodbye," alluding to her partnership with Joshua Harris in promoting purity. "And so did the girls I dated," added Shaun. "By the way, I didn't actually kiss dating goodbye," said Rebecca. I guess she didn't want all the single late 20's-ish men of God in the audience to think she was not interested.
I really went just to see Rebecca St. James, but the whole show was surprisingly very encouraging as well. It really made me love being a Christian. I have never disliked the Christian life per se, though feeling restricted at times by faith can be discouraging. But anyway, this concert really excited me in a way that I have not felt in a long time. It's kind of difficult to explain.
I have become obsessed with Christian music in the last few months. As my life becomes more complicated, I need the encouragement it gives me. Songs like "Wait for Me" by Rebecca St. James and "Praise You in This Storm" by Casting Crowns would have meant nothing to me six years ago. Now they and many others seem packed with meaning. The Joy FM's slogan is "helping you find joy," and I think it really does compliment the Bible to do just that.

Salsa Night

2007-07-27T21:24:00.000-07:00

I had heard about Wednesday night salsa dancing at this place in Estes Park last summer, but I never went. I imagined that there would be people there teaching the clueless ones. I wound up going not knowing it was part of the post pizza dinner plans.
I’ve always wondered what Gainesville clubs are like, and I’m sure this was probably pretty close, not exactly beginner-friendly. I’m not entirely sure that most of the dancers on the crowded floor, including myself, were actually salsa dancing. I kind of just tried to follow everyone else. My semester of foxtrot, swing, line dancing, and waltz seemed to be worthless here. The worst part, which last the majority of the two and a half hours, was when virtually everyone on the floor paired up. If it were swing dancing, asking a random girl to dance probably would not have been that hard. Some of the couples were dancing kind of close, but it was not too bad. I know I’ve seen much worse dancing than that. I guess the darker club atmosphere had a negative effect on me. It wasn’t so much the kind of dancing. I was just way out of my comfort zone.
This was one of those times when alcohol did not seem to be such a bad idea. I mean, could these guys act this way without some kind of help? It was only a fleeting thought- you tend to think of some crazy stuff when you’re bored. Besides, I had the problem of two big bold red X’s on both of my hands. They didn’t fade one bit after washing my hands normally and did not disappear completely until today. I guess anyone who plans to drink underage should bring some really powerful soap in their pockets.
Overall I was glad that I went. The complete boredom of the last hour was at least worth tolerating to tell this story. I got more exposure to Spanish too. I could actually pick up some words here and there. But from now on I think I’ll stick with swing or something that does not force you to choose between boredom and kind of hitting on a girl or two in a bar.

Wake up, Dirk!

2007-07-21T10:21:00.001-07:00

Angie, Dirk, and I were planning to go hiking on Friday morning before work. We looked for Dirk on Thursday night around 11:30 to finalize our plans. There were three Asian guys talking right outside his door. I asked them, "Have you seen anyone walk in this door recently?" They seemed to think I was asking them to leave. Actually, I wanted to know if he was in his room. If I already knew he was sleeping, I would have left a note instead of knocking. "Dirk... tall blond guy... do you know where he is?" I asked. Then one of them had a sudden revelation and said, "Oh, yes, Dirk!" Before I could say anything he threw the door open revealing a dark room and a confused Y worker. "There's Dirk!" Angie and I could hardly control our laughter. I shut the door, not knowing what else to do. Angie slapped me on the arm and told me in an encouraging, cheerful tone of voice, "Go talk to him." Dirk did not seem to be too upset. I told him of our plans to meet at 6:30 in the Pondo. He told me the next morning it was a miracle he got up in time because he could have slept late or completely forgotten that we told him the plan when he was half conscious.
I guess I have this kind of language barrier to look forward to in a few months. I wonder if people in Asia have no qualms about waking people up. Most of all, I hope Spain will not be like that.

Shining before men...or trying to

2007-07-19T10:01:00.000-07:00

I went to my first small group meeting with Dirk and a few other Christians who are not in LT this year on Monday night. He named the group Living transparently after Matthew 5:16, "In the same way let your light shine before men that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven." While discussing this verse, Dirk asked me if knew one of the supervisors in the kitchen. I sort of laughed, through my pen on the table, and leaned in my chair because I already knew that he knew the answer to that question.
I got the impression that this supervisor disliked me from the beginning. On my first day, she would not talk to me. Instead she gave instructions to the girl I was working with. Her low voice and Eastern European accent did not help. I would have to keep asking, "What did she say?" She was also one of the more strict supervisors so I just avoided her as much as possible for the rest of the summer.
At lunch on Monday, we discussed our "grudges." My supervisor immediately came to mind. I did not want to have that conversation all over again during small group, but that is what it took for Dirk to get the point across. Somebody mentioned that my supervisor seemed depressed last summer so maybe I should have been a little more sensitive to that. I will not get to see her very much this summer, but nevertheless I know I should make a conscious effort to be nice this time.
"Shining before men" as a whole did not get much easier in the following days. Yesterday whoever was responsible for making the veggie tray I was scheduled to deliver did not do it. I had to make it myself. My supervisor was actually a livesaver in this situation because she knew how to do it. I was still half an hour late for two deliveries because preparing the veggie tray left me little time to make the drinks. I missed a break and was very frustrated for a couple hours. I certainly was not shining very bright.
Perhaps my attitude at work will change after committing this verse to memory and lots of prayer. Food service may seem like a mindless field, but I think it is far more stressful than most people think. I want to encourage everyone reading this to remember to "shine before men" no matter what, especially my home group as they reach out to new and experienced students on campus.

Colorado Take 2

2007-07-16T14:19:00.000-07:00

A lot of people here were surprisingly very happy to see me again. I had to relearn many of their names. Few things embarrass me more than when somebody remembers my name, but I do not remember theirs. It happens quite often. One guy I met in the staff dining hall a few days ago called me “Brian,” but I was still impressed because I did not even remember his face. The name badges that the Y makes us wear are like a gift from God.
Driving the delivery van with half a million miles on it is surprisingly fun. I may never get to drive a VW Bus, but I guess this will be enough to tide me over for now. Multiple coffee, lemonade, ice cream, and barbeque sauce spills have stained the back and made it real sticky. The sweet smell is indescribable, and it has not changed a bit since I rode in the back last summer when I helped with cookouts. I feel like Santa Claus whenever I deliver ice cream or something that a group really wants. I spend the majority of my time in the kitchen, where I am usually pretty lost. In the dish room I knew what I was doing, but it’s a little more complicated in the kitchen because the staff is often working on ten different projects simultaneously.
Angie, Dirk, Rachel, Sarah, and I met for a hike up Mount Alice yesterday morning at 3:00. It was pretty uneventful until we reached the mountain itself. A marmot came up to us on the ridge hoping to score some free food. I have never seen a marmot that close. The little bugger was sitting right beside me sniffing my elbow before I knew. I may have never even noticed if one of my fellow hikers had not informed me. Dirk thought though the route up the mountain looked impossible, and even suggested that he would turn back. But he was the first one to reach the summit. That’s Dirk. We completed the hike (about seventeen miles) in about twelve hours. Some pictures are up on facebook. Our next target is Stones, one of the three failed attempts of Dirk, Amy, and I last summer.
Dirk created a small group for those not in Leadership Training this summer called Living Transparently. The second meeting is tonight. The plan is for everyone to share something that struck them as they were reading the Bible or in quiet time. Then we’ll break into our pseudo-life groups. I hope it goes well.
I miss you all and think of you every day. Drop me an email if you have anything exciting to share.

Estes Park Day 1

2007-07-11T08:49:00.000-07:00

I think I ate too much pizza at Uno’s on Monday night. My stomach did not allow me to enjoy the flight, and I was pretty tired after rising at 4:00 in the morning for a 6:00 flight. I slept through most of The Last Mimzy, which I would have loved to watch. I can’t remember the last time I was so anxious to get off of an airplane. I just wanted to be in Denver already.
As soon as I got in the car with Angie, Amy, and Dirk at the airport, my stomach ache vanished. I was so happy, like I was floating the clouds. We drove back to the Y, stopping at IHOP at the request of Dirk and I. I did the routine check-in stuff before reporting to my boss. Mike, the food service director, is tall and bald, having the typical motorcyclist look. “He has some plans for you,” Susan, the manager, told me. Mike nodded his head. “Do you have a driver’s license?” he asked. I started to pull it out assuming he was asking for a form of identification. He was actually wondering if I would like to be the new delivery guy and work in the kitchen the rest of the time. It sounded like a step up from the dish room. I asked if I could have Sundays and Mondays off because those are the days Angie and Dirk have off. “I don’t see why not,” he said. “Those are our least delivery days.” Words can’t describe how happy I was then.
Being back at the YMCA of the Rockies. I feel as if nothing that happened over the past year matters any longer. Now that I’m back in this paradise (“like the most beautiful place on the planet” as Alan Moore says) and with some special friends, all my disappointments seem irrelevant. As Amy said, this place has an effect on people. That’s not to say that I did not gain a lot and learn a lot at UF this year because I did, but it’s easy to put everything behind me now.
I went to the LT meeting Tuesday night. I think the speaker made me laugh more than any of the others last year. He was not as funny that night, but his message really got me thinking. He encouraged us to find what we’re passion about, experiment with different jobs. There is no rush, he said, because you’re all going to live to be eighty years old anyway. Sometimes God tells you what he wants you to do and sometimes you find out through trial and error, like he did.
I have a feeling my life is going to be a lot like his- trial and error. That is a fairly accurate description of my life so far. I don’t think I’ll have twenty-one jobs, but maybe three or four. I have no idea what I really want to do for the rest of my life. My mom is pressing me to find a good-paying job while my dad says, “Do what you want.” I like my dad’s advice. I know I love Jesus, traveling, the Rockies, writing, and of course my two majors, Spanish and political science. How you make a living with them, I have no clue, but I don’t really need to know right now. At least, I hope not. If I can jump around jobs like this for a few years, delivering coffee or washing dishes, that’s fine by me.

Blue Like Jazz

2007-07-05T12:33:00.000-07:00

My friend Chris Bobek loaned me his copy of Blue Like Jazz a few weeks ago. He said that the author is a "hippie liberal character" that reminded him of me. I just finished it.
A campus preacher at UF this past year told the people listening to "be skeptical of the skeptics" mainly because they endorse the lifestyles of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgenders. Homosexuality is no doubt an immoral lifestyle, but I think it's strange that he used it as his main weapon for discrediting the skeptics. Jesus said that our second greatest commandment, after loving Him, is to "Love your neighbor as yourself." It was not to stop gay marriage. Why couldn't the campus preacher say, "Be skeptical of the skeptics because they don't love you as much as we Christians do"? We might not be able to say that much of the time. He and other campus preachers have probably brought hundreds, if not thousands, of students to Christ. Their work has done far more good than harm. I really admire their courage. I'm only saying that it would be more effective if the focus was solely on Jesus Christ and loving others. Then I wouldn't have to stumble over my words as I explain how Christians feel about gays. It often does not make any sense to a non-Christian.

The last chapters of Blue Like Jazz touch immensely on this theme of what it means to love and not judge other people as Christians. I think something is wrong when we assume that homosexuality or other sin is as appalling to everyone else as it is to us Christians and we use it as our main ammunition. I've never heard anyone say they came to Christ as a result of hearing a pastor lash out against gays, Democrats, hippies, Muslims, stoners, etc. But love converts people all the time. Love should come first, then they will conform to our stances on gay marriage and other issues as they learn more about Jesus. It wouldn't do much good for me to rewrite the book here. I'll only say that everyone should read it. It really spoke to me.

My Blog's Purpose

2007-07-03T22:31:00.000-07:00

I know many of you out there are just as excited about my upcoming year in Pamplona as I am so I figured you would all want to read about it. This first post is more of a test so I can see how this works. More updates will follow.