Turn the other cheek.

Klimt is my favorite painter. The above work entitled "The Kiss" is a masterwork of gold, mosaic and new emotion. There is a lot of kissing in Spain. Not much of it is romantic. If you've ever seen a movie where an older lady grabs someone's face with both hands and plants one on each cheek - welcome to my world.

In Spain, you always kiss the right cheek first and then the left. Actually, to be fair, you don't plant one with your lips, you just make a kissy sound while touching cheeks. This is very awkward for Americans. This is very awkward for people who know that you are American. There is always a flash of hesitation by both parties - "should I stick out my hand for a shake or just kiss?" The last couple of weeks I have waited for them to act first. If they lunge for my face, I act like I've been lunging all of my life, and make a little smacky sound for their ears as we brush cheeks. I've been told that a person can come across as cold if you remain at arm's length at the beginning of an introduction. But there are many unwritten rules...

Men just do not seem to participate in kissing one another. American males will never do this. Spanish males will never do this with American males because the whole unspoken tally of machismo would be threatened. Lady's certainly kiss each other, and men certainly kiss all of the ladies. Also, in an international church setting, never kiss an African man unless he is from a french-speaking nation in Africa. But the general rule as I was told is "Just get used to kissing." and "When in doubt, pucker up."

That is just what I did to one of the young ladies of unknown nationality we had just met this morning at church. After going in the second time for the next cheek I realized with much horror that she had been holding her hand out for a handshake. I pretended everything was normal, and her lady companion stepped in for her turn. Now, to you single men, this may seem fun, but I can assure you that I have sampled many a cosmetic foundation, and have spent a few moments in the mirror each evening wiping the blush and Clinique products from my formerly manly jaw line.

The situation for my wife is a little different. She gets to kiss men and women of all ages. In the states she use to complain about my prickly whickers (what few I have) whenever they scoured her face. Now all manner of foreign men, including the pastor, Juan Antonio, get to rub her little face raw with their various whisker textures.

There is also a little international variation on the right cheek being first. In Italy, it is the LEFT cheek that is presented first. If one is used to the RIGHT cheek as being the prima cheek, and you lunge in toward an Italian, be prepared to meet head-on in the middle. This has led to many a cosmopolitan missionary from Spain getting a wet-one planted on them from members of the same sex and various age ranges.

But really, I have forced many people back with the arm outstretched for the handshake and it comes across as very cold if they are not used to the custom. I don't like to push people away, So I will be kissing you the next time I see you. Especially the guys at Homer's.

Spain is a Latin culture, and latins are warm.

Today a missionary took us into a hidden courtyard. There was an old hippy playing a melodic melody on a 6-string guitar in a minor key. Two dogs lay quietly beside him. The courtyard was well-shadowed by tall buildings. There was only one way in. The front of one grand building was pock-marked with bullet holes from the days of turmoil under Franco. I left my friends in the sunlight and walked further toward the wall. There were many small craters and large craters that were very deep from the concentration of bullets. All of the damage was scattered from about my waist to about a foot above my head along the wall. I wondered how many people had been put up against this wall. I wanted to place my fingers in the bullet holes to touch the jagged stone, but I did not because it seemed a sort of sacrilege to the many that never got to say goodbye to the people they loved.

Did they wear blindfolds? Did they get a final prayer or ask for a last cigarette? Or did they just stare down their executioners and at the last instant... slightly turn their cheek.

NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition!

(JARRING CHORD)

(The door flies open and Cardinal Ximinez of Spain enters, flanked by two junior cardinals. Cardinal Biggles has goggles pushed over his forehead. Cardinal Fang is just Cardinal Fang)

Ximinez:
NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition!
Our chief weapon is surprise...surprise and fear...fear and surprise....
Our two weapons are fear and surprise... and ruthless efficiency....
Our three weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency...
and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope....
Our four... no...
Amongst our weapons... Amongst our weaponry...
are such elements as fear, surprise...
I'll come in again.

(Exit and exeunt)

Chapman:
I didn't expect a kind of Spanish Inquisition.

(JARRING CHORD)

(The cardinals burst in)

Ximinez:
NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition!
Amongst our weaponry are such diverse elements as: fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope, and nice red uniforms - Oh damn!
(To Cardinal Biggles)
I can't say it - you'll have to say it.

Biggles:
What?

Ximinez:
You'll have to say the bit about 'Our chief weapons are...'

Biggles:
(rather horrified):
I couldn't do that...

(Ximinez bundles the cardinals outside again)

Hamburguesa

It was late Sunday night. I had just played my first worship service in an old discotech that was being rehabbed into an Iglesia. There was no power because the wiring had not been installed. The keyboard was powered by batteries. The new congregation was very forgiving as I played worship songs that sounded like a large cell-phone tooting unto heaven.

But back to the food. The five of us EstadoUnideans were hungry, and we were tired. We didn't want a large meal so late, so we started scouting for a sandwich shop. We spied the bright "Hamburger Tower" sign promising large cokes, big fries and fast service. It was a cop-out and we all knew it...

The waiter had a gameboy looking thingy strapped to his massive belt. He sat us at a table along a bright red and yellow wall and typed something furiously into his gameboy/order taker keyboard. In the next room was a net full of plastic balls that the Ninos could scrabble about in. Our table was under a vent and the cold air wafted down like love from a dark forrest clearing.

Three of us ordered the "Big Tower Menu" which consisted of a drink, a Hamburguesa, Patatas, and a desert of some sort. We found out that CokeLight does not count as a beverage. It is a special beverage that is too expensive for the Big Tower Menu. So my three companeros got their hamburguesas with water. Roamer ordered a Grand Royal Flauta that turned out to be a huge sandwich (GRAND ROYALE!?!?) I orderded the Bistec Flauta with tomatoes and "earth something or other".

The hamgurguesas were not American. They were a new invention from the old-world. (I dared not tell our new missionary friend Sandy, who gets queasy quite easily that her hamburguesa patty reminded me of ground-up newborn pinkie mice.)

But our flauta sandwiches were on golden crusty bread, moistened on the inside with fresh tomato spread and extra/extra virgin olive oil, just enough to keep the bread nice and soft on the palate. The various grilled steak slivers and bacon/ham meats and cheeses within the flauta were savory and blended well. They were flat-out great tasting! Roamer put this flauta on her top five sandwich list of all time. Mine was dang good food for a hungry hombre. The fries were golden and crunchy with big crystals of kosher-salt. They obviously fried them twice in oil from the other foods, because the flavor was intense and sharp. We ate them with little bitty plastic forks. I had a can of CokeLight, which earned me some frowns from my unhappy agua-sipping buddies. But they were soon distracted with their deserts of tiny hazle-nut ice-cream cups. (Fast food doesn't mean you get it all at once, but in a fast series of waiter visits)

Burger Tower was a popular spot. Before we left at 10pm, all of the seats were full of hungry smokers trying to order some good food very fastly from the gameboy waiter with the utility belt. As we left, the gameboy waiter was facing an air-brushed mural of fries and cokes trying to get a stubborn cork out of a bottle of Red Wine with a well-used corkscrew. Ahhhh..... Burger Tower!

I need a routine.

Is everyone okay with my dramatic memory dumps? I don't have any other outlet at this time, and I do emjoy it. I hope to get in the habit of smaller, less descriptive posts as life begins to normalize... but I don't know if that is possible. I'm feeling a weird disconnect as I read everyone's posts, and am unable to see you in person. Ground Control to Major Tom.

Barbacoa

The Charcoal in Spain spits fire. I learned this at a barbacoa (BBQ) with an American missionary family. The family of six, three girls and one young boy, picked us up from the La Garena station outside of Madrid. They were a delight to visit with before our busy next-day schedule of registering with the Polizia.

Miguel fired up the grill, lamenting his propane powered grillmaster back in the States. The most common type of grill here is similar to the permanent grills found in parks next to picnic tables, powered the old-fashioned way. The charcoal for the barbacoa is not processed. It is mined straight out of the earth and put into bags. Hence, you get an odd assortment of old stones, carbon chunks of mysterious textures, coal, and combustible black powder. It burns hot. It burns quick. There is no controlling the cooking of the meat without a quick wrist.

It was windy that day. It was hot. Dishrags were drying out after just using them under the tap. The neighborhood was too quiet and the gusting heat waves were too capricious. The hot air gusted into the house. Air conditioning is rare here. I have learned to appreciate a long, languid visit with other people in a dark living room. Everyone is always thirsty and bottled water has increased in value. (The drought conditions here are lowering the water level daily behind major dams.) The back sliding-glass door of the house was left open and the charcoal was soon glowing and spitting orange. Miguel was tending to the fire as sparks blew into the house and scattered about on the tile floor.

We ate and remained at the table, discussing various foods. I glanced out the sliding glass door and saw smoke rising from "behind" the grill on the patio below. We scrambled out of the house and saw the remains of two plastic flower pots. One had melted into a puddle, and the peat inside was still smoldering. The other had a large hole melted into it, creating a grimacing face, as the upper part of the pot melted and dripped across the new mouth. Miguel soaked the whole mess with a hose, and the rest of the family searched under the olive tree and around the inflatable swimming pool for burning embers. We then resumed our meandering, but interesting discussions in the stifling interior.

Later that evening as we drove to another missionary's home, I saw a floatplane hanging in the air like a red and yellow bumblebee. We were in the interior of Spain in the small town of Alcala, between Madrid and the city of Guadalajara. That night was hot. Sleep and dreams were deep but heavy with the weight of the previous day's heat.

The next morning we learned of a forest fire in Guadalajara. Flames were recorded at over 120 feet high. 15 firefighters had been killed. Bodies had not been identified. That day, yellow floatplanes swarmed the air, droning slowly across dusty skies with bellies full of water to dump on the raging fire. The news reported that 150 firefighters had been battling the blaze and were being extended beyond their endurance. The cause of the fire was charcoal from a grill in the city there.

The train ride back off the high plateau of Madrid down to the Tarragona plano was uneventful. Since it was a fast train and not a local train, a movie was shown from encased monitors angled down from the ceiling. The movie this day was "Back Draft" in which a young firefighter is killed on the job, all the while reminiscing about events that shaped his short life. My cousin is a firefighter in KCK. If a young lady that he is interested in does not cry at some point during the movie, my cousin dumps them for their cold heart. The movie on the train was dubbed over in Spanish. Old and young passengers of all ages would comment loudly with every new fiery explosion and action scene. It was a group event with earphones. Many cried.

The Usher Wore Spantz

Spantz: A cross between tight-fitting trousers and cargo shorts... ie: crop pants for men.

He was a young man with a name tag. The usher greeted me at the door and I shook his hand and looked him in the eye. Very good thing to do on my part because he hissed at all of the women and children when they began to get loud. It was not a "sshhhhhhh" or a "Shush" it was more like a HHHSSSSSSSSSSSTTTTTTTT HHHHSSSSSTTTTTTTTTTT!! HSSSSSSSSSSSSSSTTTTTTTT!!!! Whenever the rules of silencio were not being observed in the iglesia, Senor Usher corrected them. One does not chat idly in church here. Chat is for after the service.

Yesterday I began to have cultural overload. It culminated with a mad dash to the train station to buy two tickets to Atoche station in Madrid (where the March bombings occured) to get on the train to Alcala to be at the polizia station by Monday morning to register our faces. After I bought the tickets on the fast "Altira" train, we ran outside to the stick-shift Chrysler van that our new Missionary friend Sandy was driving, circling the crowded round-a-bout as the taxis honked at each other and bumped into each other to "make room." Sandy leapt out of the driver's seat and I took her place, because we had to go up a long windy hill on a narrow road crowded with traffic. The van liked to die on the hills when one depressed the clutch, causing a firestorm of honking horns behind. I did not kill the van. I did find the sweet-spot on the clutch and even held it for an extended period as a family dashed across the road.

My stomach had been feeling upset ever since I took a sip of water at the Christian Ministry Center. After I tasted the water I realized my mistake. The water at the Center is stored in a large sealed room that projects from underground and shares a wall with the garage. You can see the water level of the water-storing room next door because there is a transparent tube with a fishing bobber in it that gurgles and bounces whenever someone turns on a tap. The room probably housed a large snail colony. You can harvest snails here and cook them in oil. If you are hardcore, you can just drizzle vinagrette on them.

After the train station, we ran inside our hot apartment, pulled open the metal shutters and raced through many pages of confusing Spanish homework while water from a potted plant dripped on us from the patio three floors above us. I decided to stop and make dinner with ingredients my wife and bought at the CarreFour Store (Spanish Wal-Mart crowded with muchos gentes!) She was very tired yesterday and it was hard to put together meals from unfamiliar food items in a mad rush through the grocery. I soon realized: I was not hungry. I was completing tasks "mucho rapido", for no other reason than to complete them. Mentally, I have been loading my brain like a container for many days. I was sprinting through cultural overload and I just ran out ot breath. I told mi esposa who sent me outside for a long walk so I would not lapse into permanent grumpiness for the rest of the evening.

So I put on my Nike sandals and walked fast and hard. First I went Under the narrow train bridege and out to the beach. I turned right this time instead of left, because last night I had to shield my wife's eyes from two men bumping and grinding in the bushes just a little ways down the left-hand side. The two seconds I saw of them were very horrifying and I never want to see it again. I should have thrown rocks and made a loud HHHSSSSSSSSSSSTTTTTTTTT!!!!! like any good usher, but them scrambling could have been worse and THANK the LORD the my wife did not see before I shoved her the other direction. Anway, I turned right this time and it made all the difference.

The sea was azul - a deep hue of blue. The waves were steady and strong. I walked a powdery section of sand to a small rocky hill. The rocks were jagged and treacherous as I scaled them around a large abandoned school that had been built many decades before and was now surrounded by a rusty fence and inhabited by tiny goats. The path was narrow - fence on one side and rocks falling off to water on the other. I climbed to the next beach and removed my shirt. I have discovered that I have more tattoos than anyone on the entire Spanish coast. So when I walk this extremely crowded beach and try not to stare at breasts of all shapes, sizes, and ages, I am being scrutinzed by many more people who wonder if I am a circus freak or a Russian HitMan. I opt for the latter and try to clench my jaw and not walk between the young mothers and their naked babies that are having the time of their life hopping in the sea. It is hard to be serious when you see the naked babies having so much fun. They never stare at anyone, and if they do look at you, its straight into the eyes with a little piece of God protecting them.

I walked past the crowds into the next set of rocks. They sharp=edged rusty colored stones began to tower 50 feet over the sea and the waves crashed and thrummed into the sea-caves eroded out below. Oil tankers and container ships rested way out on the horizon waiting for space in the Tarragona port. I began to descend, a encountered the occasional fisherman. I soon huffed my way across narrow over-hangs and along crumbling walls and iron gates into more fishermen on a large stretch of elevated dock surrounded by scrabbly palm trees. All ages of men were whipping the fishing poles out into the sea and waiting for something to bite. I could only guess as to what manner of catch they were hoping to acquire.... flouder? Hake? Eels?

I soon made it to a large modernest sculpture of Jesus holding his arm out above the coast. It was welded together in 1957 and was now dark-brown with rust and covered with graffitti in all languages. The halo must have weighed 30 lbs. I began to sense the age of the place. I walked on, reaching a Roman wall jutting out from the old Roman amphitheater. This city has been around for awhile. The street just up the hill has been a road for over 2,000 years. I took just a moment to breathe, and then headed back to the apartment. I took the road and braved the cars instead of the rocks, guzzling a liter and a half bottle of water con gas along the way.

Later at home we found classical music on the radio and ate a dinner of cured thinly sliced ham, freshly chopped vegetables simmered on the gas stove and a salad drizzled with the new garlic infused olive oil we purchased.... We both needed a rest.

Today it begins anew. I just received a call asking me to be ready in six minutes in order to pick up the husband of our profesora on our way to class..... Good night to all of you in Kansas and states beyond.

Descriptive Update:

The sun is already high here in Spain. This morning I spent ironing a green T-shirt in a marble-floored kitchen. We will be in this ground-floor apartment until Sept. 6. There are huge sliding doors in each room that walk out onto the patio. The patio is about 20 feet from the pool (saw a guy using a testing kit on it this morning!). A little further out from the pool is a set of double-train tracks. All manner of freaky-lookin trains rumble through at all hours - including a high-speed passenger train that travels about 160mph and looks like a bullet.

If you go out our front door, turn right and walk under the train track bridge, you come to a gate that opens onto the beach. The beach is fairly wide and has the color of very light beige. It is powdery but doesn't stick to your feet. It is very clean, and on either side is small rock outcroppings that help hide everyone's exposed breasts. Actually - at night the beach is nearly deserted. The Mediterranean Sea is deep blue and the waves are about 2-3 feet high. There are big rocks around the edges that have cool paths that you can walk and watch the sun go down while the breeze soothes the worries away.

The Spanish people are very friendly and not intimidating. Even the "big tough" guys are all about my size with dark short hair and maybe a beard. I am anxious to make friends. This apartment is a blessing. I don't want to brag too much about it - because entering a new culture for a long stay with jet-lag is actually pretty terrifying - even if it is Spain. If it was just a 3-month term I would be more relaxed. A 3-year term after saying goodbye to everyone can be very claustrophobic. I even have to relearn how to find a light-switch - nevermind making a simple left-hand turn. This is a long ways from being confident in any situation anywhere in the USA. But I can cope, and am looking forward to normalization.

As for the London bombings. We get about 8 channels here on TV. There are about 4 Spanish channels including Dubbed over American Sitcoms (Everybody Loves Raymonde! and Full Casa!) There are two German Channels including a TV show that is basically "Cops" set in Germany - very fun to watch no-shirt wearing Germans being thrown drunk into Police Porsches and what-not. There are two-English speaking channels. One is called "EuroSport" and shows international Sports competition. (I saw a few Spaniards wearing Yellow bracelets because of Lance Armstrong and the Tour de France! But they were also wearing Polo Shirts...) The other English channel is British CNN. As you can imagine - we are watching non-stop coverage. Interesting that the Spanish News channel had a special on Global Terrorism that included many shots of the Twin Towers, their own Madrid train bombings, and the latest British catastrophe. They feel a common bond, and have very strong reactive emotions.

Although it sounds like we're living the high-life right now in a resort setting, my impression of Spain is a combination of things. Think: New Mexico meets Italy meets Legoland meets Wyandotte Co. and you have a basic foundation. Funny - I feel very at home here, although the uniforms of the police are a bit intimidating. I believe that the law is less about function and more about a show of strength. This maybe left over from the dictatorship of General Franco which only ended about the same time the very first StarWars movie came out in the USA in 1977.

Most of my impressions will change as I learn more. It hasn't even been 24 hours yet. In a few months we will move to the interior of the country near Madrid - where the temperature was 104F today. Yes - things will change. As for our schedule. We will be the first of 4 couples to go start this rotation of language school. We will drive a few kliks over the hill to a small compound of sorts that overlooks a large (beautiful!) chicken farm. Our first vehicle is a van. Around Sept. we will driving a bigger white van nicknamed the "bus" because it is so huge. Should be fun driving it on the extremely twisty roads. It is probably a stick-shift.

We will be "driven" hard in language school by an older lady from Argentina who we must call Professora. Her nickname is "Franca" after the previously mentioned Dictator Franco. Fair warning! The reason I call the ministry center a compound is because it has an iron gate and low walls and sits on a slope. It is not very big and has about three connected buildings all in various states of repair. It was bought from a bankrupt business man for a song. The goal is to create a "Celtic model" monastary for Christians there. The hope is to draw mature Christians as well as desperate "pagans" to the place for a monastic time of quiet, work, study, and reflection. This model worked well in Ireland with St. Patrick. Instead of planting churches, you also bring in the oppressed who are looking for peace and let them see the benfits of Christian living. This type of model is an experiment by A/G missionaries who hope to spread the paradigm into the rest of Europe. Interesting that here in Tarragona, the locals strongly believe that Paul was the first Christian to land on the beach...

I must go. This is a basic overload of images and thoughts. I will write gushy-reflection stuff later. But be warned. Spain is very Macho - and my wife was warned not to look a male in the eye unless introduced. HA! (No more prancing about for me I guess...)

I must thank Forrest for this blog idea. I could not function without it - I am only now realizing how valuable it is...

Goodbyes are over...

The airport shuttle will be here in an hour. We love all of you guys. Fight the Good Fight! Things will be hot on your side of the Atlantic - but you will have each other! (nothing is more important than that.)There will be a black-out on communication from our side for a short time until we normalize. Stay tuned for further updates... they will come.