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...