bats & the bat bridge in austin

Somehow i think bats are nifty creatures. They're like birds, but cooler and they come out at night, which somehow I also think is cool.

I think I began my fascination with bats in college at Mizzou where bats come out at night and fly around the quad and Jesse Hall (the admin building). Then when I lived in Sevilla, there was a cool bridge (I think the puente de triana) that has an area where people boulder and it's the same bridge where a flock of bats can be seen at night. Macy and I would wander over there at night to pray and admire our flying friends. In Madrid too there are some bats, just a few, who fly around the park where I like to run.

So, today when my dad was talking about his recent work trip to Austin I was THRILLED to hear about the bat bridge, which someday I will have to visit.

"Every summer, a million and a half bats in Austin, Texas make themselves at home.

The Congress Avenue Bridge has become, quite accidentally, the largest urban bat colony in the world. When engineers finished its reconstruction in 1980, it turned out that the crevices underneath the bridge doubled as perfect bat housing. When Mexican free-tail bats began their yearly migration north the next spring, they moved in by the thousands.

Austin freaked. Bats have a very bad reputation, thanks in equal part to both rabies and Béla Lugosi, and people demanded that the housing be demolished. Luckily, a group by the name of Bat Conservation International made an appearance, and explained to Austinites that, minus a nasty guano habit, bats are actually both brilliant and adorable. And the ones now living in their midst eat anywhere from ten to twenty thousand pounds of insects per night.

Nowadays, the Congress Avenue Bridge brings in 100,000 tourists annually. The mostly female colony starts moving in around March, and each female gives birth to a single pup by early June. The pups mature over the next five weeks, until eventually they can leave the roost with their mothers en masse, and take Austin’s insect population by storm."

Fun, huh! And apparently my parents joined the hundreds of people there to walk the stream of bats fly out at dusk, not once but twice. I love my dad. I'm sure it was his idea. So, if you're ever in Austin, remember to check out the bat bridge, or the Congress Avenue Bridge as it's properly known.

men are a mystery to me

This past weekend I met up with a good, good friend from when I lived in Kansas and two other guys from his team in Central Asia to hang out and to show them around Sevilla, where I lived from 1999-2001. It was great fun and they are hilarious, but there were a couple moments which made me walk away and think that men are strange... and definitely somewhat of a mystery to me. It was great to be with an old friend, which seems to be happening to me quite a bit this month, and to get to hang out with the guys for a couple days.

Some highlights of the weekend were:

... being in Sevilla, which I do miss and get back to way to infrequently
... getting caught up on my friend's life and hearing cotilleos de cada uno about girls and such
... walking around a bunch & being amazed that I still know how to navigate barrio Santa Cruz which is a maze of streets
... being in the company of three people who LOVE spanish food and culture - since basically everything that is normal here is prohibited where they live (a muslim country versus spain that has millions of pork products, great wine and such, and tons of unveiled and beautiful women)
... some of the hilarious and strange happenings - one being running into some study abroad students down by the river who were from a neighboring town of one of the guys from wisconsin who was OVERJOYED that he actually knew where he was from - he said it was the highlight of his ENTIRE time in Spain (which thusfar has been a full week, :-)). we happened to run into the same people two more times as we wandered around.
... sevilla, sevilla,...
... there actually being heat in the hostel we stayed at
... & just having some great time to relax

las fallas

so, one of my roommates, anna, just went to valencia (eastern coast of spain). it is a gorgeous town and once a year (which happened to coincide with semana santa - holy week this year, which, by the way, is not normal).

she just got back and was showing me her pictures (some of which are here) and it made me think back to eight years ago, scary i know, when michael, jonathan and i took a little road trip from sevilla to valencia to meet up with jonanthan's brother to see the fallas.


we left on a friday night, and drove all night (lucky for me the guys wanted to drive, so i got to sleep the whole time, or as well as you sleep in a moving car curled up in a ball in the backseat). we arrived in valencia by about 10 am or so, ate breakfast (churros, of course), crashed on the grass in a park, met up with nate (j's brother), and ate lunch (paella, which is best known from valencia). we then walked around to see the huge, ornate, political satyric floats which spend tons of money constructing and spend basically all year making. then the night came. after some yummy sorbet and another little nap, we headed out to stake our place close to one of the top prize winning floats/statues.

now picture the scene. there is this huge satyric statue the size of a building wedged in a little plaza between 4 or so apartment buildings. there is a fire truck or two close by with firemen and fire hoses. the streets are packed. yes, there is a little barricade on all sides a little back from the firemen, hoses and statue/float, but we're pretty close.

so, the fireworks start to go off around this whole scene. and then fireworks start to shoot out of the statue/float. some shoot out and some are just sparks within. basically there is a huge building-size fire going on, controlled by the fire hose, but wedged between buildings that are really not that far away. they are closer than i am and my skin feels like it is being singed. crazy and amazingly cool. massive amounts of fire, smoke, heat, flames, and madness.

so, that's the fallas. definitely a sight to see and definitely worth the drive.

michael, jonathan, and i then took off after the night was over (i'm guessing based on spain, around 4 or 5am) and headed back to sevilla. i again got to sleep and they got to drive. fun times. and one of the many fun road trips the three of us took in '00-'01.

Sevilla, Mexican food, Army bases

It's time for a story! A blast to my former life in Spain, in Sevilla.... in 1999.

It was my first year in Spain. There were five of us on the STINT team there and I was loving Spain, loving the adventure of life overseas, and excited about how God was going to work. We had now been in Sevilla all of a couple months. Since we had yet to find good Mexican food in Sevilla (Unlike the common American myth that Spain has tacos, burritos and is just the mothership of Mexico, Spanish food is NOT spicy and VERY different from Mexican food.), we had decided to throw our Spanish friends a real Mexican party.

We had heard from a reliable source (David - a spanish friend) that we should head to the local army base to get the food since they had American stores there with everything we would need. I had never been on an army base, but David assured us that all we needed was our US passport and we would be fine. So, Tawnny, Ann, and I found the bus that headed to the town where the base is situated, about an hour or so away. When we got there we looked for a taxi and told him to take us to the base.

We got to the guard at the base, showed him our passports, and told him that we were going shopping (that was our business on the base). He waved us on and directed us to the grocery store. We were in supermarket heaven. There were Pyrex dishes that cost half their normal price. Tawnny and Ann stocked up on Dr. Pepper. There were tortilla chips, flour tortillas, corn tortillas, salsa, chili pepper,... You name it they had it. So we stocked up. All we could carry in our backpacks and arms we bought.

So we get into the line to check out and as we are nearing the cashier I ask the man behind us how we get back to Sevilla. Is there a bus? Or do we have to call a taxi? Or what? He then asks how we got there and I of course tell him. We wanted to buy mexican food supplies for a party we were having, so we took a bus, then a taxi, and now we just needed to get home. He said that there was an employee bus that too off from the hotel later that day, but that he didn't know the hours. He then asked if we had a military ID and of course I said "no." He asks how we got on base. I tell him that we just showed them our passports and told the guards we were going grocery shopping. He says that we're not really supposed to be there, but just not to make a big deal of it. He says he has no idea how we're going to get back, but that our best bet is to head over to the hotel.

About this time we start to check out. I check out and then Tawnny checks out. Somewhere after we've both signed for it I must have asked the guy one more thing and the cashier then asks for our ID. Mind you we've already checked out. We say that we don't have a military ID and she begins to freak out, I mean really go nuts. "But you can't be here." "You can't buy this food." She just keeps on making statements, which we were obviously completely oblivious to up until now.

I offer to return it and she just continues to say that we can't buy it (when we already have). I ask for the third or fourth time if she wants us to return it and still all she can say is that we're not supposed to be there. So we leave and assume that the army police will now come to arrest us or shoot us or something horrible. Or that we will at least not make it back to Sevilla.

We sit on a bench. Ann and Tawnny drink their Dr. Pepper. We pray. And then we head over to the hotel.

We enter and there is CNN in English on a huge television screen. Since I now know we weren't really supposed to be there I just ask when the bus comes and the maitre-de says in about an hour. I ask if there is another one and she says no. So we sit down and I am fluctuating between just trusting it will all work out and expecting the police to come for us. The van arrives and we get on with all the employees and, while being fully honest, try not to disclose too much information. The bus takes us virtually to our house and all is well.

A couple days later we make an amazing mexican extravaganza, which our friends love, and for the next couple years I enjoy my cheap pyrex casserole dishes. Never again do I venture to an army base, but I will forever have imprinted in my mind the picture of us sitting there waiting for some men with guns or a bus to come by.