my flight back & my great brother

so, my flight back was incredible. it was clear that the Lord had gone before me and that he was caring for me the whole way along.

first, there was checking in... i weighed my bags on the scale at home, which i thought would be about right since the little calibrating thing showed that it was actually adding a few pounds. nope. i got to check in and both bags were over the 50 lb allotted. the lady was super nice and told me i had to take stuff out. i was prepared, so put it into a bag for my mom to take home. the lady noticed some of my heavy books and complimented me on my good taste. she then proceeded to tell me to just shove it all into my carry-on, which of course already surpassed any weight limit they might have. that was where the really heavy and/or important stuff i wanted to be sure not to loose. i told her that i thought it was probably already full and she said, actually go put it in the carry-on measuring thing to make sure it will fit. it didn't so i started to rearrange things there (and take out a couple books) to make it fit. when it did, she suggested i go across the hall to the shop with a sale on rolling duffle bags (so i could take everything i had just pulled out of the other bags). i asked if they were really going to allow me to have my carry-on plus this other bag the size of a normal big carry-on (basically) as my personal item (which i previously thought only included a purse or a laptop bag, or something a bit smaller). she assured me it would be fine and i went to get the extra bag (on which i saved a ton of money over having tried to get those books to me in madrid any other way).

so i was off and somehow just about everyone on the entire trip was extremely nice and helpful.

then i got to philly with the 6 hour layover, so i could hang out a bit with my brother (pictured above), my great brother. we went to his neighborhood in sw philly, which is by the way a very fun, artsy and ethnically diverse neighborhood with GREAT food, great architecture, great people, and fun things to do. (it also doesn't hurt that my brother lives there.) we had some good laosian food (kind of a mix between vietnamese & thai food - also where the country is located) and then went to his apartment, hung out with his cats, sat out on the back porch, and just enjoyed a couple hours together. unfortunately, six hours is a fairly short amount of time when you have to take up most of the later two back inside the airport.

(oh, by the way, my brother has a show in philly this saturday that you should DEFINITELY check out if you live or will be in the area. drew is a musician and a quite talented one at that. he's playing in a coffeehouse/bar which is somewhere around 48th street. let me know and i can get you the name. the name of his group is assemble, you can find it on myspace - although there are a few bands with the same name.)

then, i got back on a plane which fortunately had 2 empty seats between me and the girl on the other end. so we both got a decent rest and were able to actually LAY DOWN on the transcontinental flight. i did watch p.s. i love you, but was too tired to watch much else. i also got some good reading done in a fabulous book i recently picked up. it's a compilation of sermons on the sermon on the mount and is fabulous - Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, Dwight Martyn Lloyd-Jones. apparently he is quite well known. anyway, i currently think he's amazing.

i also LOVED hearing and speaking Spain spanish again. it was great! and the people around me were both nice & interesting.

well, after sleeping a bit on and off for several hours, i was awakened by the breakfast cart bumping my feet. i laid back down, eventually got some juice & coffee, and eventually arrived safely to madrid almost an hour early - 7am. i got a taxi (since i brought back way too much stuff) and ended up paying about 10-15 euros less than i had expected! amazing! on the ride home a friend called to see if he could pick me up from the airport, which was really a nice bonus (even though i was in the taxi already).

i walked in the door to an amazingly clean apartment, thanks to my new roommate chery! such a blessing! unfortunately the internet isn't working and thus the vonage phone isn't either (but today i found a wifi line from the neighbors that works on and off, so at least i have something). later a friend helped me put together my new bed (which is SOOO nice).

as you can imagine, i am still getting used to the time change (7 hours) and am still a bit jetlagged, which is why it is now (wow) 3 am and i am wide awake. and in the morning, i am a complete zombie. at least i have a couple days before i have to fully engage with the normal world (sat/sun) - when i head up to galicia (nw spain) for the western european new staff training with ágape. in the meantime, i should probably get some shuteye.

note: this picture of my brother cracks me up. it looks like everyone is either amazed or horrified by drew's crazy dance moves. in actuality he is just knealing down to talk to vance jr., or buddy, my cousin's son. :-D jejeje. it really is hilarious if you look at drew and think that he is dancing. :-D

traveling home (to madrid)

so... i am packing (and presently procrastinating packing). i have all except my carry-on packed (at least for now, until i realize i have too much for my carry-on).

today has been fairly uneventful although the last week has been jam-packed full of seeing fun people, traveling across several states (florida to georgia to tennessee to missouri to kansas and back to missouri). i've had sushi, ethiopian, pizza, lots of coffee, a good number of salads, and lots of blueberries (which i can't easily get in spain). also i bought another pair of running shoes today and was VERY happily surprised that my new shoes have a secret passageway for my ipod nike running chip (to measure how far and fast i go). definitely a pleasant surprise and a surprise.

hmmm... well i don't have much more to say other than i will miss the dear people i love who live in the US much!!! and particularly after having seen some of them briefly. i so wish all the people i loved lived closer, or that somehow i had a private jet and time traveling abilities.

but for now there is vonage and the blessings of living in the 21st century. i will be fairly out of touch for the next month, as most of that time will be spent in a fairly rural area. (i have 4 days in madrid and then head up to ligonde, in nw spain, where i will be for about 2 weeks, then back to madrid and then probably to morrocco with some students.) all that to say, i will blog and e-mail when i can, but if you don't hear from me, my life will return to semi-normal in september (the semester in spain starts october 1st).

thanks for all the memories!!!

oh, and by the way, i have a sweet 6-hour layover in philly to see my amazing brother who i love but don't get to see all that often.

dancing

i just commented on a friend's post about dancing, i think specifically salsa. anyway... i told her a fun story about my time in orlando and thought it worth repeating here.

my friend bekah, who will soon be in madrid with me, loves to dance, particularly salsa. i do too, but not as much as bekah. so during the training she was going through and i was coaching in florida, on occasion bekah organized a salsa night, either to teach people or to go out. i can't say that i went to as many nights as i would have liked, but the one night i went out with them was FABULOUS and a time forever sketched in my memories.

there was a salsa convention going on in town, so we went to the open dancing. there were three of us women and two guys. we got there and were blown away by the dancers, all professional or semi-professional. i felt like i was on the set or in a movie, definitely very surreal. and they were definitely FAR out of our league. but we danced anyway and i had the greatest time!!! i felt like a star. while i'm sure i didn't look anything like them, i pretended i did and felt like a million dollars. damien and drew being there to dance with, along with the other random guys i danced with were obviously fairly key. it was definitely a night to remember. i only wish i had some pictures to go along with it.

and the venue was stellar. a huge ballroom with a hardwood floor and all the glitz to go with it. it kind of made me think of the japanese version of "shall we dance" (which by the way is MUCH better and came out far before the american version with richard gere).

Note: By the way, the picture above is from the Antonio Banderes (he's spanish) movie "Take The Lead" which I just saw a few days ago at a friend's house a few days ago in Lawrence, KS, while I was preparing for my talk on Spain at Grace EPC. It is a GREAT movie that is about dancing but also a lot more. Definitely a great movie to rent.

Ethiopian Food

In thinking about coming back to the US there were two things I wanted to eat - lots of blueberries & ethiopian food. Somehow I don't tend to crave much food from back home. Living in Madrid, I can find just about any kind of ethnic food I might want and the ingredients for just about anything I'd want to make.

Blueberries are abundant in the states during the summer, so that has been easy.

Ethiopian food has been a little trickier since I was only in Lawrence, KS, three days and the restaurant I was hoping was still open was closed. Fortunately on my jaunt through Atlanta, in looking for a coffee shop I stumbled upon Amy's Ethiopian Café. I walked in and was welcomed by some strong cardamom smelling incense, by some strange looks (i was the only white, non-ethiopian in the place), and everything written in amharic (the language spoken in ethiopia, which is non-roman letters). I asked if I could have a glass of water and a half portion of one of the lunch vegetarian platters. (It was about 16:00 and I was planning to eat with some friends a bit later.) It was absolutely perfect. And while I ate, I watched some of the foreign news on Aljazeera, the Arabic News Network. It was perfect. The only unfortunate part is that I didn't have time to go back before I left.

So... ethiopian food in my opinion is incredible and some of the best ethnic food I've ever had. It is however, pretty different, so some people don't much care for it.

What I like is the rich, explosion of flavor you have in every bite. AND you get to eat with your hands and from a communal plate. You use the injera bread, which looks like a thick crepe, but is made from a grain you have probably never had, teff. It tastes a bit vinagery and has a texture unlike anything else. My dad is not a huge fan. You tear off a piece and use that to pick up the other foods. It is INCREIBLE!

So I've just looked up several restaurants here in St. Louis and am hoping to convince someone to go with me. Buen provecho!

The Joy of Hybrids

Those of you who were with me in Orlando, now know all the joys of the Toyota Prius and probably more than you wanted to know. And for those of you who weren't you can now read all about the AMAZING and ECONOMIC Toyota Prius.

My dad offered his car for me to drive to Florida (from St.Louis) and back, along with my other driving needs during my time in the US. It has been a HUGE blessing, just to have wheels, but also INCREDIBLE that it is a hybrid, due to crazy high gas prices.

So, first of all, my dad's hybrid, which was the first Toyota Prius Hybrid they made is not quite as fancy as my mom's new updated one. His doesn't have cruise control nor anything more than a radio & cassette player and there are a few little details they have ironed out since this first model. BUT, all that said, despite it not being a manual car, it is a FABULOUS car.

1 - You get great gas mileage. I've averaged about 40 MPG, but I think gotten up to 42 or 45 MPG from time to time. (My mom's newer prius gets about 50 MPG.) In comparison to a normally fuel efficient non-hybrid, this is incredible. This is probably the coolest thing.

2 - There is a fun little screen in the car that keeps track of your mileage at any given time, both present and it tracks it with a bar graph in 5 mile increments. Secondly, there is a fun little graphic you can look at that shows where energy is coming from and going to.

3 - My mom's new and improved prius has some added features. It is MAGICAL! You just have to have the keys on you to open the door. But you don't have to actually take them out. You just touch the door handle and magically it opens! And you touch it again for all the doors to open. You can do the same with the trunk, just touch it and MAGIC it opens (if you have the keys on your person). Then you sit down and put the power button and turns on. Again no key. Easy and AMAZING!

And this little car safely took me across the country and back. So there you go. My dad and his little hybrid are amazing!

Ode to Lawrence...

So... I am presently in my old home of Lawrence, Kansas. I spent a few years here in between Sevilla, Spain, and Madrid, while I was on staff with CCC here at KU (University of Kansas).

I have to say that Lawrence is a GREAT city and one of my favorite places. Part of it is sentimental, emotional and more about the memories and people than the actual place. That being said, here are some of the things I love most about Lawrence.

1 - Mass Street & downtown - part of what I love about it is it feels European to me with all the outside seating along the street, little cafes, great local food, a pretty large area that you can walk around and to, great art & art galleries, good coffee, good sushi, good mediterranean food,...

2 - You can still walk or ride a bike around town and it is somewhat normal

3 - The great hills to run or bike

4 - The million local coffeeshops, each with its own character and most with a GREAT soy cappichino

5 - KU - the campus is beautiful, the energy of a college campus, it's on a great hill, the great feel of a college town, memories,... KU basketball

6 - Signs of Life, Milton's, Wheatfield's

7 - Clinton Lake and the trails leading there and around there

8 - Great mountain bike trails & great memories both of flying off my bike and of not

9 - Grace EPC - a place & family that I love dearly - genuine community, great teaching - an amazing place

10 - there are a million more reasons Lawrence is great and the people I know and love there are definitely a huge part.