we should get jerseys

'cause we make a good team.



thanks to relient k for the title of this post. i sang this line to kelly the other day as we took a daytrip to segovia. :) but for our jerseys, i think i'll get them with our last name on it. well, it's not hers yet, but it will be this fall! i'm sure she'll put her side of the story on her blog but here it is on mine; besides, there are different viewpoints.



i set up a scavenger hunt for her a la amazing race and enlisted friends from all over the city to help. she had a clue that led her to that person where she got a task to complete. these could be anything from memorizing a Bible verse in dutch to taking our friend's baby to a local panadería for merienda. oh and there's the part where she gave a guy friend of ours a package to unwrap and it was underwear.



there are pictures.



that's right, folks, she had to get a picture of completing each task. it was set up that our friend, lisa, was going to meet kelly for lunch on wednesday, then she would present her with the instructions and the first clue. lisa was so excited about the whole thing and besides being a clue herself, she really pushed for the part that there had to be photos. i asked if she would be willing to take them, and she practically squealed! and another friend, leisl, had come in from castellón to visit (and go on the church easter retreat with us), so she was at lunch, too, and went on the scavenger hunt and helped take pictures (leisl took this one. thanks!)! it was also special that they shared in this because lisa was kelly's roommate last year, and leisl and kelly did a good chunk of the camino de santiago last summer, so both are special people.)


the photos are great (i'll soon load them, but you can see others here), and they really show how kelly had to go all over the city all afternoon. it took her about 5 hours or so to get to me, the last clue. her last task was to follow the blue arrows ("Suivez les flèches bleues.") inspired from a scene in the movie amélie where she sets up blue arrows around a park in the montmartre section of paris to get the attention of a guy she likes. she got her task from mary, who simply handed her the first arrow and sent her off to me. i set up these arrows around kelly's neighborhood and pointed them to the plaza dos de mayo, where we've spent a lot of time--impromptu picnics and late night chats. she found the last arrow and came walking across the plaza. when she was about halfway, i got down on one knee and just showed her the ring.



"will you marry me?"



"yes."

new start

i'm on vacation for the next two weeks, so i thought i'd take some time to chill and reflect on what's all happened and maybe give a new look to the blog, now in it's second year. so much has happened to me and around me and for me in the past two years, and it's always good think about those times and how they've impacted my life. here's a summary, not in any particular order.

-great church and great community at truenorth church
-great church and great community at oasis madrid church
-a wonderful townhouse in augusta
-having the summer off for once in 2006
-earning steady money for two years with a good job
-being a grownup
-moving back to madrid in september 07
-working with a church while living and studying abroad
-regularly going to the gym and running!
-losing 30 lbs
-going off my medicine!
-being more confident in who i am as God made me with the strengths and weaknesses that make me a unique addition to his body
-having the support of family and friends to pursue dreams
-meeting a wonderful woman and falling into God's plan after four years of preparing us for each other
-falling in love

vacation and immigrants

a friend of my roommate's is visiting this week from the states & he doesn't speak a word of spanish. he can barely say "hola", and it's so weird for him--by his own admission--to hear nate and me have complete discussions in both spanish and english. so, today, i started taking note of things that he might notice that are completely new and different to him, but that i take completely normal. i'll think of some more things and get back to you.

high of 75

listening to relient k this morning is great because there's a song about the weather. it's perfect because i'm at a point where it's rainy and cold, but it also talks about being happy in Jesus since he "took my heavy heart and made it light." that's just a great reminder for me today as i'm gearing up for revisions of papers and midterms.

and now there's the song "my girl's ex-boyfriend". "who would believe my life would be so blessed?" yeah, that's just great! kelly & i just celebrated our month-iversary on valentine's day. of course, i had to be reminded to plan something for valentine's day. despite the fact that i have a calendar right next to my desk where valentine's day is plainly marked on the 14th, i, apparently, had not figured that thursday, the 14th was just two days away from tuesday, the 12th and had invited a friend, vivi (yes, another girl), over for dinner that night and was also inviting my girlfriend over. in recounting this to kelly on tuesday the 12th, she was surprised and insisted that i verify that i had invited vivi over for thursday. here's how it went down:

"so, i invited vivi over for dinner on thursday. i know you've wanted to meet her, and she's wanted to meet you," i say nonchalantly while videochatting.

"thursday?" she asks, turning her head towards her webcam as if she hadn't heard me clearly the first time.

"yes, thursday. this thursday, around 9." i figured it would have been perfect since the three of us had off, and it was nate's (my roommate) last day of class for the week.

"really, paul? this thursday?" she asks, leading me water, but trying not to force my head down until the bubbles stop.

"what's wrong with thursday?" i ask, throwing my hands up in the air, not able to grasp the fact that my girlfriend was questioning my dinner party planning.

"it's valentine's, day, paul," she bluntly states. yes, folks, my dear girlfriend has now learned that subtletly is not my strongsuit and that i may need some gentle prodding here and there, especially in the realm of heart-themed holidays.

not quite convinced, i say: "no, really? already?" and i look on my wall to check the calendar for the box that has "14" and "valentine's day" clearly marked on it.

"oh," i say, somewhat sheepishly. (yes, i know i've mixed my animal metaphors: horse, cattle, sheep. i'm studying spanish art, not english blog narrative.) "perhaps, we'll postpone dinner until friday."

no day but today

over the past week, i've been in a physical topsy-turvy, back to my 3/1 operating system: 3 limbs working, 1 not at any given time. i've bounced back and forth between pain, strong muscle contractions, weakness and numbness, and asthma attacks. i hate this kind of uncertainty, but realize this is life is not my own. i don't have to have a perfectly-functioning body in order to be a valued person. i'm valuable because i'm created and loved by God.

there's no day but today.

the fishbowl

"welcome to the fishbowl", kelly said to me when we started dating. the "fishbowl" is our church community, and since she's on staff & we have a good number of mutual friends who got to know me separately while she was in the states last fall, people were waiting and watching. when she came back to madrid, apparently, there was a pool to see how long it would take for us to get together. whoever guessed "one week" won.

going in to week three, i guess we're still in the fishbowl as everyone's seeing the progression of our relationship, but it doesn't feel as much like we're on display. we're more of a fixture now.

get busy

today, i only had one class, after which i went for a coffee, which i normally do on tuesdays. afterwards, i came back to school and looked up how to fix my 6to4 network adapter, which has prevented me from accessing my internet (and the skype which doth connect me to the outside work whilst at home). so i printed out some stuff and will go try that. i also uploaded a bunch of photos from morocco onto my flickr site (http://flickr.com/photos/profepj/), but there are still some more from the other half of the week. i´ll get to those later.

now, i´m hungry and will be enjoying the weather and time to walk home. once i get home, i´ll eat and try to fix my network adapter problem, then go grocery shopping and jog later. i may or may not go to the gym today since i may not be able to go tomorrow.

isn´t today supposed to be my easy day?

don´t go chasing butterflies

or whatever that tlc song was from the 90s. see, my new girlfriend & i are 90s music fans.

that aside, i´d like to take a moment and talk about butterflies. you see, butterflies are what i normally have when i see a situation that might be remotly beneficial for me, then i overanalyze it from 14 different angles, and eventually talk myself out of it. or i freeze up and let these little butterflies grow into big butterflies that, as they fly en masse in my stomach, end up flying me away from this great situation.

so, last week, i had this big date with this wonderful girl. during the week, there were some butterflies. yes, there are always are. does she think i´m remotely attractive/funny/interesting/intelligent/coherent? does she think i have any concept of taste, whether in music, movies, food or clothes? might she want to spend some time with me? you know those butterflies.

on thursday right before our big (read: make-it-or-break-it) date, i went for a run to let out some of these butterflies, and by the time i was done 4 miles later, they had pretty much all flown out. long story short, it was a fantastic date! (on a side note, go see jesucristo superstar or its variant in inglés. it´s fantastic, both as a show and as good teaching.)

now comes the giddy getting-to-know-you phase, and i´m just eating it up. :)

smittenly yours,
paulo

back from the junited estates

after a month´s hiatus due to finishing exams, traveling to the junited estates for christmas vacation and going to morocco, i´m back in madrid. today is the first day of class, and it looks like this semester is going to shape up a little less hectic than the last, the main reason being i won´t have that thesis qualifying paper hanging over my head and finding every spare moment to work on it. the weather is better, the routine easy to fall into, and i´m getting more involved with church, which means i´m very much more now than before a madrileño.

the week after exams was a chill week for me. my flatmate left that sunday, and since i wasn´t leaving until that thursday, i had a lot of time to sleep. i was planning on going to the gym that week, but between sleeping late and going to bed late (apparently i was pre-adjusting my body to the eastern u.s. time zone) and going out with friends, i had little time for that, though i still went running everyday. tuesday, i went to the mountains to see snow and had the absolute BEST hamburger EVER in a mountain lodge restaurant. it was so goooood. wednesday, i spent it with a good friend, aaron, who accompanied me to the latino store where i got food to make for community group that night. after community group, aaron came over and spent the night since he was also leaving for the junited estates the next day, and i live closer to the airport.

two weeks in the states seems like a whirlwind, but i had a relaxing and peaceful time. i had two weird feelings that i wasn´t anticipating: 1) familiarity with driving and 2) no reverse culture shock. everything was oddly familiar, though i´d been away for the past 6 months. apparently i was ready for a visit and realized i wasn´t "coming home".

i took a long weekend right before new year´s and visited my brother & family in west arkansas. i had such a terrific time seeing him be a father to his two beautiful girls and to see how he and his wife have matured in their marriage and in parenthood. i got to love on the oldest and incarnate that "crazy uncle" image her parents keep telling her about. :) apparently they weren´t too far off. after returning to georgia for a few days, it started to hit me that i wanted to stay a little longer--that perhaps i had made too short a trip.

two hours after arriving in madrid, i was a tour guide to some students from georgia who were passing through madrid to study in salamanca. it was a whirlwind weekend, but we had a great time, and though doing touristy things, i got to see some exhibits in the art museums that i hadn´t seen last semester, so i was glad to show them around. besides, i like to take eating tours through cities, and my tours are, too. :)

a week in morocco was so much more than i had anticipated, and i´m so glad i had the chance to go. looking back now at the start of the trip, i had no idea what i was getting into, but it turned out to be an amazing time of making new friends and discovering how to listen to the Spirit more. besides, it was incredible to see the atlantic close up on this side and to have it in the background. this is even more spectacular since i live in the very center of spain.

i was gone for 3 short weeks, and it seems like not much has happened without me. i´m glad to be back home, glad to be with people who are my family here and make me appreciative of my family in the junited estates.

the sound of silence

so, my friend, paul who's currently in american samoa, told me that Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility was going to smite me for not blogging. my goodness, i've been studying and writing all this time. seriously. but all this silence is starting to get to me. maybe that's why i like living in the big city or even enjoyed (aspects of) teaching high school.

this morning, i had to get up a little early so i would be awake to take an exam, and as i'm studying and my flatmate is studying, it's just too darn quiet! maybe i'm more spanish than i thought (i can see you shaking your heads because you're saying 'no, he was always a little off.') it was explained to me by my former flatmate that the spanish seem to have a pathological fear of silence. like 2 seconds of quiet on a phone conversation is cause for panic, so just imagine hours of it.

then again, there's always the ticking of the keyboard.

Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility

i grew up listening to a prairie home companion by garrison keillor on national public radio, and he has said that in lake woebegone, everyone was lutheran, whether you really were or not, and the central church was the Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility.

to parallel that, i´ve been living here in (e)spain for almost four months, and i´ve come to realize that everyone´s catholic here, whether you really are or not. everyone from the señoras that wear the black overcoats and carry their little grocery carts that look like carryon luggage to the señores who meet in the bar as big as a bedroom to share a beer and a laugh to the young hipsters and businessmen that stop to look at the shoe stores every 5 meters. it´s especially evident when there are local and national festivals dedicated to saints. for example nov 9 here in madrid was a holiday recognized by the local government as the day of the Virgen de la Almudena, the patron saint of madrid, and they televised the mass in the plaza mayor and the subsequent procession of the clergy and (statue of) the virgen to the cathedral as in the manner of the thanksgiving day macy´s parade, replete with live helicopter footage as well as interviews with little girls along the route.

it´s also in the language, when to say that something is over the top, it´s la hostia (the eucharistic host); it´s perfectly normal to name your daughter maría josé or maría jesús and your son josé maría or jesús maría.

in spain, there´s a patron saint for everything, so i´m going to borrow from the luterans of nothern minnesota and take Nuestra Señora de la Perpetua Responsabilidad as the patron saint of students, particularly grad students, as she whispers to us when our papers are due, reminds us to turn off the television to study or to get off facebook and use the computer como Dios manda (as God commands) and write that 10 page paper.

so, that´s the news from madrid, where are the women wear heels that way too high, all the men wear pants that are too tight, and all the children are in strollers until they´re 7 years old.

Baby J Volume 2

my niece, Baby J Volume 2 (read dos), is going to be born next friday, 23 nov 2007! her older sister, dad and mum (especially) are very excited to meet her, as well as her extended family! i want her to know that she is very loved and that we and our church families around the world have been praying for her since we found out she was coming into our lives. i'm even planning a b-day party for her here in madrid to celebrate!

she's currently called Baby J Volume 2 because her mum and dad want her name to be special and especially for her. this nickname comes from her parents. of course, the initial J comes from her last name, and the Volume 2 is because her older sister was born last year; until she was born, we called her Humanita (literally, little human girl).

please join me in praying for a safe last week of pregnancy for my sis-in-law, a safe delivery of Baby J Volume 2 (by c-section at 7am CST) next friday, and for a smooth transition into the family.

crazy uncle paulo

triumphs addendum

Phil 4:13: I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

i've been reflecting on my past post, and i think i gave the impression that i was having these triumphs because of sheer human determination. that's not the impression i want to give at all, and i recognize that all the strength i have, any triumph i have is because God sustains me and has given me the ability to overcome any obstacle. he is the one who permits bad things to happen to us, but is the source of every good gift and eagerly blesses his children.

Job 12:10: In his hand is the life of every creature and the breath of all mankind.

triumphs

every time i do something, i see it as a triumph. i get up in the morning with no pain: triumph. i walk well: triumph. i run three miles a day five days a week: triumph. i run with pain: triumph. i ran five miles on sunday: triumph. i have never run five miles even before i got ill, so imagine the triumph i felt sunday afternoon!

tomorrow is four years since i started the major symptoms, and today i´m walking with a crutch. i don´t have pain, really, but weak function, and it´s discouraging because it has been four years since i got ill, and it´s a reminder that i´m not on the road to recovery, rather on the road of management. as i was running yesterday, i was thinking about this concept of triumphs. i don´t see my need to use a crutch today as a setback. what i would be set back from? rather, it´s another step in my managing my disorder.

i´m training for the madrid marathon in april. yes, that´s right. a marathon. how on earth, you might say, are you going to run a marathon when you have to lift your legs out of bed on any given morning? well, i´ll tell you. last thursday i was limping pretty bad, when my flatmate, who is my trainer, saw me changing to go running with him. he asked me how i was going to run when i could hardly walk. i told him, i don´t know, but we´ll see. it turns out that i limped to the park, ran the 3 miles like usual, then limped back. the same on sunday. so there. i´m not training to win the marathon; i´m pretty much planning on being the last one to cross the finish line.

but i´ll cross it.

the flight, the elephant and the sweet tea

last night i had a dream i which i traveled to the united states (after four years of being here in spain), mediated a marriage reconciliation, helped deliver a baby elephant and secure the next generation, wrestled with a leopard, and got the secret to good sweet tea, which, according to a dear lady who shares my birthday, is pot liquor from collards. who knew? alas, we don´t really have collards here in spain.

i woke up tired, as you can imagine, from having such a busy night.

at least i got the secret to good sweet tea.

running the race

so, what´s that verse about training to run the race so as you´re not flailing your arms and what not? well, i´m running and training, and i keep thinking about that verse as i do my miles (or kilometers, as i´m counting). it´s going well, and the weather has cooperated so far. no running in bitter cold nor blustery wind nor rain. though i´d probably just suck it up, knowing my newfound determind nature to do physical activity. oh, that and the absolute gratefulness to the Lord to be able to do it!! can i get a ´wha wha´for Jesus?

ok, sorry that was corny, but hey, it´s culturally relavant. and i like being culturally relavant.

i´m currently reading a book with my community group called irrestible revoultion by shane claiborne, and it´s got my upset, raring to go, and ready to talk. but what is it about this particular book that´s got me so riled up? more to share later.

but now, to run.

football vs fútbol

http://dentites.blogspot.com/2007/10/for-love-of-football.html

this, dear european friends and neighbors, comes from a friend of mine studying in charleston, sc. though i am a natural-born american, i would probably go anyhow just to see why in the world american football is so popular in the united states, or at least for u.s. americans. well, maybe i´d have to put on my espanish accent, ju know, so as not to raise any of the suspishons. becos, ju know, my english no so gudth.

gracias, josh.

i know a man with a wooden leg named smith

oh yeah, what´s the name of his other leg?

that´s how i felt this morning when i took me about 2 1/2 hours to get out of bed. i had every intention to get up, do 2 loads of laundry, transpose notes and start writing thesis prospectus, read for my sintaxis class, go running, shower, cook for community group this afternoon, go to class. all that was transferred 2 1/2 hours later when i woke up, had to drag my legs out of bed, started cooking without running nor going to the gym, and then i had to rest. so i watched a bit of la ruleta de la suerte, which i much rather prefer to wheel of fortune. then i showered, studied and went to class. not the day i had planned, but it´s not over yet. we´ll see how the rest of the evening pans out. i´ve still got to get home, grab the meal i made and make it to community group to heat up.

this morning reminded me that despite the physical strength i´ve had in order to work out and run, i´m still reliant on God´s strength for all things. without him guiding me, it´s like what paul said about doing great things without love--it doesn´t mean anything.

soy inmigrante pt 2

this past weekend, i was a guide for students from georgia visiting madrid before starting the semester term in salamanca, the same university i studied at during the summer of 2002. it was great to show them the madrid i know and love, but to also experience the history of madrid for the first time through their eyes. i had a lot of fun showing them around to places i´ve almost taken for granted. so, i took my camera along and got some touristy shots just like they did. it´s ok, i´m with them. i´m their guide. that sort of thing. ;) i took some pictures of monuments on top of the palace, and looking at them on the screen after i downloaded them, it was so striking how blue the sky was. no, friends, that was not photoshop; the sky was actually that blue! there´s nothing like a spanish sky. of course, today it´s cloudy and rainy, as it´s turned autumn here, but still, i had a great glimpse of it on friday!

so, the reason for the immigrant title of this post is the confirmation by my students that i am, indeed, an immigrant--almost more spanish than georgian. it makes sense. my english is awful (i´m constantly catching myself translating from spanish to english), i eat late, i drink coffee three to four times a day, i walk everywhere, i can spot an ´immigrant´from 50 paces, walk fast on the sidewalk, and fight my way on and off the metro. these are things that were quite strange to these georgia students. but to me, it´s just a way of life. i think with my own flat, i´ve finally settled into a routine and a new way of life. yes, i know, there´s so much i have yet to learn and so much that has been a combination of instinct and previous knowledge. but, i´m feeling more at home here.

soy inmigrante

hi, i´m an immigrant. i didn´t realize this until last night. or maybe it was this morning on the metro on the way to class. i have an american passport, yes, but for as much as i try to adapt to spanish life by the way i dress, the way i speak, the way i listen to my mp3 player on the metro, the more i realize that i am different. i´m in a foreign country. i like it, and i relate in many ways to it, but there are just some things that are easier by being a citizen or at least a long-term resident.

isnt´t that my case as a christian, though? aren´t i supposed to be set apart by the way i think, act, speak from those in the world?

sí, soy inmigrante.