Ghost apartments

About two blocks from where I live in Spain are these apartments. In my head, I call them ghost apartments. Our entire neighborhood "urbanización" in Spain was built in 2006-2008 brand new from empty ground.

Many of you may recall that the economy got a bit dicey in the late 2000s. This hit Spain a bit earlier due to some overbuilding with some EU funds and well, some other government policies forcing certain standards. Time stood still for a lot of places here including these apartments.

Out my kitchen window I can see an entire square block that the electric boxes, streets, curbs, were all put in, but no houses. Right next to these apartments is a full kids play area and park walkways.

I would love to get a look inside these. From the exterior, they look fully finished but not a single soul has lived in them ever. Probably not a good scenario for any paranormal occurrences. For me it's the ghost of a building. A place completely constructed but never used. I'd love to see if it is 100% finished, appliances and everything or just a shell.

Our entire neighborhood infrastructure was put in place all those years ago and is barely utilized. When we moved into our house a year ago, it was about 7 years old. It had never been lived in, ever. Brand new but with peeling paint because there'd never been heating or cooling. Also a clogged plumbing system on one half of the house from construction debris! No one knew that either.

So now, the economy is beginning to turn up again, quite a bit slower than the USA, but instead of those apartments being advertised, rented, or sold, new ones are being built a few streets in the other direction. I can only imagine there's a bankruptcy thing going on somewhere or the empty buildings in our neighborhood (town homes and apartment blocks) are in a no man's land between owners and banks.

I suppose I have a nosy streak (like my book character Blanche?). I like to know what's inside and behind closed windows and doors. My folks used to drive us around at night for the pleasure of peeking into the lit windows of a mansioned neighborhood near where we lived. It started very young for me, I guess!

Is there somewhere you want to get a look at?

Here's a link to another earlier blog about trespassing in a place that my curiosity couldn't resist!

English speaking friends and my writing habits

For the last eight weeks a friend I've known for 20 years has been here in Spain and another came to visit in the same time period. It has been unusual for us to have visitors the last two years. After seven years in Madrid the newness of that and visiting has worn off for a lot of our friends and family. A lot of people say they're coming but never get around to it. That international flight is a big pain in the internal time clock.

The writer in me has noticed that having a spontaneous friend to hang out with has ground my writing habits to a halt. The weather too has played a part. It's gotten cooler and sun down is coming earlier, so if I want to have a walk or anyone else in my social circle does, well that first hour after work needs to be taken advantage of immediately. 

Last year, I wrote after work for an hour usually. This was stronger in the summer when it was too hot to do anything involving motion. Plugging away an hour a or more a day produced a nice draft in about nine months. Editing is harder for me already and I've had some shifts in my day job responsibilities that have wrung out my brain soI've done little post work editing.

I turned my energies to writer work on the weekends earlier this year. It sounds really dull and there was a time in my life I would have never been able to sit still and write or edit on weekends, but now I  do, happily. Perhaps because I don't need (or think I need) to shop for house stuff or clothes. I do like to explore Madrid, but that takes a lot of energy I can't always muster.

So the last eight weeks, my visitor friends have wanted to go walking after work and see things on the weekends. Generally I've had people to be with and it's made me realize how absent that is from my life lately and I hadn't noticed.

I have friends who are permanent residents here in Spain, but they don't generally invite us places, many have kids and organizing outtings is a challenge. While we speak the language, it's still a lot more work to socialize in amother tongue and we often don't make the effort. We travel for work often so people aren't in the habit of connecting with us.  I really hadn't realized this until my English speaking friend came. It didn't hurt that she stayed in our area since we aren't in a central location either. 

I've realized I need to be more disciplined with my writing and not just rely on the absence of social activities as my writing crutch! I guess I enjoy time with my imaginary friends and forget to make the effort to get out and see real ones. 

Pro or anti Daylight Savings Time?

Daylight savings sneaked up on me this last weekend here in Spain. Fortunately I had slept late, a prereq for a nice weekend morning, and my Sunday am appointment was not missed either. I noticed that despite having an extra hour, I was still running late in the end. Seems like you go into leisure mode when you think you have an extra hour!

Another shock came today when I went to the store after work and came out of the store to pitch black skies of night. How does that surprise you every single year?

The pro in this case was waking up to light. I really, really don't like to get up in the dark, so I do not mind at all the next few weeks that will give me a day lit morning.

I will miss the longer evenings though. For some reason, even though the temperature didn't change, going for a long walk in the dark doesn't have the same appeal as a sunset stroll. In the heat of summer, however, we had to wait until 10 pm for the streets to cool down enough for a walk. Us and the rest of our Spanish village! Now we are all scurrying to the park at 5 or 6 pm. Our internal meters all seek the same bit of light. Or it could be I'm getting to be more Spanish in my life style? They seem to do things in groups, rarely are people doing things solitaire.

 With Europe changing a week before the USA, I get messed up in my internal calculation of what time it is for my people back home. Then there's my grandpa in Arizona which doesn't participate in daylight savings so while his time doesn't change, I have to try to remember is this the season where he's 8 or 9 hours different from me?

I know a few people who are adamantly anti-time changing antics on the clock. Just leave it alone, they say. They don't care about long days in the summer.

I also have heard the other argument that they should just leave it switched so that the longer light is in the evenings, don't switch back and forth.

Extra light? No change? Which one are you?

Food time may not be the right time for you in Spain

This is something that always comes up with visitors to Spain. A friend has recently come to visit and in addition to noticing my food shopping procrastination,  she made me realize that we eat at funny times.

We don't eat Spanish style but after living here so long and of course dealing with the weather the same as everyone else, we have inadvertently adapted to the food schedule.

The system as I, a foreigner, understand it in Spain is generally eating five times a day. It goes something like this:

Breakfast: maybe a cup of coffee, or a cigarette, or both. Juice and a piece of toast if you're all into it.
A toast favorite of mine here is pan tomate: toasted left over bagette bread smeared with puré of fresh tomatoe, olive oil, and sea salt.

Around 10:30-11am. It's break time. I can't seem to get a firm grasp on what this is called in Spain. Almuerzo is a possibility but some say otherwise. It is not uncommon for everyone to go get a coffee from an office environment around this time and eat something small. It is very common to see people who work manually sitting in the shade or on a sidewalk eating a bocadillo (sandwich on bagette bread) and drinking wine or beer or coke. It's a snack to get you through til lunch.

2pm Comida. In the Madrid area, this is just referred to as Comida maybe different in other parts. This is normally a three course lunch. On weekdays this is a very affordable and filling option. Last week I paid 8 Euros for: course 1 - cannelones; course 2 - skirt steak and fries; course 3 - an ice cream cone, drink included. It's sort of stick to your ribs physical worker food out in the villages where we are at. In the city a few minutes away, sometime it has more finesse but it's always the same structure. This is traditionally the big meal of the day. Children are released from school to go home and eat big and they come back at 4:30 or so which makes for a challenging day for working parents and a lot of grandparent involvement or paying the school to keep the kids for this time frame. After this would be your nap if you take one, not everyone does, and many people are too far away from home to go back anyway.

5-8 pm is merienda. Again snack time but more commonly this is something sweet. A donut or tortitas: that is American style pancakes with chocolate syrup and whip cream. This is the only time of day McDonald's serves pancakes here. People generally make sure kids get something during this time frame.

Dinner, well that depends. I understand that you might feed the kids here at 8 or 8:30pm. Restaurants do not open for dinner until 8, 8:30 or 9pm depending on their preference. I've entered a restaurant at 7:50pm and been told to come back later.

For Valentine's day one year, we left our house at 7:30pm, arrived, were seated and ate our dinner as the only patrons in the restaurant. At 9pm when we were leaving, a few couples were coming in. A fancy dinner out would probably be scheduled at 10pm or perhaps 11pm.

The next question every American asks is how do they sleep with all that food on their stomach. I have no idea. I do know people stay up later here generally. Even Spaniards sometimes admit it's not good for you to eat so late.

If they are eating at home, this 9-10pm meal is something lighter, not a big three course meal. A Spanish tortilla for instance would be a dinner. It's like an egg and potato omelet but made in a flat pan shape which is a fine art here.

I usually do eat breakfast. Mother raised me to eat something before I left the house. I don't do 10:30 snack/almuerzo though on occasion will eat a cookie if I'm starving around 11am. We eat lunch in the office between 1:30 and 2 usually, rarely do we go out for the three course meal. It takes a long time and even though affordable doesn't meet our budget.

 I try not to eat anything after work around 6pm but if I'm starving I might have a snack. Dinner without air conditioning in a summer of 100+F at times got later and later. We ate consistently at 8pm but often it drifted into 9pm. Now that the weather is cooling, we might eat a little earlier. I like the free time aspect when I arrive home and often write then, rather than "starting dinner,"  so it's not going to get too much earlier than 8pm.

When we are home in the USA and someone wants to beat the crowd to a restaurant at say 5:30pm -- it sort of gives me reverse culture shock. It seems like eating a late lunch to me. Funny what you get used to without even knowing it.

Telephone company induced culture shock

I had a guy who is living outside his own culture say he never had culture shock. I think he doesn't know the definition and has an ego that makes him think he's better if he doesn't have it. Maybe he is.

Having lived quite a number of years outside the USA, I would say culture shock can sneak up on you from very unexpected directions and maybe doesn't look like you'd think, even after years. After seven years in Spain, I define my culture shock moments by an unexpected and disproportional rage or reaction of some kind. It's not that the provoking event doesn't merit some reaction, it's just that proportionally culture shock jumps you several levels ahead of what it would be in your home culture.

Take Burger King for instance. The new one nearby has -- in English  -- on the seats "Have it your way" and yet a friend of mine who is particular about how she likes her food was told "no se puede." It cannot be. Yes, it's annoying and yes it's absurd but sometimes something simple can blow you out of the water. This same Burger King which has a permanent sign on it's pillar proclaiming "24 horas" told me two weeks ago at 11 am -- 24 hours yes, but not today, only on weekends.

The last two weeks I have been at conferences. The first week was here in Spain and people came from all over Europe. Now, I made the mistake of thinking these people are Europeans so they will not have a strong reaction to Spain.

What I discovered is that I am accustomed to the eccentricities of Spain and I have accepted many of them. I don't always like it but I'm used to it.  Now my northern European colleagues were suddenly asking why things were and I had no answer. I realized eventually that they were uncomfortable with the hotel changing the hours or the exact order of things or the details we had all agreed upon.

Now perhaps I have given up fighting these things since it takes so much energy or perhaps I have just accepted them as inevitable. I realized my colleagues were having a mild discomfort and confusion which is culture shock.

I know my significant other and I have each separately or occasionally together had moments of raging against something simple or terribly complicated, but invariably something we could not control.

Last Monday in fact after conference no. 1 we arrived home to discover our internet and cable tv service had quit.  We reset the system a couple times. Nothing.

In the USA the next step is make a phone call. We put that off until morning because we didn't have the energy. The next morning the automated system couldn't understand my man's Spanish. So I asked the admin assistant at work to call. She perhaps didn't realize I expected her to find the entire answer for me. She got me into a queue for English support and handed the phone back to me.

After being on hold for more than 30 minutes and passed between offices because they had me on hold for the wrong office, I found myself talking to someone in heavily accented English on perhaps the worst speaker phone I have ever heard. It was near impossible to understand anything. I fought thru the preliminaries of my phone number etc. I kept say I can't understand you. This degredated into him shouting at me and hanging up on me. I thought I was suppose to hang up on the cable company - at least I could picture that happening in the USA, but here they hung up on ME in frustration.

My Spanish speaking colleague said I should call and renounce the guy which is the word they use here for filing a complaint. It's a very expressive word that I like a lot and would like to try sometime, but I'd been passed around so much I had no idea who or what department I was talking to.

So I called back and then the automated system hung up on me. Then I called back and they tried to sell me something before they asked me my problem. Then I finally talked to someone in Spanish. I discovered embarrassingly that the payment didn't go thru as my account got too low. Okay, I can fix that. I only needed you to tell me.

I inquired two or three times in case my Spanish isn't working well on how to go about solving this. Do I need a number when I got to the bank and pay it? No. So then I repeat their expectations and what I should do a couple times. 

My man goes to the bank and there proceeds to get yelled at for not having the right information to pay this bill despite my close questioning of the phone company/cable company person.

Something that is simple or perhaps frustrating in the USA, turns into epic proportions in another culture. In the end, we figured out how to pay in another way online and service was restored but not before we'd had a war with our own emotions and the system. Often we just don't fight things because we just don't have the energy for it, but sometimes even in the same day, we have magical moments and love where we're living!

The art of procrastinating on food

Does everyone have major grocery purchasing aversions like I do? I've become the queen of substitutions for recipes -- assuming I even bother with a recipe for dinner -- in order to avoid stopping by a store.

In the last month, my significant other and I have achieved a new all time high or would it be stooped to a low(?) in avoiding food shopping. Today we had a conversation that went something like this:
I could eat a spoonful of peanut butter for breakfast.
Oh, you're out of cereal? Don't we have bread?
No.
Hey -- we have tostas. (Spanish pre-toasted crunchy bread slices. Think melba toast.)
Perfect, peanut butter, jelly, and tostas.
I've still got cereal.
Perfect.

This conversation took place on the way to get something out to eat for lunch, so the leftovers in the fridge could be lunch tomorrow.

Everyone does avoid the store on occasion (don't they?)  but we've really turned it into a game the last few weeks. I find great satisfaction in raiding a kitchen that seems to have nothing in it and coming up with dinner. Granted it's going to be dinner with not all the ingredients but dinner it will be.

It's funny there have been times in my life when this substitution or avoidance was due to financial constraints, but this time it's just shear stubbornness or laziness. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that it's "vacation" month in Spain and everyone is either at the beach or wishing they were, so my own personal take is avoiding the reality of grocery carts.

Now, if I'm honest this month of avoiding the store has had to necessarily require visits to the corner shop in our village. It tries to do an impression of a grocery story but it really only has two aisles and a VERY limited selection. I would say most US convenience stores are probably on par with the selection. So we have picked up a couple more liters of shelf milk there, a couple lemons, some lunch meat and bread when we decided to have sandwiches all last weekend, uh toilet paper, and a few odds and ends. We also buy a lot of random things that just accumulate in the cabinets that have aided this creative non-food-buying marathon.

I know we are probably spending too much buying the odds and ends like this rather than breaking down and going to the big store, but we've been one-upping the sensation  that you need to go to the store for a couple weeks now.

So last Monday we were going to grill and had thawed all the meat in the freezer. A freak storm came up that was glorious and humid for a few hours of relief in in our high desert, but no grilling. Hmm, but we do need to eat. So eggs to the rescue -- we had a revuelto frozen package and voila dinner. Revuelto is a veg mix of some sort that you mix with eggs in Spain. Tuesday we grilled all the thawed meat and proceeded to eat it for the next couple days. Thursday on the way to work with the last two burgers in a bag for lunch we laughed and said okay we have to go tonight that was all fun but time is up.

Oops. It's a holiday and the grocery store near us is closed. Now we could have driven 30 minutes and shopped elsewhere, but not us. We decided to push it further. We discovered some forgotten fish fillets in the freezer which my hubby creatively turned into fish curry with some also forgotten cranberries.

Enough fish curry for lunch on Friday! I had a revelation that I still had a lemon and could reproduce that lemon pasta dish minus the chicken. I mean really if there's rice and pasta in the house, you can keep the game going awhile, right?

Saturday we walked to the corner pastelleria (pastry shop) and got goodies and a liter of milk for breakfast and we're (eureka!) invited to a barbecue for dinner. So we have not achieved this non-shopping streak without the help of others and restaurants to be fair.

Breakfast is going to be our undoing I think. It's going to have to be this week. Or we could make a couple more stops in the corner store to make it to a full month of non-shopping. Like I said, we've still got rice.

Fado and other emotions

Fado is a traditional music from Portugal. Other than a curious measure or two of music online I had no experience with it. Living in Spain I have more exposure to Flamenco music, so I found it a fun exercise to contrast and compare the Iberian peninsula's folk music recently.

I went to a concert of Minha Lua in la Sala Galieo Galilei in Madrid. I would never have found this on my own but an actor in one of our work projects knew my husband likes world music and he suggested we go hear his friend sing Fado. It made me feel very connected which is very Spanish, but it's a rare thing for me.

Flamenco music is accompanied by dancing. More dancing than singing it seems sometimes and it's full of violent emotions. The dancing is a stomping generally on a wooden surface for maximum volume. The stomping becomes part of the beat of the music. It's hypnotic and in a way shocking for the pure emotion of the thing. It is generally strong themes, love, love lost, why'd you leave me kind of stuff. I suppose it is the country music of Spain but with no relation to US country music in style.

Here's a link to a polished recording of some flamenco.  Even though this was done specifically for camera you get a feel for the emotion of the music.

Flamenco has a sort of gut-level emotion sensation. I've been in a performance where the woman's emotion was so strong that the young man at my table was visibly embarrassed even though he couldn't understand the words that cried out why, oh, why did you leave me.

So if Flamenco is emotion, I'd say it has sadness and anger in it.  Perhaps of sense of having been done wrong.

The Fado music (mind you this is my own experience here) was deep, deep emotion too. Each song seemed to have the ability to tug on a string in your soul. It pulled deeply sad emotions from you. The singer Vicky Cruz of Minha Lua translated some of the songs into Spanish so I understood some. It was a lot of love lost, loneliness, and poetry. It too was pure emotion but without the anger.  Soul wrenching sadness.  There was no dancing -- that's not to say that they don't ever, but it doesn't appear to go hand in glove with the Fado like it does the Flamenco.

It was a lovely evening. Vicky was accompanied by a cello and a guitar and  it was beautiful, touching and full of emotion. Turns out my phone videos won't upload, so here's a link to the group.
Minha Lua

Patron huh?

I live in a village in Spain. Friday was patron saint day in the village. I had no idea what that meant. I came home from work and took the two Spanish dogs that live with me for a walk. Before we left, I noticed that little local cathedral bells were going off at an unusual time and at an unusual level of volume.

We walked toward our usual dirt track on the edge of town which is along a ridge of hills. The intensity of the bells from the cathedral was so loud that it bounced off the hills and sounded as if the hills actually were ringing bells. It was a startling acoustic sensation and I actually stopped to look in case there was something there.

Since the bells were continuing for such a long time, I decided to veer off our dirt path into the village main streets just to see if there was anything to see. I don't really know what patron saint day means but I figured something was going on nearby.

I reached a main roundabout that converges five roads and has flags from the Madrid region, the EU, the village, etc. As I crossed the big road on the red elevated crosswalk, I noticed that loads of people, surely the whole village, was walking uphill toward the cathedral. They were converging here at the round about taking the calle to the church. They were all dressed up, like wedding in Spain dressed up which is serious. Lots of high heels, dresses, the men all had on suits. My jeans and two dogs got some dirty looks from the older ladies, so I decided to walk across them and go another way rather than join the stream.

I worked my way uphill in the village thinking I'd get above the cathedral and look down on the crowd. Meanwhile the bells are still going. People were driving into the tiny side streets searching for parking and frantically putting on suit coats as they trotted down to the church. When you are from a village in Spain or your family is from a village, you come back for important days. Looks like Patron Saint day is one of them.

I was startled to see an older lady with a cane not dressed up and wandering around like me. I said the customary "hola" but as I chose my cross street she stopped me. Over the bells, she hollered in my ear about not wanting to go that way or I'd end up right in front of the entire "public." She asked me where I lived.

For some reason, I find this hard to explain in the village. Of course I know my street address, but people tend to say by areas. I can't seem to memorize mine - I've never seen it written out since it's sort of local slang. I always try to say I live by the park. The park is Arroyo de Tesoro. Treasure brook, I suppose would be a translation. I'd call it wild cat, ditch with water-sometimes park. Well, I managed to croak out, "treasure." She says where? I say "By the park, treasure park." I can really freeze up in Spanish and sound like an idiot. She got the idea and told me to go down and turn the other way. I obeyed. It seemed best even though I wanted to see what was going on.

I was by the stinky trashcans by the fish shop when another family crossed in front of me. One woman had a Muslim head covering and style of dress but could easily have been Spanish from her appearance. The rest of the family was in jeans and regular Spanish whatever Friday afternoon clothes. Then I noticed they're speaking Arabic. Okay, nobody in our village does that and we're a long way from downtown Madrid.

The bells stop and fire works start exploding up by the church. The two dogs start trotting and as the fireworks escalate, they are dragging me two-horse team style down the street toward home. We did make it safely if somewhat surreal-y.

I decided to walk to the grocery shop for some diet coke. At the round about by the stinky trash cans, I see that all these dressed up people I saw before are marching behind a procession statue of Jesus on the cross. So I walked up to where they are stopped by the bank. When I get close, they have stopped the procession and all the dressed up people who have babies are trying to balance them on the side of the statue platform and take their pictures. So this is really unusual for a girl from Kansas, and terribly interesting, so I whip out my camera and take pictures and then decide to do a video.

I'm panning the crowd and the music starts and I realize I'm filming my neighbors. Nice one. The weird American neighbor lady who doesn't know how to behave appropriately. How many times have you seen a neighbor going down the street and  you stop to take their picture? Hmmm. Going to chalk this up to a very interesting cultural learning day.

Can you see the babies being held up there on the right?

Foster Dog

I was ready to leave this morning in a long flow-y sweater that I had to take off to clean up diarrhea from the attic floor. Sigh. Mini-Moo-Mora couldn't hold the special treat of some meat we gave her last night.

About six weeks ago, we got talked into being foster dog care givers. A lady in our Spanish village had watched our dog to raise funds for the rescue society here. Yolanda then started talking to us about foster caring a small dog in the rescue system. I guess Yolanda usually takes in the large dogs and this little one really needed to be somewhere else.

Since we had a little dog and they had gotten along while at Yolanda's house, she thought it was a good fit. Enter into our lives: Mini.

Mini had been found on the street abandoned, pregnant, malnourished and full of bugs. She had been restored to health and is seeking a home. When I went to the ASCAN facebook page and website I saw no record of Mini. Turns out in her original home she was Mora (blackberry) Thus we dubbed her Mini (as in miniature) - Mora.

I noticed some little cream cups I had displayed the name brand: Mini-Moo, so her name continues to mutate. Mini-Moo-Mora. Moocher would not be a bad one to add to that either. She's perpetually hungry after her street life.

She has anxiety about being separated from us and we spent several weeks having rather fussy bedtimes which we have now resolved. It involves a game of hide and seek with some dog food that occurs after we turn out the lights and shut the door.

Mini also had issues with not wanting to go to the bathroom in our "yard/garden" which has no grass. Mini needs grass to do her business. So despite being house broken when she came to us, we've passed a few weeks in confusion about where is a good place to go. We had it conquered until the diarrhea set back this morning, but she's definitely getting the hang of it.

So we've met several people in the village, when we've been on walks, who were part of Mini's rescue. They all love her - you can't not love her because she is so loyal to anyone who is kind to her after her abandonment. They all warn us about being cautious about finding a home for her. Apparently there is a lot of dumping dogs that goes on here still and that the police don't really do much about it.

After all the warnings, we are nervous about finding her a home.

Mini joins Dulcinea who is our Spanish pound adoptee dog that we've had for six years and is a joy for us, but we never imagined being a two dog household. Oh dear. Not sure where this is going. Anyone want a super loyal dog? We think she's part pit bull and part dachsund because she's as stout and compact as they come. 8.5 kilos of tough muscly love!

Dulcinea on the left, puffy in a winter coat, black and delicate, Mini on the right, all muscle and she lets Dulcinea win.

When? American Culture shock

I've never been a morning person. That is my first confession. I have a good time if I get up and join along a party going somewhere early on a Saturday (a trip to the lake), but there is usually a soul searching moment before I agree wondering if I really want to or if it is worth it. In Spain, we meet at 8:30am for a trip to the mountains. Still feels early.

In Spain, things usually start later. Our church started at 11:30 (out at 2pm). The church we went to in language school only had evening church at 6pm. No one ever wants to meet for breakfast because they don't do that and there's no where to go eat breakfast. Events in general don't start exactly on time.

On the other hand, they think nothing of meeting at 9 or 10pm for dinner and then going out after that. I did go to hear my brother play in a band recently leaving the house at 9pm and that didn't cross my mind at all as unusual at all.

I was recently at an American event that started at 8:30am. Someone made the comment about starting on time and getting "up and running" in the morning and how satisfying those two things are.

I recognized that my own personality of late rising and the combo of being in Spain where things aren't started on time generally makes me less and less comfortable with strong punctuality and early meetings. It was a very North American moment. On the other hand, I'm a grown up and know when I'm home I need to get with the US system. It's just funny to find yourself outside your cultural norm.

A day in the life

Backstory: For six months, I worked on contacting our broadcast partners and others who had been interested in doing one of our Bible stories video projects in another language to arrange a foreign language shoot for the Go Borderless event. After many disappointments and what seemed to be spiritual opposition, I discovered that two guys were coming from Bangladesh to the Go Borderless 10 day training event. We exchanged the script and started planning for them to stay an extra week for the editing process etc. I was so relieved to finally have something locked down and something that would touch so many lives. I was to direct the shoot so I had been out scouting locations, the direction of the sun at various times of day, etc. We would take half the team and shoot half of the man on cameras segments one day and the following day finish them with the other half of the team. Everyone would experience a field shoot and at the same time we'd have another product done in another language. So finally it was all coming together.

Then two weeks before the shoot, we got word that the Spanish embassy had denied the Bengali men's visas to attend Go Borderless. We sent appeals called, faxed. The embassy wouldn't budget. Now with only two weeks to go I was starting over.

The first thing I was sure about was it had to be someone local - we couldn't ask anyone to fly in at the last minute. So I called one of the Christian production houses that also does a drug rehab ministry that is based in Spain. In my unpretty Spanish and his bumpy English, Dani and I talked. He did have someone who could do the man on camera parts. He was busy that day and said send him an email. I had our resident organizer, Spanish speaker, and lawyer - Silvia verify with him. Yes, yes, everything was fine, but he was always too busy to talk it through.

The day of the shoot: I'm organizing the team of Go Borderless volunteers, the equipment is getting loaded in the Speed the Light van for transport to an old village nearby. A man named Javi shows up dressed in jeans and a t-shirt. I start putting make up on him in preparation to go to our location. We are talking, in Spanish, I'm explaining what the day will involve. He thinks it's weird I'm putting make up on him. I try to say we always do this for talent. After we get him done, he is on the phone. I thought he was dressed casually but Dani would be using this for broadcast so I assumed he sent Javi with the casual look on purpose. Javi has told me he is usually a camera man.

We load up and get ready to leave and Javi is still on the phone. We get there and start setting up the equipment on our first of four locations for the day. We are ready to start shooting and I finally understand Javi. He is not a talent/on camera person. He has been on the phone trying to get his boss to send out David who usually does this kind of thing. No wonder Javi thought it was weird I was putting makeup on a camera man.

But we need to start shooting. We are all set up, on location, ready. So I make Javi do the first take. I don't know if David is going to show up ever much less now. After one take, we have to reset some lights and teleprompter things and a car screeches up near us. A man, David, in a suit jumps out. This is the guy. Somewhere we miscommunicated with Dani or he did with someone else. So I'm in the middle of the street in this village putting make up on David (Thankfully, we'd brought it with us!)

David was very good at the man on camera talent and the shoot went really well. Until location #3. A week previously I'd checked this location. Silvia had filed a permit with the town to shoot. Suddenly, the day we need to shoot, they are loudly putting metal scaffolding up in front of the old cathedral. I adjust the shoot plan and we squeeze a shot in that doesn't include scaffolding. AND we do it while the scaffolding men are at lunch - or we would have had no audio whatsoever.

It was a crazy day. I've never had talent change midstream like this. The Spanish version of Path of Jesus was completed and used by the local broadcaster here in Spain who also has stations in South America. In addition, it is being shared with Assemblies of God churches in Spain and that is just the beginning.

Why Madrid?

We do media work out of Madrid, Spain. It's missionary work that reaches into at least 20 other languages right now and has been in as many as 50 languages at any given time. It's nice to live in Spain, but honestly I'd rather be back in KC with friends and family, but I know I have a mission from God to do this work.

So the most frequently asked question: Why Madrid? The group we work with International Media Ministries used to be in Brussels, Belgium. We thought we were going back there originally, but after we applied to be missionaries the police raided the building in Brussels. The story that I've heard is that they cracked down on visas and someone at the church nearby wasn't quite legal and somehow that spilled across the street to IMM and other ministries. Eventually negotiations opened up the opportunity for the church and school to continue, but the authorities didn't budge on the media people having visas.

So a search started for somewhere else to locate the ministry. We weren't part of this and don't know the whole story except they were looking a lot of places. The Spanish church offered some land and said they believed in IMM. Free land and support, a done deal.

Spain as it turns out is very arid and looks a bit like the lands Jesus walked on earth and so we are able to shoot a lot of things around the corner from our new offices in olive groves. That was an unexpected benefit. Our productions because of people and location, do not look American. That's important when we are sending it into a variety of places in the world, some of which are hostile to the US or don't want to be fed "western" ideas. It's a bit of divine serendipity that occured with the move to Spain.

We are also sort of mid-way in the world for working with people from other cultures on projects be they from Asia, Africa, or other parts of Europe. We are also at hand for the variety of broadcaster meetings and connections that are often made in Europe. This is how we get the products we make out on the airwaves, so the meetings are crucial to getting the good news out to people.

So it has been a blessing we never expected. The people have been very kind to us as foreigners in their land and we have learned a lot living there. We do enjoy our time in Spain, but it's certainly not Kansas.

I feel ignorant

I had a moment this week that I used the word ignorant in the literal sense of the word. I was on a tech support call if that helps any. I couldn't get the new website to load and I knew that I was simply ignorant of some step in the process. (I must be missing a similar step for the printer, but I digress).

We are about to start doing public speaking each week about our lives in Spain making videos. I realized after living in Madrid the last four years people expect me to be an authority on Spanish culture, but I feel ignorant. In four years, it seems I've barely scratched the surface and now I must speak for an entire country.

It's not that I didn't gain a lot of knowledge in Spain, I did. It's just that I really only know about my own experiences. I had one culture class from a real Spaniard but that was 3 days about five years ago. I knew and interacted with a few Spaniards but my daily life was with missionaries and other immigrants.

My only real Spanish friends were from church and there again most of the people sustaining the churches we attended were not from Spain. Romanians and South Americans seem to keep the church alive. I know compared to the random person on the street I do know a lot about Spain, but I don't feel an authority on a country so diverse. Each region has its quirks and laws and in some cases language.

Now don't get me wrong, it's a blast to get to talk about it, but I feel sheepish speaking for an entire people group with my limited experiences. Most people are only interested in about 15 minutes worth of conversation about my life in Spain, sometimes only five minutes. So traveling around and visiting to do our fund raising is a fun opportunity to blabber on and on about what I do THINK about Spain or tell my personal experiences. Hopefully a year from now I haven't left a lot of people thinking the wrong things about my other home.

Ready or not here I come.

Signs of Spring

Spring is popping up here - and it's just February 28. I have lived many, many years in a climate that has a much longer winter and this is a really wild sensation.

I still have all my sweaters out. Our winter was so mild there are two heavy ones I never wore. I think the winter here has the potential to be colder than it happened to be this year, but it ends much earlier that's for certain.

We get most of our rain through the winter, so the usually brown hills around us are greening up. The pansies in our yard never died during the winter so they are popping up with flowers. The early blooming trees are sprouting white and pink petals. It's hard to believe it's so early.

I feel a little guilty about enjoying this since everyone has had such a hard winter. I have to remind myself to get out and enjoy it now because it will get really, really hot later.

Another sign of spring is strawberries. My favorite fruit. Last year I missed them because I thought it was some weird hot house aberration last year when they came in February. I'm learning that things disappear after they go out of season, so you have to enjoy them while they last.

Not sure if this will show up very well, but tonight we had a brief shower and a very strong rainbow with the beginning of a double. The end of the rainbow was out in the wild lands behind our house. First on a power line poll which is kind of funny because that is a pot of gold for someone. Then the end of the rainbow moved to the rabbit warren we can see, hmmm.