Remember me?

So after a couple people asked me, I decided enough time has gone by since I last updated my blog. It looks like the last time was around January 9th so... yeah... we're about due for one. The problem is, I have no idea where to start. I think the last two months have caused more positive change in me than the last 6 years combined. It feels like I am growing more mature and closer to God on a daily basis.

I have become pretty heavily involved in the church that I go to here in Madrid, which is called Oasis. It's a church that was founded by Christian Associates and it is still a pretty young church. It ministers to a lot of people like me who are only here for a year or two so its a very interesting community, but I have met some of the greatest people of my life there. I'm finding so many friends who are really on fire for Christ who are really challenging me to grow. After coming back to Spain I got myself into singing lessons with an American woman that lives here. She really knows her stuff so I'm learning a lot and I've started singing in church every now and then. Oh! Some of my friends here are really into the film thing (which used to be one of my aspirations), so using my friend's camera and my editing equipment we made a pretty hilarious video for our friend Amy's birthday. So not only do I sing now, you will also see that I've picked up some Flamenco skills.

Along with all of that, I have also been faced with some of the biggest challenges of my life, especially financially. The amazing thing is that while even now I am not sure how everything will work out, God has been reminding me along the way that He is totally in charge right now. Some of you were around for my big freak out over the summer which prompted a big, dramatic note on facebook. You'd think I would have learned after that how to rely on God but I still found myself in a panic not too long ago. However, I think I'm finally getting it through my head that He takes care of us in supernatural ways if that's what it takes and He hasn't let me go under yet. Now I'm totally at peace in this discomfort.

To sum it all up: I feel like Madrid before Christmas was one thing, and Madrid after Christmas has been a whole new level of awesome. I apologize that I haven't been keeping everyone updated better, but with all this stuff going on it has kept me pretty busy. I'm going to try and do better, I promise.

-Josh

Volveré

It's 12:15 AM and I fly back to Madrid tomorrow. I'm not ready. Physically or emotionally. I've been delaying packing and I think it's because I didn't want to believe I actually have to leave. Don't get me wrong, I love being in Spain and I'm sure when I go back I will go right back to my routine over there. But coming home has been a difficult experience. It feels like I've stepped out of the wardrobe and found that no time has passed since I left. (Yes, that's a Narnia reference.) I got off the plane in DC and felt like I was right back in the summer (except there was a little more snow) and I had never left. I remembered all the friends that I miss as well as the time I get to spend with my family. It feels like I have two separate lives and I'm starting to accept that they will always be separate. I have this weird glitch in my personality that has always made me want to share all of my experiences with the people closest to me. So when I do something fun like move to Madrid, I always think about how much cooler it would be for my family and friends to experience it with me. I think one of the things I've had to learn is how to enjoy those experiences for myself which has really helped me to be more independent.

Having said that, here I am 16 hours from boarding a plane to leave the comforts of friends and family all over again. It's definitely not a totally negative feeling, but I can't help but feel like my time here was so short and I wish I had more time to spend with everyone.

Well, no use in dwelling on it. Time to get to work on packing.

-Josh

Holiday Happiness

I generally like to consider myself an optimist when it comes to the world we live in. I often feel really blessed by my family and friends. Then, every once in a while I become really conflicted about that. See, I just had yet another wonderful Christmas with my wonderful family. Forget the presents, we all know that those are temporary things. When I say I had a wonderful Christmas it means I felt like I was right where I belonged with the people I belong with. Having an entire day to just hang out with my family is a really great thing. The conflict that I face is that I feel spoiled. Sometimes I feel out of touch with reality. Today there were 278 people who spent Christmas having to subdue some idiot that was (unsuccessfully) trying to blow their plane up. Fortunately, the fool just ended up burning himself in the crotch and everyone is fine, but today 278 people wondered if they were going to see their families again. Also today, thousands of volunteers on the Eastern Shore of Maryland went out searching for an 11-year-old girl who disappeared earlier this week. Around 4 PM, they found her body and her family had to spend their Christmas mourning the loss of their little girl.

I know the sad thing is that we hear this kind of news often and I think, for me anyway, that makes me a bit desensitized to it. But for some reason this evening when I read about the little girl I was hit pretty hard. It just seems pretty unfair. I apologize for being such a downer on Christmas. I know this is a time when we are supposed to be nothing but cheery, and the truth is I am cheery. That's my whole point. I was able to come home from Spain and spend Christmas with my awesome family. I couldn't have asked for a better Christmas. I guess the only reason I'm writing this is because I want to remind myself to take a minute and pray for anyone who has had to go through a difficult Christmas. My prayer is that God would let those people know they aren't alone and that He would help lead them through that darkness. I think that's the only thing I can offer really. That, and to make sure I'm always thankful for the blessings I've received. I pray anyone who reads this had a great Christmas and I'd also encourage you to just remember where all your blessings come from. Love you all.

-Josh

Oh! The Weather Outside is Frightfully Stupid

So, I just got off of my 9 hour flight from Madrid which felt as long as it sounds. I'm in Atlanta waiting for my flight to DC and we have major issues. First of all, the weather here is a mess. It's raining a ton and you can't see anything. My flight has already been delayed from 5:30pm to 6:45pm. To complicate things, The Weather Channel is expecting, and I quote: "a major, perhaps HISTORIC snowstorm" back home. How unbelievable is that?? I just looked and the snow is supposed to start between 10pm and 12am so as long as my flight isn't delayed anymore, I should be ok. This is major drama here people. I don't want to spend a week in Atlanta.

So after thinking a lot about how weird it is to be coming home in the middle of my time abroad, I've realized how exciting it is. I think this time at home will be so good for me. I get to have Christmas with the fam, I get to watch the last 3 weeks of Redskins games from home, I get to see lots of friends, I get to spend Euros as dollars and I get to have as many free refills as I want on drinks. And then I get to go back to Madrid and continue all those experiences over there. Life really couldn't be sweeter.

I am kind of curious to see the ways that I've already changed. I don't necessarily feel like I've changed, but God has done so much in my life in the last 3 months so I feel like there will probably be evidence.

Anyway, apparently my flight is delayed because our plane is going to arrive late, which means that once it's here we can leave and I should make it home in time. This is good news because being snowed into Atlanta while not being able to see my family = major suckage. However, making it to DC before the storm and being snowed in WITH the family = major fun.

-Josh

SeVILLA, wouldn't wanna BE YA!

HELLO! I'm alive! To my thousands of fans who check my blog 5 times a day for updates, I'm really sorry I've been quiet for like 3 weeks. To the 4 people who exist in reality and actually read my blog, the truth is I had a friend (Eddie) come visit me for 2 weeks so I just didn't bother posting anything.

EDIT: I just added new music to the blog after making this post. I found Family Force 5's new Christmas album and it is absolutely ridiculous. However, I kinda like it. Enjoy.

Let's see... what to talk about...

Well, Eddie's visit was really fun. He enjoyed seeing Spain and I enjoyed showing him around. It really meant a lot to me for someone from home to come and see what my life is like over here. It was especially cool that it was Eddie that came since he's a teacher and I was able to bring him to school for a day. My coordinator swooped him up, took him to her class and while I did my normal work he was teaching 5th graders. They loved having him and I think he really enjoyed the experience. You should ask him about it. (if you're prepared to listen to him go on about how cool he is)

I had a 5 day weekend this past week because of a holiday here in Spain (they have tons of holidays), so some friends and I decided to go to Seville (Sevilla in Spanish; pronounced seh-vee-ya) for a few days. It is in the southern part of Spain and it is one of the places you find a lot of classic Spanish traditions like Flamenco. In fact, one of the nights we were there, we stumbled upon a real local bar and around 1:30am one of the workers turned off the music, brought out a guitar and everyone gathered around and sang. Apparently everyone was expecting this except us and there were two or three people performing the singing and it was incredible. The songs were mostly very slow and powerfully sad. One woman next to me was balling while the guy was singing to her. hahaha

Sevilla has a lot of really awesome buildings and architecture. My favorite building was the Plaza de España:

It was too big to capture in pictures but maybe you can get a sense of how pretty it was. We also went to the Alcázar which is the palace. It was built by the Muslims that inhabited Spain at the time which is reflected in the architecture.

My favorite part of the palace was the gardens.

Alright, in the interest of this not turning into a huge presentation on Sevilla, I'll just show one more picture:

That picture is from the inside of the cathedral in Sevilla which I believe is the 3rd biggest in the world. Inside the box there are the remains of Christopher Columbus. Pretty cool, huh?

So just to give you some more personal updates, I am getting very excited for Christmas. A week from tomorrow I will be home!! That is a really crazy thought. There are a lot of emotions tied into that which I want to elaborate on in another post at some point.

I was able to share with a friend of mine the other day that I have been feeling a little bit like I've lost focus since I got here. I know that I'm here for a reason but I was struggling, feeling like I had not been able to figure out what that might be. So I prayed about that a little bit and then the very next day I started reading a book that a friend here gave me called "Don't Stop Believing" by Michael E Wittmer. This book is one of the best I've ever read about Christianity so far. I'm 3 chapters in and already it is helping me to define questions and ideas that I've had for years. I highly recommend. Anyway, that was a huge blessing. Later on that evening I was at my coordinator (Natalia)'s house because I have begun tutoring her daughter and her brother-in-law. In between tutoring the two of them, Natalia helps me practice my Spanish by having conversations with me. Out of nowhere she asked me, "Josh, tienes una religión?" (Josh, do you have a religion?) So... I was kinda surprised by the question and didn't exactly know how to react because I am barely comfortable explaining to people that I'm not religious, I just love Jesus in ENGLISH, let alone Spanish. But I tried and I think by the end of it she understood what I was trying to say. I'm not sure what was accomplished by that conversation if anything, but it seemed too big a coincidence to be nothing. Then later while I was tutoring her brother-in-law, he asked me "So, in the United States is Christmas more of a religious thing?" Luckily we were speaking English so it was a little easier this time, but I ended up explaining to him a lot of the same things I was explaining to Natalia. It was so bizarre. I have no idea what it all meant, but I think it was somehow God's way of answering my prayer. We'll have to see what happens in the future I guess.

Alright, that's enough for now. Sorry it has been so long since I've updated. I'm going to probably try and update more frequently for a while since a lot is going to happen with my trip home in a week. I think it is going to have some serious effects on me since I've become comfortable here and now I'm going to go home and remember what I'm missing.

-Josh

Mesquite? Is that made from Mosquitos?

The other day I was in my room, on my computer when all of a sudden I saw a mosquito fly in front of my face. Mosquitos are my 2nd most hated insects. I hate them a little bit more than flies and a little bit less than ticks. I especially hate mosquitos in my room because they always end up having a feast while I sleep and I think I must be slightly allergic to them because their bites usually turn into welts on my skin. So, needless to say, I dropped everything I was doing so that I could engage her in a fight to the death. (Yes, her. For anyone who doesn't know, only female mosquitos suck blood.) I think if anyone had walked into my room at that moment they would have felt puzzlement that would have bordered on alarm. I was frozen in an attack position, waiting for her to fly into my sight. She came into sight a few times which resulted in futile attacks on my part. Then she made a terrible decision and flew over to my wall which is white and made her stand out a lot. I grabbed a notepad and flung it at her and that ended up finishing her off. The crazy thing was that as hard as I hit her with the notepad, her body remained in-tact. Spanish mosquitos are made of steel I think. Anyway, here's a picture of her:

Her stripes are pretty beastly. I think it means she's a tiger-mosquito.

Other big news: I have officially infiltrated the sticker-trade at my school. Stickers are extremely popular here and pretty much every kid has an album. They are very serious about making trades. If someone gives you a tiny little sticker, you aren't going to be giving them your favorite 3-D Hannah Montana sticker. It just doesn't work that way. So they began giving me stickers here and there before and after class and I just started putting them in my agenda book:

That's just the first page. I have at least 2 more pages so far. I'm pretty fond of Sandy Cheeks at the top of the page there. It would take a pretty hefty offer to make me part with her. Last week I actually bought some nice Spongebob and High School Musical stickers to put into circulation. It was a horrible idea. I actually made one of the teachers mad because the kids were becoming too distracted. Oops. Next time I have to make them a prize for good behavior or something.

On a more serious note, I had a nice moment yesterday. I've been here long enough now that there's really no excuse for the fact that I have slacked on getting into the bible. I've joined a bible study through this international church that I go to now, but it doesn't really replace the time that I have one-on-one with God. My bible was still in my bag from bible study so during my break I decided to shut myself into the little classroom they give me and just read. I was really enjoying reading through the parables and stories in Mark. I think the story of James and John asking Jesus to sit at his side in Glory is hilarious (Mark 10:35-45). I think one of them must have pulled the other aside and been like "Listen man, we need to get dibs on the places next to the throne. I'm asking you because I like you and you have sweet sandals that you let me borrow that time that mine were giving me a bad blister." Then Jesus basically says, "Guys, do you honestly think that is a first-come, first-serve kinda thing? Those spots are reserved." But what really makes me laugh is that it says "when the ten heard about this, they became indignant with James and John." I imagine that to be the most awkward moment ever. "Umm.. James? John? Did you guys seriously just try and ask to sit to the right and left of Jesus? What the hell? What happened to our 12 best friends agreement?"

Ok, so that's my dumb interpretation of that story, but in my mind it was really funny. It was one of those moments where the bible was making a lot of sense to me and I had a hard time putting it down yesterday.

Ok, it's 3:15 on Saturday and I haven't done anything.

35 days until I come home!

-Josh

I Came From the Montaña

Where to start, where to start... well, it has been like 2 weeks since I've updated and I promise it's not for a lack of commitment as much as it's for a lack of things to say. However, some interesting stuff has happened so I think I have enough for a substantial update now. Also, I think I'm going to just throw tons of pictures at you so LOOK OUT!

Last Saturday, which was.... let me look... October 24th, I went into the city with my friend Erin and we were attempting to go see a movie. We found out about a place where they show old movies for about 2.50 Euros, so we decided to try and catch Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. When we met up, we discovered we both had a different address for the theatre from the internet so we tried Erin's first. That led us here:

So, the sign next to the huge scary door indicated that we were in the right place which was very confusing. Our solution to the problem was to stare at the giant door for 5 minutes and every so often one of us would tentatively walk up to it and nudge it slightly to see if it would open. We did this several times because we were never sure if we had tried hard enough, as we didn't want to be seen struggling with a huge door that was clearly locked. Eventually I gave it a good hard push and we even used the knockers, and we decided we were at the wrong place. That's when I remembered I had a different address which was a few blocks away so we decided to go for that. We were happy to find that it led us here:

We were unhappy to find this sign:

That means they were sold out. In the end, the time we spent staring at the doors to the Filmoteca business offices caused us to miss the show. Oh well, next time. The one thing we accomplished that night was taking pictures at the famous bear statue that is in the Puerta del Sol, which is a famous plaza at the center of Madrid. We use it as a meeting spot often and so does everyone else in the city. I always see lots of groups of young people waiting for friends around the bear:

So let me give you at least a small peak at the area around my house. I took some pictures late at night one time while walking back to my house. When I leave my apartment, I walk down this street first:

When I get to the end, which is where I took the above picture, I am standing at a circle with a gas station on it:

This is the closest landmark to my house, so when I take the night bus home in the middle of the night I know to push the button for a stop when I see the good ol' BP. Here's another picture from the traffic circle of a bus stop:

From the cirlce I walk about another 2 blocks to get to my metro stop which is called Peñagrande. The inside looks a bit like this:

So this past weekend was also a busy one. On Friday, I went with my friend Antonia to a mall near Madrid where there is an IKEA. The mall is called la gavia:

This is the part of the city that it's in:

Besides the mall it looked like the whole place was still being built.

So Antonia and I had been saying to each other that we really wanted to try and go hiking because there are lots of mountains surrounding Madrid. We found out about a little town called Cercedilla. Erin, Antonia and I met at the train station and took the renfe train out to Cercedilla.

When we got there, right outside the train station was the beginning of a really nice trail that we walked. It looked like this:

That last one is Erin and Antonia obviously. The place was really beautiful. It was also really nice to get out of the city for a bit. I hadn't realized how much I was feeling constantly surrounded by noise until I experienced the quiet out there. On the way back to the train station I got some water from this thing:

It was some seriously good water. The town has a lot of ruins left over from the Romans. I'm not sure if this was part of it, but I like to believe it was. That spout looks 2,000 years old, right? I took a picture while we were waiting for the train and I'm pretty sure that woman was getting weirded out that I was taking pictures of her:

Well that is about all the pictures I have. If you're wondering what I did for Halloween after going to Cercedilla, I went to a friends apartment and we watched The Orphan and... that's a really bad movie. So I didn't dress up, but downtown all the young people were running around drunk in costumes. Trick or Treating is a growing concept here so not everyone does it.

I think that's enough for now. After making you wait 2 weeks I've showered you with photos, so enjoy. I will try and update quicker next time.

-Josh