Ok I guess I will write on my Blog

Well for a while I didn't feel like writing on my blog. But I thought about it, and even if no one reads this, it will still be really good exercise for me. So to all of you faithful readers [and I know there are many of you] I am back. I will try to write about some interesting stuff.

Speaking of interesting...I went to Madrid the other day [it was totally last minute] to meet up with Ford Quarterman and his Spanish friend. I was there for two days [you can see pictures on at Flickr

The trip was great blah blah blah. But the interesting thing happened late the second night when I missed my 1:35 am bus back to Granada. Originally I was on a really tight budget because I had to pay for two nights at a hostel, food and I only had 90 euros to do it because my bank card was frozen. Once the money was gone it was gone. But when I met up with Ford, his friend said I could stay with him. So I thought, "Hey I can spend all the money I want." I did a bunch of unnecessary stuff like tour the Real Madrid stadium etc. and by the end of the night I only had about 14 euros left. But I was taking the bus home and I already had a ticket so I was fine.

When I missed the bus I said to myself, "crap, I don't have anywhere to go and the next bus isn't until 10:30 tomorrow morning." So I started walking. Little did I know I was walking in the wrong direction and I ended up in a really scary part of southern Madrid that was poorly lit, and empty except for the lines and lines of prostitutes who chased me down every time I had to walk by. Needless to say I was a little worried. I didn't know where I was. I had two expensive cameras with me and I had no where to sleep. After about 3 hours of walking I made it back to center city and found a bench to sleep on. After a pretty un-restful hour of sleep I got up and read for another couple hours till the subway stations opened.
What I was reading was "The Bonfire of the Vanities" which is a book by Tom Wolfe about New York in the 1980's. It spends a lot of time discussing "the ghetto" and the plot is centered around a hairy encounter in The Bronx.

At around 6 the subway opened and everything was fine and I slept on the subway until my bus was ready to go. I had survived "the jungle" to put it in the words of one of Tom Wolfe. And it was time to back to Granada.

Last night when I got home I watched Spain play soccer and then came up to my room. I couldn't decide if I wanted to go to bed or go out and do something. But as I sat here at my computer I started to get really lonely. I thought about how much fun all my friends at home must be having with out me, how I can barely even talk to my friends here and how much I didn't really want to be here in the first place.

I went out on my little 2X4 terrace and smoked a cigarette. When I was done I came back in, crawled onto my hot bed and eventually fell asleep. This morning I woke up after about 13 hours of sleep [I guess I was tired since I didn't really sleep the night before] and thought about my thoughts from the night before and I realized that (1) it is a huge privilege to be here. Most people don't get to just go out of the country for two months... (2) I realized that I didn't come here for vacation. I came to serve other people for a change, and to taught things by the people that I meet as well as by God.

So that was good.