Christmas In the Middle of July

6 weeks ago I arrived in Spain. I sat in the baggage claim area as one by one all of the other passengers had taken their bags and finally I was the only one left. The conveyor belt stopped and I realized that my luggage wasn't coming. That's me waiting in the picture to the right. See my expressionless face? I couldn't believe it was happening. I hadn't checked a bag since I saw a suitcase lying untouched on a runway. But this time, my bag one the one lying on the runway.

The bag contained almost all of the clothes that I wear on any sort of regular basis. After about a week of waiting they told me that I had a budget of 50 euros/day up to 1,000 euros to use on buying new clothes till my stuff showed up. This made me feel a little better, but I didn't want to have to buy all new stuff. I like my old clothes. But over the next several weeks I began to accept that I was never going to see my stuff again. We filed a claim with the airport so that I could get compensated and all that good stuff. Eventually I totally gave up on the bag; I figured some guy in a crappy apartment in London was sporting my favorite Mr. Kleen shirt.

Yesterday at lunch, Jane [my host mom] said that there would be a special visitor later that afternoon and that when he came I would have to answer the door. At first I was really curious but in about ten minutes I had totally forgotten about it.

Later that afternoon, right before the team meeting was going to start the doorbell rang. I had been assigned the job of "door answerer" so I went to open the door. When I looked out I saw a suitcase sitting on the steps and a guy was standing there asking me for my signature. At first it didn't click with me that my lost suitcase had been returned to me, but when I realized it was mine I just about flipped out. I did the thing that Loyd did in Dumb and Dumber when he saw Mary for the first time. The grab your heart and back up slowly into the wall thing...I thought it was funny but I guess the delivery guy hadn't seen Dumb and Dumber because he just looked at me like I had problems.

It was gone for six weeks so I figured it had gotten thrown on some plane to the Philippines and then traveled around for a while. But when I asked where it had been, they said the the whole time it just sitting in the Granada Airport Customs area. Somehow it took them 6 weeks to search a couple of rooms for a huge suitcase. It makes you wonder what those people do all day. I mean they have entire departments devoted to finding lost luggage and it takes them 6 weeks to find a bag when it was in the right airport the whole time. I'd be willing to bet that it was sitting in a pile of bags similar to this one...

But I'm not complaining anymore. Not only did I get my stuff back, my favorite "Mr. Kleen" shirt, my great-grandfathers belt buckle and all of my other favorite articles of clothing, but I bought about 600 euros worth of clothes that I probably don't really need. Some of the big ticket items were...Running shoes (110e) Climbing shoes (65e) And an oxford shirt from Lacoste (84e). So in the end it was like I got paid 600e to be inconvenienced for 6 weeks. The Lord works in mysterious ways...

In two weeks I will be traveling back to the states and I will play "Airport Roulette" again. But this time instead of traveling with one checked bag, I will have two. Maybe they will loose both bags this time and I will get to spend another 600 euros! Cross your fingers for me!

It's harder than you think

For all you people thinking about trying to learn a second language:

It's not easy.

As I was leaving I talked to a lot of people who said, "Oh man when you come back you will be awesome at Spanish." And I believed it. I thought that by the time I got back I would be sounding like a native speaker [that might be an exaggeration] Then there were a few people who had actually been to another country with the hopes of learning the language, who told me that it was going to be hard. And that two months really isn't long enough to completely submerge yourself. But I didn't listen to them. I assumed that they were just peeing on my party. [I'm not sure what led me to that conclusion]
But then I got here and I said to myself, "those party poopers back home might be sort of right." Then I got through the first month and said to myself, "those party poopers back home are totally right." And then what makes it worse is that sometimes you run into some guy who speaks English, Spanish, Arabic and Hebrew and never had to study any of them. [That happened just the other day]

Don't get me wrong, I have learned a ton of Spanish. But I have the vocabulary and grammar of a 3 year old at best. Most of the time I am just asking, "where is the hospital?" or "do you like music?" and when I am really going out on a limb I may say, "It's making nice weather."

But it could be worse...
For the last couple weeks I have been in Spanish Classes at the University of Granada. There are another 3 or so weeks left in the class and then I come home. Normally at the intensive Spanish courses the classes are big mixes of people from tons of different countries but most of the people in my class are Americans. I asked someone about this and they came up with two possible reasons why this might be. (1) Many Europeans are starting their vacations later this month and therefore don't want to be in classes. And (2) Most Europeans are in the higher level classes because by the time they spend the money to go somewhere to study a language they are pretty good at it.

Now I am not in the total beginner class, I want you all to know that. I am in Intermediate B. Which comes after Beginner A and B AND Intermediate A. But it is also lower than Advanced A and B and Superior A and B. I had the option to go into Advance A but I decided that it would be better to be able to review some stuff. After a couple weeks of classes I have decided that I am in the right level for two reasons. (1) The work is challenging but not overwhelming. (2) The Americans in my class make me feel really really good about my Spanish. They have the WORST accents I have ever heard in my life which is saying something because in Spanish most letters are almost always pronounced the same way.

Now we are not talking about having bad Granada accents. [In Granada things are pronounced differently sometimes. Like the C's and Z's are usually turned into a TH sound.] They have no accents at all. They are classic examples of DAA's [Dumb Ass Americans] reading Spanish words off of a page as if they are reading English. I wish I could tape them and put it online for you to hear it. Even those of you who have never taken a Spanish class in your life would wonder what their problem is.

So now I'll wrap it up. The basic ideas of this blog entry are:
Language learning is really hard.
But that doesn't mean you have to sound like a DAA when you are learning to speak.

Weekend of fun

That's what this weekend has been so far.

Yesterday I went to the beach with some friends. What's interesting about the beaches of southern Spain is that instead of sand, they have little tiny pebbles. At first I thought that would be a bad thing, but soon I came to love the little rocks. They are easy to brush off, they don't get into your sandwich and they are really nice to lay on. But not only are the beaches covered in lovely little pebbles, the water is incredibly clear. Now to all you Caribbean losers this may not sound all that special. But to a North Carolina beach boy like myself, clear water is rare.

You can see the bottom from over 20 feet up (on a great day you may be able to see 4 or 5 feet down in NC) and the water gets really deep really fast. It is actually a little scary because you will swim out about 20 feet and all of a sudden the water is 5 feet above your head; swim any further and you can't touch the bottom even if you want to. Also on the beach that we went to there is a little rock peninsula that is known around Spain for it's great cliff jumping. You can climb up from the water and before you know it you are ready to do a 35 foot jump into a school of fish. We are going back on Tuesday so I will take some pictures / video of us jumping.

Today I went climbing with my friend Aaron and a friend of his named David. David is from Brittan. Little did I know, Granada has some radonk climbing spots. And there is a wide range of difficulties. Today I did my first lead climb. Lead climbing, as opposed to top roping, is where you set your own anchors in the rock or anchor into screws on the wall. This is a little more legit because with top roping the most you can fall is a couple feet because the rope is anchored above you. But with lead climbing the anchors are below you and may be 10 feet apart. So when you fall, you fall however far above the last anchor you are, times two because all the rope that was there is now slack, plus the stretch in the rope. SO if you are 10 feet above your last anchor you will probably fall 22 feet.

Normally the anchors are a little closer than that, but no matter what; the danger is a little more real. Tonight there is a party for some people that are going home for a year. And I am sure that will be fun too. So thank the Lord for a good weekend so far.

Ok now it's just getting a little silly

Well today the Lord took my wallet from me. Somehow it fell out of my pocket while I was on the bus. I looked everywhere and talked to the driver but it's gone.

Fortunately I only had 20 euros in cash, but it still stinks because I had a lot of other important stuff in there including my checking card, insurance cards and everything else that normally is in a wallet. I think that God is teaching me a lesson about my stuff. First my luggage got lost (technically it's not lost, but I haven't seen it in 4 weeks and I haven't heard from the airline in 8 days.) But not only are all of my clothes probably gone forever, my wallet is gone too.

It's cool though. I am starting to realize that money isn't all that important. And what better way to learn that than to get stranded in Europe with no clothes or money?

Oh so soon

I went to Morocco last weekend and it was an awesome time. So I want to tell you all about it. But at this point I don't have the time to sit down and write something good because we are in the middle of a prayer conference right now and the days packed. I will try to write something soon and I am uploading my pictures now. flickr.com/photos/zaysmallman.

Viva Espana!

Well Spain just won their semi-final match in the EuroCup against Russia. The score was 3-0

Lets just say it was nuts. I just got home from the game and even while I sit here in my room I can hear horns honking and fire works going off all over the place. Football is life here and when your team wins it shows.

The bar was PACKED with people, all cheering for Spain (obviously) and after every goal people went crazy. Jumping up and down, deafening noise, high fives and hugs all around. But that was only the beginning. After they won we left the bar and started walking home. We encountered several large groups of people all chanting and thought, wow this is great. But then I reached one of the main plazas downtown. There were probably about 9-10 thousand people crowded into the plaza. People were climbing on the gigantic fountain, waving Spanish flags, shooting off huge fireworks and chanting.

I stopped in the Plaza for a while and partied with "the people" then started for home. As I walked, every car that passed was either honking its horn or waving a Spanish flag out the window or both. Even on the little scooters people were waving flags and screaming.

I have never experienced anything like this. The people I saw were all different ages, men and women. Some of them were even old. There is just nothing like this in the states. And this was only the semi-finals. What if they win the cup?

Today I go to Morcco

Today I am going to Morocco. This is pretty exciting because I have always heard that it is a pretty cool place but also I have never really had a chance to see any of the third world as they like to call it. So this should be a cool new experience for me.

I will write more if I get a chance while I'm there. If I don't get internet there I will write when I get back. Also I will take lots of pictures and put them on my flickr.