Is the world getting smaller?

I don't mean literally of course. But, I begun to question this common phrase many of us have echoed at different times over the years. I understand the sentiment - the world is most certainly more accessible than ever. This blog post proves that - I am in Spain, most of the readers of this blog are in the US, and I'm posting a video about Lagos that is being spread via the internet. It is easier to travel and communicate than at any other point in history. By far.

But the truth is that the earth is still physically as large as it ever was. In fact, more people are alive right now than ever before (duh). A friend posted this video about Lagos that really captured my attention. It was educational - I got to learn a bit more about a place I know very little about. But it also got me thinking. When I think of Lagos, I think of internet scammers and unlawfulness. Not much of a snapshot, is it? The sheer number of people who are (possibly?) living in this one city gave me pause to think. There are tons of these huge cities "popping up" around the globe that I know so little about. I know their names, where they are located (usually), and know when really bad things happen there.

I'm not convinced the world really is smaller - I wonder if we just delude ourselves into thinking that because we have the means to travel anywhere we want to. Plus, somehow it makes it not as important for us to stop and learn a little bit more about other places if we truly are all that much more connected - it minimizes the vast differences we have with others around the globe. IF the world really is getting smaller, it's hard not to feel overwhelmed by how the problems seem to grow larger as the earth seemingly shrinks like my wool sweater in the wash.

At any rate - if you've made it this far, you will be rewarded by a lengthy (by internet standards anyhow), but quality and informative video about Lagos.

Moist and Merry

We have had a good Christmas so far in our new home. Christmas Day was grey and rainy - see the pic above. This is how I always imagined winter in Galicia to be - but it has been the exception rather than the rule for us. Regardless, it was a fun morning to be inside and to open presents as we gathered around our new Christmas tree. We are building new traditions, so it is fun. The boys have been having a good time all around. We have a two-plus week Christmas break from schools - both the boys and I. It feels like the first extended time we've had as a family to simply exhale. While the pace of life never slows - it is nice to take a moment to pause and feel more 'settled' than we have for quite some time.

The Lord is good - in this season of celebration, we are grateful that he has provided a community here that we are connecting with. We shared meals with someone on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. We are of course missing home some, but feel that the Lord has blessed us in our first Christmas in Spain. It's nice that the holidays here give us reason to consider the Christmas story for a longer period of time. At home it is very easy for the real reason for Christmas to be forgotten outside of the 36 hours that encompasses Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Here they celebrate the arrival of the Magi on 1/6.

Merry Christmas to everyone! May you all experience the joys of Christmas, and have time to reflect on the birth of our savior!

Too late for Christmas Music?

I'm not sure if it's too late already to talk about Christmas music, but I thought I'd share three good finds from this year. If you shop on iTunes, all are economical buys: one is an EP, and the other two are currently available for eight bucks.


Bebo Norman: Christmas... From the Realms of Glory.
Bebo is not exactly a find that no one has heard of. He's been making quality CCM music for years. This is a quality album. The traditional tunes are unique enough in their arrangements, and I really like most of the original material. It definitely strikes me as a more worshipful Christmas album than I've heard in a while. (Why is it I feel compelled to describe it this way? That description is a sad commentary all on it's own).


Mindy Smith: My Holiday
This is one of my more pleasant finds. I've been reading good things about this artists music for a couple of years. She has two other albums out. This Christmas album was reviewed well, and I was looking for some new holiday music - at eight bucks, I took a chance, and have been pleasantly surprised. I think you'll like it too.


Hem: Peace at Last
This is a three song EP that I found on iTunes, and cannot find an image of it online anywhere else. Since I have not figured out how to get my iTunes album covers into this blog, you'll have to go to iTunes if you want to see the cover. Hem has been one of the bands I have been telling people about for several years now. I love their music, and their short 3-song EP was a nice addition to my Christmas music selection.

Merry Christmas and happy listening!

Feliz Navidad!

Merry Christmas to all! I am so sorry it has been SO long since I blogged last. My unfamiliar path was a bit busy and crowded this month. It was hard to come by time to blog. Faith just posted tonight (again - she's been much more consistent about blogging over the last month - if you havn't checked her blog out lately, click here.)

At any rate, the entire family enjoyed a bit of Christmas Spanish style on Friday. First, Brennan had a teatro Friday morning. Faith and I crammed ourselves into a small hot auditorium to watch each class from Brennan's school contribute to a show. I fully intended to film Brennan's class and post it here for all to enjoy - but my camerawork was so awful, I will not impose it on anyone. Brennan, as always, was very cute about it all. He had to memorize four lines in Spanish that he recited with a group from his class. He is doing very well now learning Spanish.

On Friday afternoon Ryan's school had a Christmas party complete with lots of candy, presents, and a short kid-friendly program. Head to Faith's blogs to see pictures of the candy. While they do have "Papa Noel" here (Santa Clause) he is really no big deal. The guys that the kids in Spain get pumped about are the Reyes Magos - The guys we call 'The Three Kings' back home. Most presents here are exchanged on January 6 - The day of the Kings (Dia de Reyes). This is the day they celebrate the Magi coming to bring their gifts to the baby Jesus. Turns out it is pretty efficient - at least it was at Ryan's party. With three guys all dressed up handing out gifts, Ryan's entire school had received their gifts in a manner of minutes. All in all, it was a fun experience. I've included two photos of Ryan with 'his' king.

Human Tetris

Every day, at least one time, Ryan asks "Watch Jap-o-nese please?" By which he means he wants to watch this video.



After much prodding by my wife to post this funny clip, I have finally given in. The boys first got attached to this particular video when their Jio-jio (uncle) Clement e-mailed us a link to the video.

The funny part about Ryan asking to watch "Japonese" is that at first we didn't know which Japanese video he wanted to watch. Was it the silly engineering-type video that I can only describe as being "kind of like those big domino things, but not really because it's with marbles"? Or was it the traditional Japanese drummer video that came in a Paste Magazine DVD Sampler that Ryan inexplicably got attached to? Or was he asking about one of our favorite Strongbad e-mails where he talks about being a Japanese cartoon? So - as if those three were not enough to be confused by, he now has three more of these Human Tetris videos available on YouTube, as well as my personal favorite 'Jap-o-nese' (sorry Strongbad). Once again, words really can't explain this, but I'm sure you'll at least smile, if not laugh if you choose to watch.



Finally, since I'm on a roll, I thought I'd add one last laugh. This one is courtesy of our friend Jung who recently finished a round the world trip. It doesn't fit neatly into the Japanese groupings above, but the picture was taken in China, so, being on the same massive continent is close enough for me. I can't think of a better caption than his own caption from facebook.

can I get a "joss-stick hot nature roast chicken fortress"?

He had a number of pictures of funny translations into English. A close second in my book was the "Green grass is afraid of your trample." sign.

The Radiohead Effect

Paste Magazine is by far my favorite magazine. I really enjoy the effort they put into finding meaningful art. They focus mainly on music, but also get into film quite a bit. They touch on other subjects like books and video games as well. Their slogan is "Finding Signs of Life In Music, Film, and Culture." As a busy parent, I have found very little time to search for quality music and films - Paste has been incredibly helpful to me especially in finding new good music. They include CD sampler with each magazine. Their website is also pretty cool, usually highlighting some video and music on their site. On the whole, I find the site to have perhaps too much info, but I suppose that means just about anyone can find something that interests them.

The reason I am blogging about Paste right now is that they have shamelessly ripped off Radiohead's most recent marketing tool by letting you pay what you want for 11 issues (one year) of Paste. If you are interested, check out their offer. I heartily endorse the magazine, and this is a good chance to get an exceptional magazine at a price you appreciate. Did I mention the monthly CD alone is worth it?

Galicia

In my thankful blog, I mentioned I am thankful for the opportunity to live in Galicia. Faith rightfully suggested I might take some time to explain in a little more detail about it.

Galicia (pronounced gah-lee-thee-ah) is the northwest corner of Spain. The Atlantic coast defines the geography to the north and west. It is known as the Costa del Muerte - "the death coast" because the dramatic rocky coasts and poor weather has meant many tragic shipwrecks over the centuries. The land is mountainous (think Appalachians more than Rockies), and Portugal borders to the south. The weather is temperate, and wet. It rains quite a bit (or so we are told - the weather has been unseasonably warm and dry since we arrived) and the result are beautiful green landscapes, and equally beautiful and dramatic rocky coasts.

It is one of Spain's autonomous regions. It is part of Spain, but also enjoys a little more autonomy from other regions of Spain. This is mainly because the people here are a different people group than much of Spain (although to be fair, Spain seems to be comprised of many different people groups). And perhaps even more significantly, they speak their own language here, Gallego (guy-yay-go). It is not a dialect, rather it is a seperate romance language that developed at the same time as Spanish. It shares similarities to both Spanish and Portuguese. Gallego is the official language for government here, so much of the early paperwork we completed was in Gallego, as is most everything that is sent home from Brennan's school. The Gallegos are proud of their language and unique heritage.

This region is truly unique, and it's been a joy to begin to learn about it. We really are only just beginning to learn. My weak attempts at explaining it in a blog will only convey so much. If you like Wikipedia, you can read a little more about Galicia here.

We have taken way too many pictures as we've had chances to sneak out and explore Galicia in the short time we've been here. I've created another album on Picasa you can peruse if you are interested. I apologize in advance for the number of photos. Just recognize I am only posting the best we have taken. I just hope it gives even a small slice of how pretty it is here. As usual, you can click on the photo below to be taken to the online album.

Galicia

More Boat Photos

In one of my early posts I linked some pictures I had taken of boats near our new home. I mentioned that these little boats had really captured my imagination. To further prove my obsession, I have more than doubled the number of photos in my Picasa album. (yes, there are plenty more photos I didn't upload). Click on the photo below to be linked out to the album on Picasa.

Boats

Thankful

We celebrated our Thanksgiving today with other American missionaries living in Coruña. It was as good of a time as we could have asked for. 14 of us crammed cozily in our little apartment. Of course we ate ourselves silly on the standard poultry, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and pie, as well as some less standard (but no less good) enchiladas, and chicken corn soup. Certainly we have much to be thankful for. I thought I'd list out just a few.

Galicia

We have had the joy of visiting three different coastal villages on the three weekends prior to thanksgiving. This corner of Spain is unique and beautiful. Stunning really. We sometimes have trouble believing we actually live here now. We thank our father for creating such beauty.

Kids

See No Evil - When 8 month olds get silly.Explorers

As I was looking at pictures of our recent adventures I felt very blessed that our kids can experience all of this. And I am very glad to experience it all with them and in some cases through them. They have a joy in exploring all that is new here that is good to have around. Even trips to the store are exclamation point inducing for the boys. (Incidentally, and only on a hardly related note, I observed today that as a parent I am not a good judge of picture quality when my kids are in them. I keep the worst pictures of my kids because deep down I like the pictures solely because they contain images of my own progeny.)

Community

We feel blessed by the community that we are joining here. The people we have become closest to so far are the other missionaries here with whom we share a language. In addition to that small circle, Vida Nueva church has been very welcoming to us. We are excited about all of the budding relationships we are nurturing there despite our deficient language skills. We look forward to the natural maturation of these relationships as our language skills continue to improve. It is also great to see the kids really connect, play, and have fun with other kids.

La Eternidad

The day after my grandfather passed away, the Spanish word of the day for Faith was La Eternidad - eternity. It was another timely reminder of the gift of eternity that God offers to all. It is so simple to say it, but so true - I am thankful for the gift of eternity. As I processed my mourning for my grandfather I was struck that even after such a long and complete life, death still seems so unfair. Something in me still protests the unfairness of it. I think it gave me a window into the nature of death and the nature of our beings. No amount of time is enough for me, is enough for any of us. We were made with eternity sewn into the fabric of our beings. We were not made for endings. Eternity is the answer we each long for. On earth, no time is enough. So, the solution is literally 'no time.' We were designed to live in timeless eternity with the creator of the universe. I for one am thankful that Grandpa can now breathe deep with his longing for eternity fulfilled. I am grateful that we have a God who would sacrifice himself so we can join him in eternity.

Can you believe I slept in a....?

I ran across this article today about 10 unusual hostels found around the world. Sparked my imagination a bit. Enjoy.

The picture above is of the Point Montara Lighthouse in California. I shamelessly lifted it from the article linked above.