American in Spain

Today, I went to reserve a room at the local B&B for Tom and Debbi, my godfather and god-step-mother, for their visit before the wedding. I could have called, but it was a beautifully sunny day, so I decided to walk.
(more…)

Not three meters from where I found this creature, I discovered another huge monster.
(more…)

About twice a year, every little town in Spain has what can best be described as a “medieval festival”. It’s probably all terribly historically inaccurate, but it’s kind of fun. Little boys run around with little wooden swords that they presumably lose interest in a day later. Girls get their faces painted with flowers. It’s a fairly wholesome day out.

Last Sunday, we drove to Laredo and walked up and down the entire length of the beach. It’s 5 km long, so we walked 10 km in total (6.2 miles). By complete chance, we happened upon one of these medieval fairs.
(more…)

Last weekend, we had a thunderstorm come through. They are way more rare here than in my native North Carolina. We also have two new cranes that have been put up next to our house to build even more housing. Intrigued by the idea of two visible metal cranes towering into the sky and a coming electrical storm, I set up my camera to record out the window.
(more…)

I’m a huge fan of the Audio Player plugin for WordPress that lets you embed a flash player for a single MP3 file in a blog post. The problem is that you have to host the MP3 file yourself, and if your hosting service isn’t very generous with either storage space or bandwidth, it’s not a very good solution.
(more…)

We went to Santander this morning to see the bishop. Well, obviously little pawns like us don’t actually get to meet The Bishop, but we went to his offices. We brought my birth certificate, my passport, Marga’s passport, my baptism certificate, Marga’s baptism certificate, my ID, Marga’s ID, my driver license, etc. It was all organized in a nice folder. Every possible document they could want to see.
(more…)

Alianzas is Spanish for “wedding rings”. We’ve finally bought ours. Choosing a piece of metal to have on my hand for the rest of my life was tough. During the shopping, I was consoled by my knowledge of how choices affect happiness. And sure enough, now that we have them (and are stuck with them), I love them!
(more…)

University professors are some of the smartest, hardest working members of society. Not only that, but they are very well practiced in the art of lecturing, imparting knowledge through speech. So what if a young (47), energetic, well-accomplished, well-respected university professor from a top university was asked to give the last lecture of his life?
(more…)

clerical, adj

1 (of a job or person) concerned with or relating to work in an office, esp. routine documentation and administrative tasks : temps are always needed for clerical work.

I can see how this secular definition came about after my dealings with The Church. As you may recall, we were planning on visiting the local Bishop today.
(more…)

The thing that’s got me most nervous about my impending matrimony is the unresolved clerical clerical paperwork that has to be done. According to The Catholic Church, neither Marga nor I are prepared for matrimony. And until we get the go ahead, the priest in Mondragon will not marry us.
(more…)