Here I am. Safe and sound. In Madrid, Spain.

My flight left Newark airport at 10:30pm (delayed by half an hour thanks to mechanical difficulties). I must say, as far as international travel is concerned, it was one of my best trips (it helped that it was only 7 hours of flying rather than 9, but also the timing was phenomenal). As soon as we took off, they started serving hot dinner (I had a very delicious chicken and pasta dish with salad, roll, and brownie) and then they served drinks. Each seat had a personal screen on which you could play music, movies, tv shows, games, etc. After dinner I watched a movie and then went to sleep for the night. I usually have a horrible crink in my neck after sleeping on an airplane, but before leaving NY I picked up one of those inflatable neck pillows and it was great. I slept soundly until they woke us up for breakfast. It was mixed fruit and a croissant. And then they brought drinks. And we were on the ground within an hour. We landed at noon on Thursday. I was semi-rested, fed, and ready to face the day. I couldn't have asked for better timing.

I had intended to read the tour book of Madrid on the plane, but I watched a movie instead, so after our friends (I'm staying with missionaries from our church in CA until Sunday) picked me up from the airport we went home and I took some time to plan out where I wanted to sightsee. We ate "dinner" (they have their big meal of the day at 2pm) and I did some more planning (struggling at times to stay awake, but I did!). Eventually I set out around 5pm. I decided to do some shopping rather than real sightseeing, but I did manage to see the bull fighting arena (bull fights are on Sunday, so I won't be going to one). I took the metro to the arena. Took photos. Shopped. And then took the metro closer to the center of Madrid and walked around a lot looking for stores that I thought would be good candidates for souvineer shopping (hoping to avoid the souvineer shops in Plaza Mayor, where the crush of tourists - and pick pockets - are more likely to hang out). However, those shops weren't as promising as I had hoped, so I'll go to Plaza Mayor today (and do the Rick Steves' Walking Tour of Madrid).

I came home at 8pm and was ready to fall over. My shoulders ached because I brought too much stuff with me on my walk-about. My knee ached because that's what it does. And my feet ached (I guess I'm not used to walking). I came home and ate yummy, homemade chicken soup, and saw Ivan was online so I chatted with him for awhile. I eventually went to sleep around 10:30pm.

My initial thoughts about Spain: Most people start their day late, have a huge late lunch, take a siesta, and go to bed super late. I need lots of sleep, so all of that sounds good except the staying up super late part. The metro system is fairly recently built, so it's very clean and modern. During rush hour, the metro is almost as crowded as Russia, but somehow it seems as if you can't squeeze another person on, but they do and still manage to not touch each other. Very different from Russia where you're pushed into other people and squeezed together so tightly. Also different from DC where if it looks like another person won't fit then they don't even try getting on. A beautiful "invention" they have here (actually, I've seen it in several European countries) are these wonderful blinds that are installed outside your window that can be pulled down and literally black out your room. My sister needs to get these installed at her house so she can sleep during the day after an over-night shift. They are incredible. They also help eliminate ambient noise from the street. The elevators here are very small. They say the capacity is 5 people, but I don't know how you could fit more than 3 in there. There seems to be no such thing as an obese Madrileno (person from Madrid). In my walk-about yesterday I didn't even see someone I would call fat, much less obese. Perhaps it's because 1. no fast food (it's being slowly introduced, but the locals only go there as a novelty - most people eat home-cooked meals) and 2. their big meal is earlier in the day, providing lots of time to work off those calories. That's about all of my thoughts for now. The weather is very similar to NYC right now. Bright and sunny outside (although it rained yesterday) but still very brisk and downright cold - especially when the wind blows.

My volunteer responsibilities for the conference begin on Sunday, so after Saturday I probably won't have as much time to dilly-dally on the internet, but until then I intend to send you regular updates. Partly so you can keep up with my goings-on and partly so I can easly copy and paste these e-mails into blog postings (I don't like to blog about trips until I'm back from them, just so the crazies out there don't know I'm gone).

If you think of it, you can pray for Alberto, one of the men in the church here who had a kidney transplant last week. At first his response looked favorable, but then his body started rejecting it. It's still too soon to tell what will happen, but we're praying that his body would accept it and that his doctors would have wisdom and we're praising God for Alberto's confidence in Him during this difficult and painful time (his body is all swollen and he's on cortisone for the pain).

That's it for now.

Labels: Spain, WWW2009