This is Timothy George just back from his trip to Zaragoza. It was a huge festival. I´m not even sure what it was about, but it was very big. We stayed in a great big fancy hotel, smack dab in the middle of the city for three days. I took about five hundred pictures in all of the whole thing, including the old monastary that we stopped at on the way back. The monastery was actually one of my favorite parts. Actually not the monastery itself, but the surrounding trails, gardens, waterfall, tunnels, ponds, etc. It reminded me alot of what heaven is going to be like. I was so beautiful! Three hours there was much too short. I barely made it back to the bus on time, but I did make it back on time, and I was not the last person, so they weren´t waiting for me. During the festival, along the street, there were these people that would dress up in silver and paint themselves silver and then stand on a box perfectly still with a container in front of them when someone would drop in a coin, they would start to move. Either stroking a silver apple or flower, or riding a silver horse etc. It was very odd. One guy even had a tail. It was kind of creepy too. I got a lot of pictures as I already said, so if anybody wants any just email me.

Hello again and welcome to another addition to Mishaps in Spain, or if you prefer...edition of Mishaps in Spain.

Well, my roommate, Hernan, and I were up until one last night talking about evolution. I just found out that he is an atheist and believes in evolution. Not an unlikely combination. It was rather difficult to do it in Spanish too. He was trying to justify evolution by using examples of micro evolution which I tried to explain to him was quite different that macro evolution. When I would point out to him the physical or chemical impossibility of something he would just jump on to something else. After that night I realized that the very first thing is thatthey have to be convinved that there is a higher power that exists, because if they don´t accept that then they don´t really care how wrong they are because they have chosen to believe a lie, because they don´t want to accept the truth.

Hello again, and welcome to another episode of Mishaps in Spain. Many things have happened since I last wrote here. Many of which I do not recall. We took a trip to Valencia. It is quite a large city. The third largest in Spain. There are a lot of old Roman buildings in Valencia. We went to the toop of one of the towers. Two hundred and twenty three spiraling steps that progress smaller and smaller until you finally get to the top. I took a long time to get there, but it was worth it. There was a gigantic bell on top and you could see the whole city from up there. I have some pictures if anyone wants some. Just ask me. I am on Yahoo IM most evenings so if you show up I will talk to you. Anywho, things are starting to settle into a routine here. The classes really aren´t going to be that bad. I think that I might have a chance at living afterall.

Hola Caballeros, señoras, y señoritas,

Well, classes have started this past thursday. They are going to be pretty hard. It quite amzing to me though that even though they just talk for so long and so fast, I actually understand most of what they say. it is kind of weird though because i can´t just sit back and relax, I have to be up in my seat concentrating on everything they say to catch, otherwise, it doesn´t get in. i have to concentrate so hard sometimes that it makes my head hurt. Well, I also went to the local WalMart today, Carrefour. I bought my notebooks and a pencil. Not very exciting. By the way, would you believe that they pay for a liter of gasoline here as much as we pay for a gallon!

I finally have internet in my room, but I´m not sure for how long. The computer guy here couldn´t get it working, so I decided to give it a try tonight, and I finally got it. There are actually quite a few people from Southern here. Of them, there is only one that I could know that I didn´t. Well, let me tell you what I did today. I decided that I would ride down to the beach, it´s actually pretty far if you don´t drive. So I borrowed a bike from the dorm and headed out. I got down to Sagunto and I was tempted to go up and look at the fortress, but I decided not to because we will all be going there on a tour before too long. Sagunto has narrow cobblestone streets that are really cool (super hiper mega chevere!) Anywho, I kept going and I got to Port Sagunto. I ended up in an industrial part of the town when ¨it¨ happened. I road up on a pretty high curb, I did everything right, but I guess it was to high, and the bike wasn´t of the highest quality, and pop went the tire. So I was in the middle of the city with a dead bike. I thought I was pretty close to the beach, so I decided to keep going, because I knew that there were some other students that had gone down to the beach. I thought that maybe I could get a ride if any of them had come in a car. I got to the beach after another hour had passed. I found a little podunk cafe on the boardwalk that had a drinking fountain and got some water. I was really thirsty! Then I went to the beach and found some students. Of course, they had come on the bus. Smart me didn´t think to bring any money. So turned around and headed back into town, walking my bike. I forgot to mention that when I was walking the bike before I had remembered that in one of Stephanie´s survival books it had said that if you had a flat tire you could stuff the tire with ¨"rags, plastic bags, leaves, or anything you can find." So I had stuffed the tire with litter and rode the bike a little. It really doesn´t work very well. It´s also kind of hard on your backside because there is a bump every time you go over the valve stem. I finally got back to Colegio Adventista de Sagunto. The whole trip took about five and a half hours. It not supposed to take that long, but I was dead tired from walking all day. When I got back to the dorm I was so thirsty I staggered into the dorm and took a long swig from their anemic drinking fountain. It is not very good at producing alot of water. I lived.

This is an article I wrote recently for the Adventist Frontiers magazine. It has not been published yet, so I thought I could attract more users if they found out that they were getting the premier reading of certain, prestigious essays.

Sitting in my dorm room, staring at the wall, and thinking about all the homework that I should be doing—and all the other things that I should be doing, I begin to think about how my life was in the Philippines, and what might have happened had I not gone. Of course, I had just turned nine years old when I went, and I didn't have a whole lot of say in the matter. Even so, I was very excited about the whole ordeal. Little did I know what I was getting myself into as we set off into the great unknown. Now, it's been ten years since that date, and I have much to look back on. I know that living in the Philippines has caused me to miss a lot of what's happening in America--especially the friends and connections that I could have had. But what did I get in exchange? Getting bit by a snake, a poisonous centipede, lots of different types of ants, and many other critters of which I don't know the names; swimming in the cold mountain river; helping to save people's lives on a weekly basis; seeing the joy on my friend's faces when the light came on and they really saw Jesus for who He was. Sure I missed out on things here, but what were they? A bunch of no-good rock stars? The new “sag” look? American teen sub-culture? Frankly, I don't think that I missed out on a whole lot. Well, for all you out there, I just want to let you know, it was more than worth it. Going to the Philippines was something that I would never trade—not for all the superficial attractions of the world. And what did I gain? Well, why don't you follow the calling and find out for yourself?

Well people, this is my second time blogging in my life. I think that it is a very interesting idea. I was watching the news today with Somer, and Bush come on to reassure the American people that everything he was doing was in their best interest. It was amazing how much he looked like his cartoon. I think that it would be really interesting to get a political debate going here. Maybe about what the US should or shouldn't do about the Iran WOMD crisis. Bye now.