Graphic Norway

Ok, you can breathe. I'm updating. I've also been steadily putting pictures up on my photobucket account.

What have I been up to since Thursday, you're wondering? Well, right now it's Sunday at 10:10 PM, and people, Sunday has been really nice, you have good things to look forward to.

On Friday my entire school went to Córdoba (Cordoba if you're a loser) to have a tour of the Mezquita...oh...thinking...Mosque, yes, mosque...a tour of the mosque. It is quite impressive. We also visited ruins of a Muslim city called Medinat al-Zahra, from the reign of Abderramán III (yeah, I'm learning). The site was only inhabited for about 30 years and is only about 10% excavated. I was filled with awe. The mosque filled me with awe. Ruins in general fill me with awe.

I go to these places and people are running around me, talking loudly, taking pictures of themselves, and I just can't participate. I need to touch the rocks and let my over-worked imagination play. I need to be silent and wondering in ruins. I feel I need to respect them and listen to what the weathered stones are saying.

What drives me nuts is that ruins start me thinking about God. I see these walls covered with intricate carvings, dilapitated with age and conserved by the hills under which they were buried, and all I can see are people. People who lived way-back-when living; washing clothes, telling their kids to be quiet, plucking blossoms in spring, readying the town for royal welcomings, and I know that God actually knew them. He saw these people that my head wants so much to see but can't see. He was there way-back-when too. He has enough room in his big God head thing that he can known everyone there ever was, is, and is to come. He loved them, just like he loves me and Ellen and my mom. That's a lot of lovin'. It's hard to handle and impossible to fathom.

I think it's hard because it forces one to realize tangibly for one moment that it is impossible to contain God. My life is relegated to some odd years on earth. God is relegated to eternity. He is undefinable. The best I can do is see where he just was and hurt my head by imagining where he's going.

I need to stop thinking about this, or I will never read my history homework, which, by the way, does not fill me with awe and wonder. It just makes me wish Dr. Winn spoke Spanish fluently and taught at an island school in Seville. Being Spanish would improve his pirate skillz.

I also went shopping yesterday and, per usual, got lost. It is a darn good thing that I do not mind being lost, or I would be angry all the time.

Today I called Ellen a scary backwards-faced witch. Perhaps this merits explanation. You won't get any. I'm just writing it because I think that perhaps she'll read it in school tomorrow and start laughing.

European news is graphic. Yesterday, Ellen and I were innocently chillin' after supper when suddenly news came on about a nude beach. I only realized it was about a nude beach when Ellen yelped, turned her head, and unforunately pointed in the direction of the television which was proudly displaying 50 full-frontal men on a nice jog. Then, a man and his wife, frolicking side by side. Somewhere, his grandma is beeming with joy. Wait, what am I talking about? She's probably on the run too.

So, I've come to see more of a man's privates by watching national television than by being flashed on the street by a perverted narcissist. Oh, irony.

Is that irony? The word "irony" is a chancy one. Not for the faint-hearted.

What do people want from Spain? A shirt that says, "Graphic Norway"? I saw one at church today.

Ok. That's enough. Time for my bottle (water) and then time for bed.