adios la casa de Attridge.

tomorrow [sunday] annie and laurie are going to drive me about an hour east to a little village called torvizcon where i'm going to be staying with lizzie wynn at her granjas, or farm.

the past 12 days have flown by, but at the same time it's as if time is at a stand-still. we've pruned olive trees, weeded orange trees, weed-wacked, irrigated, cracked almonds, pruned some more olive trees, fallen out of a few olive trees, harvested lavender, planted some trees for future wwoofers to fall out of in 50 years, and weeded some more. and all of it has been great in its own right, as strange as that might be.

the scenery that i've been blessed to wake-up to here has only been a figment of my imagination up until now. double-takes are no longer the exception, but the rule.

so much Beauty. so much Grace. nothing but Him.

thank you laurie and annie for a wonderful stay.


a few days ago, annie took jola & me up to the windmills that power the nearby villages.
each one contains enough energy to power 700 homes, which might seem like a lot, but considering their size it really isn't.

after pulling over for a few, quick shots, we drove a few miles to this roman bridge that was constructed thousands of years ago before the time of Christ & previous to the invasion of the Moors in Spain.


a few spanish observations:

1) driving. there is no method and lots of madness. little round-abouts are situated all throughout the towns and cities and drivers are in the habit of appearing out of nowhere and flying around them like hell is on their [w]heels. maybe there is some sort of a system to this, but i have yet to decipher it.
2) siesta. breakfast is usually very small -- some toast or a bit of fruit-- and is taken about 8 or 9 am. lunch follows about 2 or 2:30 and is far more like a feast than anything else. siesta-- which basically consists of lounging around and napping for an hour or two-- takes place from 3-5 pm, and then at 5 everyone heads back to work for a few hours.
supper doesn't commence until 9 or 10 on average, and if you find yourself in a restaurant in spain before 8:30pm at the earliest, rest assured that you'll be dining alone.
3) old men. during any hour of the day, at any bus-stop within a few miles, you can find a group of 4 or 5 old men who just sit and stare at everything that moves. and that's all they do-- they don't talk, not to you, not to eachother-- they just sit and stare.

all

day

l
o
n
g.

so tomorow it's on to chapter 1.
i would consider this to be the preface, but a wonderful preface indeed.

but what's really been on my mind:

"the people that make a durable
difference
in the world are not the people
who have mastered many things, but who have been mastered by
one
Great Thing."
[john piper]

goodnight.
.j