#003 Adventures in Spain

When summer roled around, it was time to get to work... but not REAL work, fundraising at my parish. We had already heard that another pilgrimage was being organized for August, this time, to Rome, but as before, the problem immediately became the money. How were we to pay for another trip, so close to the last one?

Our plan (by "us" and "we", I mean the youth in my parish who were interested in going on the trip) became to do as MUCH fundraising as was possible and to hope that somehow, the remainder of the price would appear. The trip, if I remember correctly, cost about $1200, and we were pretty much broke. The remainder of my weekends became centered around the fundraising we were doing, which consisted mainly of selling empanadas (meat-pies) right after most events, including group meetings (of the various groups in our parish), masses, etc. On Sundays, we had the added "pleasure" of being given a free table at the flea market (in the parish basement) where we sold all kinds of items which had been donated to us for this purpose. Our main type of item for selling were clothes. People would donate us so many clothes, that we ended up selling items of clothes for $0.50 each because we were facing two tables full of clothes, piled up to 2-feet high! In the end, I'm not sure how the money showed up, but it must have since all of us who had been planning to go were able to go.

We left for Europe the first weekend of August, but I don't remember exactly which day. Our 12-hour flight landed in Madrid, Spain, but by that time, I was pretty exhausted, especially after not having slept well the night before leaving, as well as not having had any sleep during the flight due to sheer excitement. We then took a very small propeller airplane from Madrid to Malaga, where our bus driver would be waiting for us.

From there, we drove to Granada, where a group of brothers from the Neocatechumenal Communities there were waiting for us. When we arrived, we were split up into mostly groups of twos and threes. Each group went to the house of one of the people who had been waiting for us for dinner and to spend the night.

Needless to say, it quickly became obvious to everyone there that I had no clue what I was doing. When we arrived, we sat down for dinner. Now, in my home, when we sit down for dinner, whatever is on the table is what is our main dish. We fill our plates with the different dishes and just eat, sometimes after having said a prayer. Because of this, I was completely unprepared for a little something called "appetizers". When I sat at the table, the family had served whole shrimp, olives, and some other goodies. Being that I was in a foreign country, I assumed that maybe this was what a typical dinner meal consisted of, and so ate my fill of the shrimp and the olives. In my wildest dreams, would I have ever imagined that after the shrimp would come rice and the rest of the main course. So, when they brought out the rice and rest of the meal (which I never found out what it was), I made another giant mistake : I excused myself from the meal, saying that I was already full. It would not be long before I would really understand the gravity of my mistakes that day, but, as they say, there's a first time for everything, and that was my first and (hopefully) last time I would be filling myself with appetizers when invited to someone's home.

The last interesting tidbit I remember about staying in this home, was that it was where I finally gave up denying that I needed a shave, and actually tried to shave for the first time in my life. The experience wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, but I had rather hoped that my dad would be the one to teach me /show me how to shave, rather than me trying it by myself. I even remember one of the other guys giving me alcohol to use as an alternative to aftershave.

I remember that we slept in Granada only one night, but that did not mean we weren't able to do a bit of sight-seeing. The family took us (I forgot whether it was that same day or the next) to La Alahmbra castle. The castle was the last moorish

stronghold before they were forced out of Spain in 1492. The inside of the castle was VERY elaborate, as the Moorish royalty tended to keep elaborately decorated rooms to impress both visitors and embassadors. Being that this was the first castle I've ever visited, I was extremely excited to see it, as well as fascinated by the sheer number of quotes from the Koran inscribed on the walls in Arabic. And the view of the city of Granada from the castle windows was just breathtaking.

After the exciting visit to the Alahmbra (or maybe the day after), we all met up again and boarded to bus. We drove from Granada to Madrid, where another group of brothers, this time from my catechist's community, were waiting for us to take us to their homes. I went with a slightly different group of boys to the house of a married couple. I don't quite remember if they had any children because by the time we arrived, the children had already gone to bed. We ate dinner, and drank sangria. I believe I drank about 2 glassfulls of sangria, because it was not only the first time I was drinking such a sweet alcoholic drink, but also because it just tasted AWESOME!

The next morning, our adventure... I mean pilgrimage would continue...