Venice to Barcelona

Well, we spent more time in the Venice airport than we expected or wanted! All of us will want to avoid that in the future. The airport is quite small, and has very few places to sit, and no comfortable seats until the departure gates. Outside the building there was a pool with a sculpture in it that I though Joel and Kate would enjoy. It looked like a huge columnal cage of giant tennis balls with rotating colors focused on them, so they changed colors. At night the colors of the tennis balls got deeper. Once they were bright fuchia. I took a picture on my cell phone and finally got the pictures out of it since we are back Stateside and I can go on line.

Because of fog in Barcelona, our plane did not take off until 1:00 a.m. instead of 10:00 p.m. so we spent a number of hours at the departure gate with many other wannabee passengers. Every time the telephone rang at the departure desk and the flight was pushed back to later, they all responded with animated chatter. They were speakers of Italy or Castellian Spanish so their stalletoed syllables kept our tired brains entertained.  I thought it was interesting that they didn’t get angry, only excited. We finally got settled between the sheets of our hotel room at 4:30 a.m. The trip from Federal Way to Barcelona was ended after 36 hours on the body clock of our very exhausted bodies. But, we had made it! In spite of the fog, in spite of too much baggage for the regional airline, we had made it. Thanks for your prayers. 

So yesterday meant walking for miles (!) in three European airports: Paris, Venice and Barcelona, and today, (Thursday) in Barcelona, where we ate at the downtown mall with lots of different stores.

We had fun checking out the fashions – I think we had forgotten how stylishly Europe dresses. What did we see? Lots of dark clothing on people, but bright solids and stripes in the windows for the spring approaching. Lots of tall boots, even thigh-high ones, over skin tight jeans or spandex tights. Long, baggy sweaters. Short, stylish winter jackets and coats. Giant purses of every sort of color combination and neck wraps – everywhere! NO ONE else wore sandals!

I thought it very interesting that there was a fancy vending machine in the mall that dispensed dairy products: 

I finished the very informative book I was reading, Generation Xers talk about the Church of the Nazarene. I told Jon that I learned a lot about our children by reading it. It is a collection of essays written by Nazarene Gen Xers. Some characteristics are new to me so I want to reread it again. Let me close with a couple of quotes from it:

“The gospel is not something that needs to be made credible to the world; the world is something that needs to be aligned to the gospel The church’s task, therefore, is not to respond to what sick people clamor for; it is to provide a legitimate alternative to the destructive way of living that makes people sick” (p.112).

“The world needs to see that the church is more about God than about us Our language and rituals must intentionally be focused on God. Save the business itesms and announcements for the bulletin. We will live without people hearig about our potlucks. God is worthy of our undivided attention for at least this one hour each week!” (p. 123)

“In 1958 some 72% of American families identified the husband as the ‘breadwinner’ and the wife as the ‘homemaker and child-rearer. In 1990 the percentage of American families who would have identified themselves in this way dropped all the way to 7%!” (Leonard Sweet)

“One Xer predicted in Time (magazine), “My generation will be the ‘family generation. I don’t want my kids to go throu what my parents put me through. Nazarene Xers may address family issues by reinstating healthy family values from yesteryear, while providing assistance to those in more unconventional family structures today” (141).