jamie's wanderings

This week is already passing by quickly, and if I don't get this down, I'll have forgotten all that's swirling in my mind. This month we celebrate several new minestones. First, I finished my MA WOOOHOO! So good to be done, but I'm already swamped in PHD work. We did stop to celebrate yesterday, driving up the mountain to eat with good friends, and talking for hours on end. It was good. This Saturday, we completed 9 years in Spain. How is that possible? But more on that in a second. And finally, this Monday will be Andrew's birthday. We are going to have a loud, obnoxious, so much fun the neighbors are jealous steak barbaque. Can't wait. But back to the 9 years in Spain. We are so grateful, so happy, and so amazed by how God has kept us here. How has He done it? by giving us an incredible community of insane friends, at church, at the gym, and now at the university and our students and of course, Triatomix, the triathlon team. All of these groups are i...

I woke up this morning thinking about a friend of mine, who wrote last night on her Facebook last night, "Sitting next to my brave sister." This sister has cancer. I started thinking about the word sit. It's not something we do much, or we do too much. Now, most of us work in front of computers, tablets, or desks, and we sit. Some studies show sitting too much is killing us. Google has bouncy balls and creative chairs to help computer programmers as they sit. I actually have a ton of pain sitting to long, and have to get out, walk, run, swim, cycle, stand on my head, or do something every day that I sit and study/read/write. But sitting with a friend, brother or sister, parent or any other loved one, that is something else. Sentarse is the verb for sit, Sentir is the verb for feel or emotion in Spanish, strangely enough, they are very similar in sound, which just one phoneme differenciating them. And I think, sometimes, they are close to one and the same. Job's ...

So as not to keep you, dear reader, in suspense, a short report on the Half Ironman I volunteered for a week ago.We had ten men in all that started and completed the race without any injuries other than sore muscles and lots of cramps, which is completely normal when you keep moving intensely for 7 hours or so. They are amazing, my heroes, and I got to see them at different points in the race. We started first below in the pantano (water reservoir) called Canales. They warmed up. lined up the HONK, the horn sounded and they were off. Beautifully off. It was like a piece of art. As they swam, we walked up a STEEP hill (where last year I felt like I almost died and realized I was too fat and started training much more in earnest) and stopped to take various pictures. Then the guys finished the run and started to walk up. We took a few pictures. This one is Juli, our team trainer as he runs up in 5th place after completing the 2.5 km swim. Below is a video of the whole race as the...

This weekend, almost 20 of my teammates from Triatomix  will complete either the Olympic or the Half Ironman in our backyard, the imposing Sierra Nevada. Today, 7 of them completed the Olympic, 1500 meters swimming, 40km cycling and 10 km running, most of which is completed above 1500 meters or more above sea level. Just standing up there watching them finish I feel the lack of oxygen and my legs complained of little pressure and felt quite swollen. This race is one of the most physically demanding in the world, and is incredible to watch, let alone participate in. I'm going to take pictures tomorrow with my husband, and with a bunch of the girlfriends/wives or other friends, hand out water at the halfway mark for the Half Ironman. They guys will already have swum 2.5 km, and cycled 93 km and run 11 km by the time they reach our water/fruit stand. They will have another 11 km to run before finally crossing the finish line. The men in our team (this time we have no women competi...

For Jody Portions of my thesis to wet your appetite. Perhaps what we spoke of yesterday will make more sense. Everyone else can listen in. :) Culturally, Shame in this paper is  defined within the context of Judeo Christian values but we can also see the values of the definition of shame within the Asian cultures to expand our understanding of shame, although it is obvious within the Spanish culture, there is a combination of both shame and guilt cultures. It would appear there is a combination of both due to Judeo Christian values as well as shame culture. This is why in the Med this looks differently than in the Middle East or the Asian world. It is a moral obligation and not a cultural obligation as in Asian cultures. It would appear from the literature that shame in the Med looks more like Shame in the Middle East as both major cultures have had a lot of cultural contact, linguistically, socially, culturally and even politically. We can see from the literature review in p...

I've written a lot lately about our journey to become triathletes, and I've realized that there are so many parellels to life as you work through things physically. Today, I'm laid up at home from church with a sprained ankle and a torn up knee, and I didn't even do those training! I merely slipped and fell walking with some girlfriends this week and boy has it hurt! I did two triathlons and hundreds of kms of training this year, and I hurt myself walking. Sigh. However, this has given me time to reflect and think and stop and be still, which is still a very important part of life, one that's really easy to bypass as we think "being productive" is the only way to do live. Last weekend I was in England with Andrew, and we went to our friend's ordination service. I'm not an Anglican, but I can very much appreciate its form and traditions, and staying power, even through the midst of war, crisis, plagues and you fill in the rest of the blanks. T...

This last Sunday we had another triathlon, a harder one in Almeria, on the very edge of the Almeria desert on the coast. The sea was choppy, and the distances were longer, and it was hot! The "sensations" were the same, nerves, anticapation, excitement...the transitions went well, but the swim wasn't very much fun, I didn't enjoy it it all. The feeling of being surrounded by so many people and the choppiness of the sea and too much sediment and algae made it for not so fun of a swim. I also had to run up 400 meters barefoot to get to the bike, that made it not so fun either. It was hot running, I almost passed out as I passed over the finish line. And I was last. The medic poured water over my head, and I almost felt human again. This time, our friends raced after us, and so they loudly cheered us on. I mean, loudly. I think one guy, Enrique was omnipresent. He was by the sea, the bikes and the finish line. Believe it or not, it was incredibly humbling to h...

I've had any number of people ask me about our first race in Sevilla, and I've promised some more details, so here they are for anyone who would like to know. Both Andrew and I returned from the US two years ago absolutly drained after watching his mom slip to the next life. I returned 10 days before Andrew, and my friend April realized it was not good for me to be alone. So one day, she dragged me out of my house and said, let's go sign up at the new gym. We had a wonderful time exploring the gym, going to the pool and jacuzzi and steam room and so I signed Andrew and I both up without telling him. I didn't tell him for weeks how much we were paying, becuase I knew how important it was for us to go. Two or three times a week, we'd find ourselves there and it really helped us through those first blurry months back in Spain. As we started to go, we realized that one of our friends from church, Julian was a trainer there. His wife Liz and I attended a bible stud...

It's holy week again. In our part of this world, it's a huge todo. Lots of floats, parades, processionals, people in the street, statues of virgin mary and jesus died, alive, tortured and crucified. It makes me sad because the Jesus I know, came into town not with music and fanfare and carried by 50 men, but on a donkey. The children cut off palm leaves and cried, Hosana! Which means, save us now. And the Jesus I knew was pulled in so many directions. They wanted him to save them from their political and economic crisis. They wanted bread and a new governement. He didn't deliever. Instead, he died a wretched death on a horrible instrument, and then suddenly, people said he rose from the dead. He had over 500 witnesses, and he didn't do huge massive miracles as a resurrected Jesus, he just appeared and ate bread and fish. I'm not here in Spain to convert people, I can't do that as a human being, only God changes men's hearts. But I am here to talk to pe...

First thoughts for my MA thesis. Emotion is a strong element in our perception of the world. It is difficult to ignore and harder to quantify. One of our strongest and most powerful motivating emotions is shame. Shame is the first emotion mentioned in the Bible, that has Adam and Eve realized their nakedness, they covered themselves out of shame. Wars and conflict and battle all have been fought over honor and shame. Strangely enough in this modern world, we neglect the existence of this most base emotion, and instead we often move blindly through our world motivated to protect our honor and compelled to the beat of its drum to always avoid shame.

Art by Jason Jack Soen-Photo by James Stickings

I wrote a note to a friend today, and thought this would make a good post. Edited for public viewing and expounded upon. Sometimes we think everything is supposed to happen instantly, work, job, cultural adapation, friends, family, etc, etc, and everying is limited to this thing we call time. Its awful, but something I've learned specficially when Andrew's mom passed away two years ago, that there is a time and place for everything. For us, there was a time of intense grief, and then a time of healing, but that doesn't mean that we still have grief and still need healing, but there are times and places for it all. Yesterday, I sat church, with my own grief. Grief of time lost. Grief of loss of relationships. Grief of saying goodbye to my aunt and uncle as they move onward to Cyprus. I stood and sat in church as I used to watch my uncle do, and let everything wash over me. When I first watched him, I wondered why, and yesterday, I completely understood. My collegues i...

Last year, I found myself in a new group of friends, triatheletes. They are a werid bunch I tell you. Working out 3-5 times a week for fun and then they go on 100 km bike rides over the weekends. Sheesh. And I wondered why. So last year, Andrew and I started to take their pictures. There is nothing more educational about a group of people than suddenly whipping out a camera. As they got used to us, we began to learn why they do this. I'll never forget the sensation of walking amoung the atheletes as they prepped for a half ironman or long distance race in the Sierra Nevada, the mountain that towers over Granada. You could feel the buzz of adreneline, and the excitement was palpable. We stood with Liz and Juli, the trainers of this club that are some of our best friends. Juli usually actively particapates, but this time, he was an organizer of the race, and so he was just an observer and a coach. As everyone got into the water, and stood there waiting for the minute warning, h...

I like teaching English.