July 28th, 2007 – The Adventures of Salty Dog and Mud Beast

10:00 pm

Today was wonderful. We spent the day in a small town called Barletta. It is such a fantastic little city. We are both thinking that Barletta needs a youth minister and a music teacher. We may just say here forever (no not really Rosa… don’t worry, we are coming home). All the people are so friendly. They just say hi to you as you walk down the street. I love the small town feeling and atmosphere. Last night we walked around and everyone in town was out strolling around. They even closed some of the streets for the purpose of hanging out. We love it here. We have not seen a single tourist the whole time (only a couple that didn’t look entirely Italian walking down the beach).

OK... first things first. The train ride was terrible. We rode in seats that were pretty uncomfortable and neither of us slept much. Fortunately, the train was 2 hours late getting to Barletta and I actually slept most of that last 2 hours.

We got to the town and wandered around for a bit looking for a hotel after walking down to the sea and getting our feet wet. YAH! The Mediterranean! We found a nice little place with a double and a bathroom for only 45 euros. We put on our suites and went and swam in the sea for a while. It was SO COLD! Like, the beach at Galveston is usually kinda warm so this was a shock for us. And the waves were so small. Like… all they way out, they weren’t more than 4 inches tall if that. And that was as far out as we could see… so I guess the smaller bodies of water aren’t affected by the moon as much. Bwige was getting in too slowly, so I kina pulled her in. Then I kissed her and she was very salty so I started calling her Salty Dog. And I was covering my arms in sandy mud stuff as to prevent them getting burned. Well, Bwige didn’t like the way it looked so she made me wash them off. However, she did start calling me her mud beast. So Mud Beast and Salty Dog explored the Mediterranean together. And we made an amazing find… a water-bat. It was this black thingy floating in the water and it had a snout that looked kinda like a bat but big flappy things in back. OK, so that’s not the best explanation, but I didn’t have my camera, so you can just make up whatever sea-,monster you want and that’s what I saw.

The city here is so quaint. The buildings are all lined up in a typical European fashion. However, most of them are orange and yellow. (Don’t worry, its not bright neon orange, more of a terra cotta). More people have cars here than they did in Rome, maybe that’s because they work in another city. There are also less scooters. The people are so relaxed… they hang their laundry out the window, sit on park benches, and stroll aimlessly down the street. No really... God, they DO need ministers here ya know…

Afterwards, we went and ate lunch at an abandoned restaurant. No, we didn’t scrounge for slugs in a 16^th century eatery, it was just that we got there at 12:30 and nobody was eating yet. When we left an hour later, it was still empty (we found out afterwards that people don’t eat till 2pm on Saturday). The food was amazing! We had a seafood mesh with lots of different stuff in it like mussels, little octopi, prongs, huge shrimp, and little thingies that looked like muscles but had a red leg sticking out of it. All of that was mixed into the risotto, which is like rice, except that its pasta. All in all, very very tasty.

We spent the afternoon napping to make up for our lack of sleep on the train. Then we went and strolled around and took pictures. We ended up at a nice restaurant for dinner. Again, we were the only ones there. The food was more amazing than lunch. The bruschetta was the best I’ve ever had. First, we had a plate with spaghetti mixed with lots of sea creatures like lunch except no octopus and red legged muscles (it also had the whole mussel shells in it). Yum.

Next we had a mixed grilled seafood platter. Wow, the biggest shrimp I’ve ever seen! It was almost the size of a plum. And there was also a hollow spherical squishy thing. I think it was a whole calamari because it was about that consistency. Also on the plate was a prawn, larger than a plum, and a whole grilled fish. OK, I know my descriptions aren’t that great, but in the world of seafood, I just don’t have that great a background knowledge and my saying that the calamari was about the consistency of a rubber ball wouldn’t sound very appetizing. So maybe by the end of the trip I will be an expert at describing food. I will swirl a nice glass of wine and after sniffing and tasting it, get a hoity toity look on my face and declare that it is pure and balanced… like a nun on a tightrope.

After dinner we strolled down the street. So much fun. Its so nice just to see people spending time together. So many people in the states spend all day working working working. Then they come home and collapse in exhaustion, only to repeat the next day. The weekends are spent lounging around the house to recover from the insane hours worked the past 5 days. People in the states live to work. People here simply work to live. They spend their evening strolling and socializing. Work isn’t that important because they close shop for 4 hours every afternoon to go relax at home and take a nap. Then, they are out till midnight hanging out with friends. How backwards America’s priorities are!

I heard a story one time about a guy lived on an island. He spent his mornings fishing to feed his family and the afternoon laying around in his hammock with his friends. One day a business man came up to him and suggested that he not be so lazy and spend his afternoons fishing so that he could take something to the market to sell. Why, the islander asked. The business man said that if he sold fish, he could save up his money and buy a bigger boat. Again, why? ‘Well, if you have a bigger boat, you can catch more fish, and sell more and save more money. Then you could buy a whole fleet of boats and hire other people to do your work for you. Then you would have all the money you could ever need!’ The island man though for a second, and with a puzzled look on his face asked what he would do with all his money. With a large smile on his face, the business man replied that when he had money, he would be free to lounge around all afternoon and sit in his hammock and hang out with his friends.

It seems to me, that Americans work to work. We spend so much time working that we don’t have time to hang out with friends. Bwige and I are always struggling to find time for deep fellowship. We are always doing this or responsible for that. I look forward to being at home with slashed schedules. (for those of you who don’t know, we dropped about half the things we were responsible for). We want to focus on life.

Well, that’s about it. Enjoy your busy lives. Keep on running around so that you can run around more. Keep on working long hours so that you don’t have time to enjoy the pleasures your money buys you. Or…. maybe you shouldn’t.