Consider yourself kissed.

At first, the Spanish custom of giving a kiss on each cheek as a greeting made me a little nervous. Not actually doing it (that's easy and not awkward at all) but the thought of it. I thought it would be awkward and that I would somehow mess up when I did it.

The first person I gave dos besos (two kisses) to was a little old man involved with the street evangelism ministry in Madrid. The last place I got dos besos was the Catholic church I worshiped at yesterday.

During orientation at the school here, they explained the practice of dos besos in detail. Often when a group of friends goes out or when a family gets together, they will all go around and give dos besos to everybody before leaving to go on their separate ways. But sometimes this is just impractical. Say you are saying goodbye to the fourteen friends that you've just discoed away the evening with. That's twenty-eight kisses. In such a case, it is appropriate to just say, "Dos besos para todos! (two kisses for everybody!)" as you wave goodbye. It's a way of saying, "consider yourself kissed."

Having so much to explore, so much to try, and so much to talk about makes me want to do two things: a) spend none of my time keeping in contact with people and b) spend all of my time keeping in contact with people. I hope to continue to use this blog as a sort of compromise. When you read these posts, imagine that we have run into each other on the street and chatted a bit. Consider yourself kissed.

I am happy to say that Tabblo seems to be working well again, so I have finally finished an old post on my time in Toledo with my ECA friends. It can be found here.
And here's one of my pictures from the parks. More photoblogs will be coming.

This past weekend, I spent a day in Morocco, a day in Gibraltar, and a day in Los Arcos. But since I've only journaled about half of one of those days and already have about four notebook pages, I won't be able to post anything until tomorrow. And I use 'tomorrow' in the Spanish sense, as in, 'not today.'

Dos besos para todos!