I'll get back to you about Rome.

I'm not quite ready to publish anything on Rome yet. It was a wonderful eventful trip, full of gravity. Here's some that I wrote about a night at Feria, the local fair that is the biggest and craziest in Spain:

The sound of dancing heels on marble floors is loud at four in the morning. My feet are tired, in peculiar areas I've never felt before, but I'm just glad my knee doesn't hurt. I was worried because I had bruised it earlier, tripping over a curb. Usually when I trip, I can keep myself from falling, but this time I could hardly break the fall. I was up again in a second, but not before some guapo Spanish man could take me by the elbow and ask me if I was okay. It reminded me of the time when I fell completely down the steps in Matalascañas. Then they came running to my rescue from their seats at the bar.

After supper (Spain's frozen food section utterly fails at spring rolls), we dressed ourselves to go out. Alaina makes it in an authentic flamenco dress. I mock it in a long flowy skirt, an embroidered shawl, and silk flowers above my tight bun.

I met up with my friends at eleven at the information booth. It was still so early, but I was already tired. I wondered why, and then I figured it out. Nevertheless, I had to be the responsible one in the group. Gretchen was excited about the one euro tinto de verano, Melanie has no inhibitions to begin with, and Rachel was running on the sleep she had gotten on the airport floor.

Melanie wanted to dance, so she asked some guys if they wanted to dance with her. They didn't, and she wondered how anyone could turn down such an invitation. But at the next public caseta, I was videoing a couple couples who were dancing in the back half, and they noticed our interest. So that's how we ended up dancing with some half drunk Spanish guy and his wife.

Gretchen wanted another tinto de verano, so we went back to that caseta. While she was pushing her way to the counter, I suddenly became Melanie's coat rack. When Gretchen returned, balancing our mixed drinks, she asked me where Melanie was. I pointed to the center of a crowd of dancing jóvenes. There was Melanie, feeling the rhythm, moving her hips, shaking her tooshy. Her arms curved gracefully up and down as if bringing an apple from the branch to her mouth to the wind at her back. She caught everyone's eye, and we knew we would have to keep an eye on her.

Soon enough, we had been invited to a private caseta. It took a little patience to actually get in, but once inside, we saw dancing worth waiting for. "How did they learn how to do that? How do they both know what to do next?" Gretchen asked. This dancing wasn't choreographed (so little is) which meant that the couple had to be communicating. Francisco, who had invited us, chatted with his friends at the bar while we rumboed in the front half, speaking in Spanish to prove our legitimacy.

"Why didn't Francisco dance with me?" Melanie mused as we later meandered through the midway. At 3:30 in the morning, I have no perfect words to say. But our God never sleeps, never slumbers, and he told Melanie that she is His princess, and that she doesn't need to look for her prince in crowds of lightly intoxicated Spaniards. Through my amazed mouth, God told Melanie that, just like her lack of inhibition did wonders for our feria experience tonight, God can use her to work his wonders in this drunken world.

I decided to be the man in the group and walk my girl friends home. After kissing Gretchen goodbye, I had time to just walk and think. That's when I realized how much my feet hurt and how much God had spoken to me and through me. Sometimes he speaks as loud as dancing heels on marble floors.