Marbella I hear is wonderful, and it has a very helpful, utilitarian ATM, but thirty minutes later we were headed back to Málaga, on the right bus, forty-five minutes away.
Yet I believe that God is a great caller of audibles, seeing the way the defense sets up in a football game––and how I have a tendency to mess things up––and working out some blessing or learning experience in spite of myself, like (in a serious sense) some of the ex-offenders in my Spiritual Support Group who, because of their bad calls that led them to prison, do some awesome work with other young guys who are on the path they used to tread.
So we meet Omar, who first tells us we are, in fact, on the right bus, then winds up sitting in front of us. He is a spindly man, with a hair cut like Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible II, though that is where the resemblance ends. I get his name wrong at first and ask, "Oman? Like the country?" "No," he says, "like Omar Sharif!"
Omar is a professor of pottery at La Universidad Polular in Málaga and lives across the city in Old Town, just three blocks away from our hostel. So, when I ask him if he knows of La Calle Victoria, he smiles, buys a pack of cigarettes and, smoking as we go, proceeds to lead us across the high rises of the new, touristy beach city, over the river into Old Town, through a very old, traditional bar of wooden barrels of wine which also sells fish in the morning, past the Roman theater and the Moorish palace behind, past the wells between buildings where house construction has stopped with the advent of new ruins. He also, on our roundabout route, leads us into one of twenty-two houses which protect the barges and vestments the Easter parade. In the middle of this house––really a small cross between a museum and a warehouse––stand two large barges of wood, overlaid with gold and silver. On top of the gold one shall sit the Christ and the silver one the Mary, each of which has four large beams extending to the front, back, and underneath, with name stickers for each monk who will carry it.
He tells us about the vestments the priests wear in the ceremony, and all through his broken English to me and my broken Spanish back to him. When I ask him if his pottery is beautiful or functional, he says he only makes beautiful pottery. I believe it, and eventually he even helps us find our hostel, which was advertised by one tiny sticker on the intercom and was very quaint and nice, undoubtedly because it is hidden in upper stories, the tree fort of hostels.
We meet Nicole from Switzerland and Henry, whom I think is of Asian descent, from Sweden. We wander the old streets under fabulously bright Christmas decor made of lights and a Nativity scene of flowers and life-size camels made of woven branches. I feel awkward because, at dinner, I am both the only one who orders Málaga's special sweet wine and, when the server plops down a plate of free olives, the only one who eats olives; but hey, free olives.
Nicole has a significant other back home, as do I, and we swap stories. I get to tell the story of Rachel's own adventures, and it brings joy and fascination. Additionally, Nicole and Ryan and I connect deeply over Scrubs, and she is thrilled about getting back home, when the 8th Season will have come out in German. Henry may think we're crazy, but he also thinks we're cool, and he is cool as well.
Yet the bus debacle and the fact that I killed my battery charger and somehow left my cool car towel in Ireland (yes, I dry with a car towel––it is small, absorbent, and awesome) turns my mind to wily schemes: How does one legally make money while abroad? By content writing for the internet? By asking for it for Christmas? Is it selling of one's soul to let a company place ads on one's blog? In spite of all this, God has brought us this far, and we trust we will be brought farther, so long as we're good stewards of goods and no longer leave cool towels for the Irish.
I'm still scheming, though. I ask Ryan if we can save money getting to Madrid by convincing a wizard to turn us into a horse or leopard so that we can run to Madrid, so long as the spell is undone when we reach the city. He thinks this is dumb, so I suggest, perhaps, his spell could be like that of the Frog Prince, where a Spanish girl would have to kiss him for the spell to be undone, and they could live happily ever after. Instead, he suggests (unimaginatively) that we just catch a bus there.
