The Finish Line

I have three class days left at UC. That's right, only THREE! Time flies. I've been so blessed to grow in this extraordinary environment at UC and with the people around me.

The next month will be full of transitions: Finishing my 4-yr Registrar Office job, ending my internship with Alumni, finishing classes and taking my last finals, and ya know, GRADUATING. Thank the Lord I'm not moving out of the Vatican until next September, don't know if I could handle that.

I said in my last post that words of affirmation are a big love language of mine. I've realized that statement is true in times of uncertainty when I need clarification from someone else. Otherwise, physical touch/proximity and quality time are both a big deal. In stressful times lately, having someone there to watch a movie with me or hang out has brought me so much peace and indicates that I am significant. Thank you for your love, you all provide an immense feeling of stability.

I have learned that I must trust Christ to be my sole provider and to refrain from being caught up in everything that I could attempt on my own. God has provided me with clarity and strength in my decisions. He has followed through and will continue in this time of transition, with relationships, income opportunities, and with sustenance.

Unda Pressure

I'll start by saying that Life Is Good. I know this and believe it even though things aren't always easy.

A lot of me feeling pressured is my own doing, but it's who I am. I'm pressured at work to not mess up and make a great impression. I'm pressured with living up to my mentor-like status with my brilliant small group girls on Tuesdays. I'm pressured with thinking about the dating scene and where I fit into that, how I should conduct myself and read people properly.

I feel obligated to everything and always think I have to prove myself or I'll be considered a failure. I'm thankful for the friends and family around me who are constantly reminding me that I'm doing a great job. If you didn't know, words of affirmation is my primary love language so anything that I hear keeps me going. I definitely don't do anything for the sake of praise or appreciation, but I honestly push myself for approval. I have a service mentality which connects me with God's purposes but also drives me away when I get overwhelmed.

The message that God is already pleased with me is astounding and I pray I can retain that as I move forward into a brutal, demanding, beautiful world.

Passion for New Opportunities

God has presented people to the forefront of my life who have shown me what it means to have passion, leading me to find out what my passions are. Growing up helps us find conviction in things, through experiences and learning things that just make sense. My friends in student groups, my roommates, and my professors have demonstrated their driving forces and I've witnessed how they and the people around them experience the fruits of that.

As graduation approaches pretty rapidly, I'm torn between having security with a job and being content if I don't have that right away. I'm proud of who I have become over the past few years and feel like I have a ton to offer and am qualified for a lot. But I have to accept the reality that even though I see that and the people around me do, companies and businesses might not right away.

Contentment and humility are great struggles for me right now. In the midst of loving people, contributing and participating in my social arenas, and thinking about my future, I'm struggling to maintain a balanced and humble perspective.

However, while I struggle I am learning what makes me tick. Loving and helping people reaches me in ways that nothing else does. EdgeCorps (Navs staff) is one of my many possible paths, but even if I do get a full-time job I want to make people an important part of my life. I thrive off of the presence of others. Where I work needs to feed that or I won't find fulfillment or contentment with my work.

Looking Forward

Being back home in the states has been a wonderful experience. My reverse culture shock wasn't as much bad as good, helping me realize how much I take for granted living in the United States. Several people have asked me if I would ever live in Europe and I'm not sure I would. Traveling and staying for more than a few days is great for me because I love being settled. While Spain felt very natural for me (meaning I never felt like a tourist there), I still feel more at home and settled in the states. Not just because people I know and love are around, but it really is the land of opportunity. It's different, because obviously Europe provides plenty of extraordinary adventures. But in the US, I truly feel equipped and acknowledged enough to follow my dreams and achieve whatever I want in life. It's obviously not in a tangible way for me like it is for so many people who move here, but I can see how blessed I am to have the freedoms and future that I do.

I miss speaking Spanish on a regular basis and I've tried to keep up my listening practice by watching BBC Mundo shorts and following them on Twitter. Emily McF, who I mentor, wants to keep going with Spanish and eventually study abroad, so we'll have parts of our meetings in Spanish to practice together. I've never felt called to missions, but now that I've seen and learned about other cultures more, I want to be a part of them in more of a service-oriented manner. After I graduate, I'll definitely start looking into maybe doing a short-term thing somewhere.

The friends that I have in Cincinnati are so wonderful. I've loved jumping back in, getting huge hugs from people the first time they saw me again, who had genuine excitement while asking about my trip and experiences. I'm blessed to have roommates who have all traveled abroad (yeah, all 5 of them!) and know the kinds of questions to ask and the types of feelings I had then and now.

My sister asked me if I hate Americans now in the sense of living elsewhere, but I really just dislike ignorant Americans. It's sometimes heartbreaking to see people so tunnel-visioned in their own world that they aren't a part of other cultures or types of people. Traveling abroad isn't necessary to have an interest or even and idea of what's going on in the world. There are so many people on this planet. I've gained so much more perspective and I hope that it manifests in a greater and more apparent sense of humility.

I have a ton of opportunities in the next few months as I prepare to graduate and search for a job. I'm more excited and content than nervous and anxious. I know I will be taken care of. We have an awesome God.

Never Forgotten

My last informative post!

Tuesday 7/27:

To finish this day, we went out to dinner at Casa Mingo with a bunch of people. Great atmosphere, bread, ham, pollo asado. Afterward, Ita and Amanda accompanied me to get gelato in Sol. Best decision ever. I got frambuesa (strawberry) and chocolate on a cone. We walked up to the Royal Palace and hung out in front of that. It was a beautiful night, it looked extraordinary lit up. At that point, I knew I wouldn't go out in Spain anymore at night so I soaked it in.

Wednesday 7/28:

I had my religious persecution presentation today in Jorge's class. It went pretty well, Kristin said it was clear. Jorge gave us a nice sendoff with it being the last day of classes, gave us his email address if we ever wanted to say hi! Charo's class went over of course. I went shopping in the afternoon for the rest of my souvenirs and gifts for people. Got a ham bocadillo from Museo de Jamon for 1 euro for lunch. Never could get sick of those. I got a jersey for myself. It's size 14 kids and I got some shorts and socks with it! I spent the evening cleaning, eating, packing, studying.

Thursday 7/29:

Got up extra early with Katie to finish preparing for our exams that day. Hung out in the cafeteria with everyone for a bit, had some pan con tomate for breakfast. Jorge's exam was solid, more confident than the midterm. There were grammar sections, completing sentences, fill in blanks. I got a 92% on my project and a 93% on my essay about the novel we read, so I probably pulled a B in the class. My conversation exam went a lot better than my midterm as well, I felt more relaxed with the more general questions. I ran back to my apartment to check out and get my deposit back from Gabriela. Everything was in good shape!

Vanessa, Kendra, Katie, Kyle, Alex and I went to Rodilla (fast food sandwich place) for lunch, then shopping in Sol. It was cool to spend my last few hours with the apartment clan. I said bye to Katie with the assurance that I'd come visit her in Chicago. The boys were great when I left with the great departing words from Alex of "Ill never see or talk to you again." :-P

I cried on the way to the airport in the metro during my last moments in Spain. Hard to believe it was over.

Friday 7/30:

I met up with Rob in Stuttgart at the airport and we made our way to the hostel. It was a struggle to find it, carrying everything uphill. We eventually found the place tucked away behind some trees over a hillside so it was difficult to see. There weren't towels so I used a t-shirt to dry off my face.

We got up for breakfast and had musli, a oat/granola type of cereal with some bread and jam, plus some awesome hazelnut chocolate, fruit, and sparkling water. We caught our train to Munich which was about 2.5 hours. We dozed during the trip. We found our hostel there really easily since it was close to the train station. We couldn't check in until 3 pm so we left our bags in the luggage room and walked around by the fountain, main strip of shops, and church. Got a 1/2 kilo of cherries from one of the many fruit stands set up and sat by a fountain near the church. Had a bratwurst on bread with sweet mustard. Best brat I've ever had. We rested for awhile after checking in, showered, then met up with Dave and Ryan for dinner. I got a 0.5 L of Weiss bier (best I've ever had) with veal meatballs over potato salad. We made our way to an outdoor garden and had a 1L Radler (half bier, half lemonade) then headed to Hofbrauhaus (the original!) and had a 1L Russen (sprite with Weiss beer) that tasted more like bubble gum. We got some pretzels at Hofbrau which were amazing.

Saturday 7/31:

We slept late to recover from the lack of sleep and the drinks from the day before. We went and bought souvenirs and shopped more, got a sandwich. We had some strawberries from a stand before Rob went lederhosen shopping and found a great deal where he got the pants, shirt, scarf, and shoes! We grabbed some sandwiches and Chai tea in the train station. Later that night we headed to Olympia Park where they had carnival games and rides, food, and stores/markets. We got some chocolate covered fruit and found a nice tea and candy shop.

Sunday 8/1:

We got up early to get to the castles! It took a 2 hour train ride and a short bus ride up the hill to get to the castles. We had tours set up beforehand (good call Rob) so we walked right up. We grabbed some lunch between castle tours. I had meatloaf and potatoes while Rob had paprika chicken. The tours were relatively quick but extremely informative. We climbed a massive hill up to the second castle, it was ridiculous. We jumped into a German tour for the second one since we were running late, but they found us the English tour. There were beautiful gifts made of ivory, great views overlooking the valley and mountains. Got ice cream before leaving, hung out at the train station for an hour with some Haribo gummy bears since we missed the previous train by a few minutes. On the train, a tour group was there with a guide who was telling stories about the kings who lived in the castles. Very cool perspectives. We grabbed some dinner at the train station before heading back to Karlsruhe, salami sandwich and a pretzel with butter. We got to Rob's apartment late Sunday night.

Monday 8/2:

Slept in and had eggs and toast for breakfast. Rob's apartment was nice, 2 other roommates with their own rooms. Kitchen, full bathroom. We walked around Karlsruhe, saw the castle, went in their mall, found a cheap France hat, got an apple struessel (so good), stopped by a veggie market and got stuff for dinner. We went to their zoo for a little while, bigger than Rob thought it would be. Stopped by the grocery store and headed home to start cooking chili! We talked to Rob's roommate Andreas for awhile. He called birth control the "anti-baby pill" which apparently most people do over there. Rob super-packed my suitcase with all of my new souvenirs and clothes to make my backpack lighter.

-In Karlsruhe, they have several forms of public transportation with the above-ground trains and buses, as well as a metro that's under construction. They have the long-distance trains as well, very easy to get around without a car.

-Their sandwiches are always different and have tons of ingredients. Always a surprise when biting into one.

-For university students, they have time over the summer to prepare on their own full-time for a set of exams in the fall. Rob's roommate committed to studying 8 hours a day.

-Struessel is more pastry-like while Streudel is more like apple pie

-German culture is very clean and pleasant. They have a proud sense of history while being confident about moving forward.

-Their food was excellent and their beer was unlike anything I have had in the states

-In Europe in general, it's typical to turn the water off during your shower to save some

-Bathrooms are called Water Closets

-Didn't really have iced tea in Europe, just canned

-People in Europe don't usually drink anything while they eat. Andreas said it's bad to drink while eating because it weakens the digestive acids in your stomach

Tuesday 8/3:

Got up early to catch a train from Karlsruhe to the airport in Frankfurt, about an hour away. I made it through security after the people checking my carry-on luggage by hand after going through the machines. I had some Doppelkek cookies with me and the lady asked me if they were for her. My flight was 9 hours from Frankfurt to Detroit and I needed to stay awake as much as possible to adjust to the time difference. So I watched 3 movies: Valentine's Day, Alice in Wonderland, and Death at a Funeral. All great in different ways, did the job of keeping me awake. My flight out of Detroit was a little late but I made it back to Cincinnati close to on-time. Mom and Kirstie greeted me with big hugs and we found an O'Charley's so I could have some chicken tenders and rolls! Great way to come back to the US.

As I adjust to reverse culture shock, I'll probably write things on here about my progress. Europe was beautiful, I can definitely consider living there at some point in my life. I definitely want to see more of Spain, and Europe in general. I've posted some pictures on Facebook to start! I'll stick a few in here along with my commentary.

It feels good to be home, but I'll never forget Spain.

Soaking It All In

First off, I'm finally feeling better! I started sleeping out on the couch and I have felt better since, so my theory may be correct. I don't want to test it in my last few days. Yay!

To continue last Thursday's entry 7/22, I met up with Kristin at the Prado and made it through one of the two main floors in 2 hours. It was mostly Renaissance era paintings, so I saw a few famous ones that were nice surprises. Saw some Bosch, Van der Weyden, Goya. Afterward, I met up with people for our Spanish friend Pablo's send-off at a restaurant called Jardin de Secretos. I had a couscous dish that had some interesting spices. We went out for beers and tapas afterward, I had my first cerveza con limon which was tasty.


Cool sidestory that happened earlier this week: For class, we had to interview Spaniards about the Spanish Civil War. I talked to a guy in the cafeteria at school. He explained how the country was filled with persecution and hunger. He admired his father through everything. People would be taken from their homes and murdered/shot because of the hostility between sides. He got choked up a few times during our conversation and said he could talk about it all so much more. A few days later, I saw him again and he approached me with a gift wrapped in Christmas paper. It is a novel written by his brother I believe. He asked if I could understand it and I said it'd be great practice! It seems to be a mystery/thriller. Very cool connection.


Friday 7/23:

I gave a presentation in my conversation class about the film "Jamon, Jamon" which went a lot better than my first one. I had some more Kristin time and we met up at a Starbucks (got some American feeling in there) and had a date.

We went to an Egyptian temple that is 2200 years old. There was flooding going on the in region of Egypt and they shipped pieces of the temple to other countries. It was very small, but well conserved with engravings.

Saturday 7/24:

Our night bus for Barcelona left at 1:00am on Saturday morning! Alex, Kyle, Brad (Alex's buddy) and guy from Brad's program went on the trip. I was not only the oldest, but the only girl which naturally made me feel like a mom. I definitely took care of them but they were sweet! The busride was 8 hours so we arrived around 9:00am in Barcelona. Kyle was my seat buddy, I slept a little, but not too much. It was good to have some alone time and chill with my Ipod. We found the hostel after navigating their metro system. We stayed at Nest Hostels-Yellow which was nice: ac, gameroom, kitchen, lounge, terrace, showers, towels, sheets. A guy named Reese was in the room with us, sweet guy who was traveling around Europe. Two gals Shana and Stacey from Brad's program tagged along and managed to get a room in the hostel. We were able to leave our luggage in a storage room since we couldn't check in.

We went by their futbol stadium, found Sagrada Familia which was a really unique church that was unfortunately under construction. Interesting sculptures and forms on the outside of it. We had a strange place for lunch that did the job but wasn't too great. We climbed a ridiculous hill to make it up to Park Guell, but were rewarded with amazing views of the city. We found the famous terrace. So beautiful. There were tons of sculptures and their famous mosaic moderist art with the seats and the buildings everywhere. I managed to get the famous picture in front of the seats.

We made our way back to the hostel for check-in and headed to the beach! The water was very blue, clean sand, sailboats. There were rocks out in the water that we swam to, sharp edges that busted open Alex's foot. The boys brought me a beer (open liquor/drinking laws everywhere) which was nice. There were a lot of topless women at the beach even though it wasn't the official topless beach. Spain approaches that a lot differently. It was more normal than I thought since I really didn't know anyone who was doing it. One of those things that'd be strange with a group of friends. We only stayed for a few hours on Saturday, made our way back to the hostel and showered. We found a cheap, but nice little Mexican restaurant around the corner from the hostel. We got some stuff at the store for calimochos before going out since we didn't want to spend too much on drinks. There weren't too many bars where we were looking around Las Ramblas, but we eventually found a nice place where we got free shots with mojitos. Kyle may or may not have taken one of the shotglasses. I got a brownie to finish off the night as well. We made it back to the hostel around 4:30am all pretty tired, but satisfied with the end of our night.

Sunday 7/25:

I made sure that the boys were up on time to get ready and check out by noon. There wasn't free breakfast like we thought, but I had gotten some granola bars the night before to tide us over. There was a fruit and bread store open, where I got some awesome nectarines, a baguette, and some small chocolate pastries. We headed back to the beach and got a good spot. Went swimming a little but mostly just relaxed and soaked in my version of heaven. The guys brought me some lunch after they got Alex's foot cleaned up again. I ended up getting a good sunburn, but it was worth it. Haven't really gotten a lot of sun in the last two years! Brad and his crew left around 3:00pm to catch their train but my boys and I didn't have to leave until midnight.

We headed back to the hostel and showered, got our stuff and checked out Casa Mila, a famous curved building near las Ramblas. We had a good dinner of paella and pizza before heading to the bus station early. The buses were confusing and parking in the wrong places, but we managed to find it. It was more uncomfortable than the first bus, so I really didn't sleep at all.

Monday 7/26:

Our bus returned around 7:30am so Alex and I made our way to the university. Oh yeah. I was alright on energy levels until halfway through my first class, but my biggest pain was the sunburn on my legs. My conversation teacher called in sick so I didn't have my second class! So the two days where I stayed up all night I didn't have full/normal class day. I slept from 1pm-7pm to catch up from 2 nightbuses in one weekend. Brad, Alex, Kyle, and Maria (Kyle's Spanish friend who is adorable and wonderful) came over and made tortilla espanola, salad, and pasta. We watched silly youtube videos and talked about the differences in Spanish culture with Maria. She said that their first priority with life here is to be happy and content, to take things as they come. They don't really make to-do lists here and do things based on priority/urgency. I hope I can take some of that mentality back home and not be so hung up on being busy and unavailable because of a tight schedule.

I'll write about today next time since I'm going out later for a dinner with people since we only have a few days left!

Me Siento Bendecida

I've been able to take a step back over the last few days to have some "alone" time, not necessarily being by myself because that rarely happens here, but even some time not doing homework or running around the city with the apartment clan (I may propose to think of an official name for us. I'm sure we can come up with something, we're pretty hysterical). Along with that, it's an incredible thing that I didn't know these people 3 weeks ago. I feel like they have been a part of my life for years. Living with someone and having a good connection with them from the start has significant results. When you have people in your life every single day for at least 6 hours going to school, making meals, riding the metro, quoting South Park, watching Spanish movies, and of course talking in Spanish slang or in a Borat accent, you realize how great people can be. When living in a different country, everything is new at some point and you need people around you who can say "tranquilo" or help you laugh off your potentially embarrassing situations. You need people to make sure you don't take life too seriously. I can definitely say I have that here.

Sunday 7/18:

Alex and I were victorious and didn't sleep through our alarms and went to something called Rastro, a market on Sunday mornings off of the La Latina metro stop. Vendors line the streets with booths, selling everything you can imagine: clothes, jewelry, scarves, books, placemats, antiques, etc. And all of it is really inexpensive! So I got most of my souvenirs knocked out. I got a dress for myself (only 4 euros!) as well as a scarf to add to my collection of foreign country scarves that I have at home from friends and roommates. We walked into a restaurant to get some water and the countertop was covered in giant bowls of all kinds of olives. I ran into a guy there whho I met during my layover in Atlanta. His group was going to study in Segovia for the month (where I went on Saturday) and I randomly ran into him in Madrid. So crazy. He told us some great stuff about Barcelona, which sold me into going with the boys this weekend! So at first when I didn't think I would make it over there, I decided to miss one of the field trips to go. I've heard it's beautiful and one of the great things to see in Spain. You'll hear about that early next week! Later on during the day I worked on a short dialogue project with a gal from class, then got Kebabs from down the street for dinner with Katie and Alex.

Monday 7/19:

Normal class day. I worked on another little project after class, then went to the Reina Sofia museum off of the Atocha metro stop (where my hotel was during the first few days). The museum has a lot of surrealist and cubist work from Dali, Picasso, and Marco. The time period of the Spanish Civil War was great, with works of Picasso mostly but other artists demonstrating how dark the world was.

After some smaller studies of Picasso and some prints of propoganda during that time, you turn the corner and find Guernica (above) by Picasso in a room by itself, covering a wall. You can take photos from a certain distance, but I chose to simply walk into the room and stand there for about 5-10 minutes looking at it. As you can tell, there is a lot going on. I can now believe that it's an accurate portrayal of the war's effects on the people after learning more about it. Absolutely incredible, I've always wanted to see that one.

We booked our hostel and night bus tickets for Barcelona later on! We'll head out at 1am Friday night/Saturday morning and return Monday morning.

Tuesday 7/20:

Some other random observations of Spain:

-Traffic is more willing to yield to pedestrians in the crosswalks. There aren't as many cars here since the public transportation is great. Jorge (teacher) said that families have one car at most, if they have one. In his family, "su mujer" drives the car with their little girl and he takes the metro. The first time Katie heard him call his wife "my woman," she thought he was sexist but that's a proper term here for wife :-)

-I've been able to watch some TV, mostly when I'm eating lunch after school. I usually have on the news. I don't miss American news at all! They're informative here with stuff going on all around Spain and the world. I really haven't seen any entertainment news and if so, it has been on page 8 of the paper or in a small scrolling tagline at the bottom of the screen.

-People don't really exercise or run in public here. There are tons of infomercials for exercise equipment so maybe they do it in their houses?

-"Abejas Asesinas" was on TV the other day. Killer Bees.

-"Ruleta de la Fortuna" is more fun here than in the states...Wheel of Fortune! The audience gets more into it, singing songs when they spin the wheel, do the wave between each solved puzzle. It's good vocab and spelling practice for us.

-Reading articles and straightforward things has become easier. I read a headline on the TV yesterday and had to do a double take because I thought it was in English!

Tuesday we had our midterm. I wasn't there mentally for awhile since my nose and throat freaked out again the night before, but it was a fair test. I ended up not doing as well as I would have liked which is frustrating, but I'll have opportunities with a project and the final to make up points. After our exam, Jorge gave us the pronunciation lecture, talking about certain letters and situations in Spanish. At one point, he switched from explaining (in Spanish) how English has different sounds for their vowels, then proceeding to say "water" in a very American accent and then in a very British accent. Hilarious.

I managed to get a pill from the pharmacy for decongestion, painkiller, cold symptom relief. I was proud of myself for being able to communicate everything in Spanish and to ask questions. I'm pretty much tired of being sick, but I've still managed to have a good time. I think it's God's way of telling me that life must and can go on even when you're sick. In reality, besides sleeping less, I've only missed out on drinking more which isn't necessarily a bad thing. It would be nice to just have a glass of wine or a mojito, but I've still managed to have plenty of fun! Since we all had our test on Tuesday, pretty much everyone in USAC went out together. We all started out at good ol' Tigre, then split up into smaller groups hitting up different places.

Wednesday 7/21:

Normal day of class. Took a nap and worked on homework all evening. We're reading a novel for class called El Cartero de Neruda that is historical fiction around Pablo Neruda and the election of Allende in Chile. I don't know about 6 words on each page, so I take the time to look them up so I can read it more effectively. Made myself some dinner using a baguette and ham, salami, and chorizo.

I'm heading to the Prado here soon but I'll write about that after I go at some point. It's hard to believe that I'll be leaving Spain in a week to head to Germany and that I'll be home in about 2 weeks!

Hasta luego,

Bri-como el queso ;-)