joyful strength

Update

2010-03-09T18:23:00.001-06:00

Today, after waiting for a week for the students to finish filling in bubbles on standardized tests, I finally taught my first lesson at Lincoln Elementary School. Maybe the gossip in the teachers' lounge will die down now that all the teachers can apply their creativity to regular lesson plans, but I doubt it. I'm just excited that these third graders are much better behaved than the third graders at El Camino. My good cooperating teacher has a lot to do with their good behavior.

I live in a house within walking distance of my school. I love my ten-minute commute: under the bridge, over the Metra tracks, around the corner, over the Cal Sag, and through the parking lot. It's a routine that reminds me where I am, what I am doing, and what season it is, which is good because sometimes I get confused. It's almost spring in Illinois, and I am a teacher. My bedroom is cold, but my classroom is hot, which I didn't notice until I was teaching today.

In Bogotá the seasons don't change, which is a shame and a blessing. It is a blessing because it is beautiful. But this past summer, huddled in the basement with the windows still boarded up because of the snow, I shared a poem about mountains and valleys, and many friends from many places agreed: we humans need the winter to appreciate the spring, pain to appreciate comfort. Until our eyes see better, we need some darkness to see. And what I see is a world looking for something better.

I am waiting to get married. Being engaged is wonderful, but I want something better. Living in a house is wonderful, but it just makes me want to be home with Ryan even more.

Lord willing, we will find our home in Bogotá. I left a big bag of clothes and toiletries there, at the home of another missionary teacher, in good faith that I will be back as Mrs. McKeever. I will teach English as a second language and Ryan will teach Bible as second nature. We are looking forward to teaching and discipling students from all around the world and participating in a community of Christians who are reaching out to Bogotá. And Ryan is looking forward to learning Spanish.

In about a month, I'll be coming back from spring break. In two months I'll be almost graduated. In three months and four days I'll be married. And then about a month later we'll move to Bogotá with either one hundred or two hundred pounds of earthly possessions, depending on the airline. Deo volente, Dios mediante, Lord willing. And how do we know what the Lord wills? We look at what he has given us, and what he has prepared us for. We read his word and listen to his people, and we keep praying.

Please pray for us as I teach in Blue Island and as we prepare to teach in Bogotá.

Thank you, Rachel

2010-02-13T11:46:00.002-06:00

I haven't done as much writing as I would have liked to during my time in Bogotá. I only have a week and a half left, and it looks like most of the writing I will be doing is lesson planning. Ryan and I will also be doing some writing for the application to work at El Camino Academy next year and an application or two to a sending mission. Please pray that God will continue to guide us in this decision.

My friend Rachel is here in Bogotá, and I appreciate her presence so much. She's been someone I can talk to in any language that I want about anything I have on my mind, and we've enjoyed exploring Bogotá together during the time that we're not at our workplaces or researching future workplaces. Since she's taken the time to write a description of her time in Bogotá and since her description sums up some of my own experiences here, I'll post it here:

______

Saludos!

In case, no one has any clue what country I'm in (like my brother who claimed he did not know, although he did guess correctly)... I'm in Colombia. I don't know where to start to describe Colombia so I'll try to begin chronologically.

To enter and get my sixty day visa I had to convince the immigration official that it really was not suspicious that I was traveling alone. Colombia began for me by arriving late at night, having to scrap the sleep in the airport plan since it closed at night, and being very grateful to be able to find a good place to stay with the help of a friend I traveled with from Panama. But morning dawned quite bright, so they say, but here it dawned literally with really brilliant tropical sunshine. I walked out onto the streets of Cartagena, Colombia to find a colorful, vibrant, historic walled city filled with life. I climbed the ramparts and looked out to the aqua sea, wandered in circles in the narrow colonial streets searching for comfortable shaded plazas, which gave temporary relief to the searing sunshine, and tried cheese filled arepas and cheap fresh tropical smoothies of the best kinds.

I then ran into some frustration while searching for a bus to Bogota as even bus ticket prices are actually bargainable here. I got one great low price with what I thought were some clever tactics and with secretly gathered price advice from a nearby shopkeeper, only to find that I'd actually gotten the ticket seller down to the price reserved for those with bus company connections and well... his superiors didn't let that pass. However another company gave me a good price and the front seat for the 18 hour ride that turned into 25 hours, which I've learned to expect. The two bus driver fellahs decided to become tour guides for the odd tourist girl on the bus and bought me lunch, pointed out the towns and landmarks along the way, offered me a cell phone to call with, and stopped and picked a taxi to send me off in that they deemed to have a trustworthy driver upon arrival in Bogota, which was nice Along the way we passed over high mountain passes, stopped in major towns, and drove through vast spaces of arid rural land.

I arrived at the comfortable apartment of the director of a bilingual Christian school and was taken in for the next few days and relaxed in a safe, loving place. I spent the next couple of days meeting people and then more people at the bilingual school and became a sort of curiosity among the staff, who are mostly recently graduated teachers, for my wild travel story of seeing Latin America. I was invited to attend the teacher get together after school and met many welcoming, kind people and we even had a campfire with smores to top it all off. After that introduction to Bogota, I moved into the home of a couple who are long-term teachers at the school. A Colombian family, a couple and a cute little toddler, live in the house as well. I cook up all sorts of semi-Colombian concoctions for my meals. I'll probably have to try to describe food later because it is quite rich in variety and in new things to try.

Fundacion Internacional Maranata: Hogar de Paz (the place I've been working during the day):

Every afternoon for five hours I work at an afterschool program for the "hidden poor," children that are above government support because they are not on the street but who still are in need of extra nutrition, support, and supervision after school. This is just one part of the foundation, which also organizes Christian concerts, speakers, and other events in Bogota and in all of Colombia. I help Cindy, who organizes all of the Hogar de Paz details. Fifteen children- mostly 7 and 8 yr olds, a couple of 5 and 6 yr olds, and a 10 yr old burst through the doors every day. We feed them lunch, ranging from hot dogs Bogota style with pineapple jam, spaghetti that doesn't taste like any I've ever had before, soup, rice and beans, lentils, plantains, and juice made from lulo, mora, lime, or mango. We sing songs, play games, help with homework, attempt some English lessons, and try to prevent serious injuries. We had two lost teeth in one day, however from natural causes. The kids are unruly, energetic, and quite the challenge but they are normal, untraumatized children unlike those in Honduras and it is such a relief and a joy to see. Unlike the Honduran children, these kids have the incredible wealth of parents who care to leave them with hugs and pick them up with kisses every day.

They are quite entertaining at times. One eight year old with the most typical Colombian face and big brown eyes, the one who tries hard to behave but falls under the influence of some other more ornery types, stared up at me yesterday and finally asked, "Teacher how do you grow so much?" Needless to say, I'm quite tall here. Last week we had a birthday celebration for one newly turned six year old. Colombians actually sing the birthday song in English with the best accents and then add on a little Spanish tag. One little girl could not finish her English homework of a "word search within letters" at home because her "abuelita" (grandmother) did not speak English (she genuinely thought English was necessary to finish the homework).

Four little boys are soccer terrors who play with abandon despite repeated warnings not to break the windows or injure the little girls (again). They have taken to beginning their soccer matches in the undignified courtyard surrounded by pink walls and white gates with a stirring rendition of the national anthem. With mischievous smiles revealing gaping holes where their front teeth are missing, they place their filthy hands across their hearts and begin to sing with gusto all in a line. The jumbled tune is inevitably broken with characteristic childish distraction when the keeper of the ball can no longer let it just sit there waiting to be kicked. But for ten seconds those four are quite the show and a picture of the solemn importance of soccer in Colombia.

They leave every day sporadically in ones and twos, stopping to give the traditional goodbye of a little kiss on the cheek, if they are not too distracted, to "la profe"- Cindy and "la teacher"- Rachel.

Bogota in general:

Bogota is big, big, big. Nine million people cram into the very organized network of streets in the capital city of Colombia. At 2,650 meters above sea level, Bogota sits on a high plateau where a comfortable clime of eternal spring reigns supreme and is broken only by occasional downpours and the chilly nights. The sun is brilliantly bright with the combination of the altitude and proximity to the equator. The city is organized along a green mountain range that rises to the south and provides both a landmark in the vastness of concrete and brick and a glimpse of the beauty of the hills surrounding the city. Bogota is a safe haven from the countryside and the waves of guerrilla violence. The city has grown to fill the view from the horizon even from the high mountains. Within this very modern city, the streets are filled with men and women wearing more suits than I have seen since Washington D.C. Mass transit, in the form of the transmilenio, is my way to get to work and to explore, crowded as it may be at times; my foot actually got caught under the operating door yesterday we were packed in so tightly- ouch! The transmilenio is like an above ground subway using non-automated buses in their own special lanes. But Bogota can not be explored in a month! Sometimes a horse drawn cart can be seen clopping down a main thoroughfare hawking used appliances, but somehow even this almost fits in as Bogota is varied and lively. The heart of the life of the city can be found in the huge central plazas filled with vendors selling juice, fruit, shirts, cell phone calls, ice cream, stockings, pirated DVDs, and a random assortment of distractions that almost make me dizzy. There are government office areas to explore, with a very colorful changing of the flag ceremony at the president's house, historic neighborhoods with narrow streets, museums of gold, history, and art, and streets lined with vendors organized according to category, be it the leather jacket neighborhood or the blender barrio. How else would you find what you need in a city this big? There are truly huge malls, an enormous park I've yet to explore, and seemingly endless streets to wander.

Bogota has some interesting ways of managing traffic and streets. Pico y Placa is a system by which all cars are given certain days they can not be on the road each week based on their license number. Last Thursday was the one day of the year where no one is allowed to drive a car, so mass transit was crowded. Some of the main roads are even half converted into massive bike lanes on Sundays.

Colombia is an overwhelmingly rich country in numerous ways and Bogota is the center of it all.

My neighbor and outings:

Rebecca is my neighbor. She's a fifteen minute walk away, living at the home of a wonderful Colombian family who are incredibly welcoming and generous. Having such an excellent friend for a neighbor means we get to go for walks around the neighborhood, explore on the weekends, and have cooking parties to attempt Colombian cuisine. We've wandered to a large central fruit and meat market, eaten the traditional plate of food filled with a variety of typical dishes (prepared in a restaurant run by a very friendly family), watched the guanabana juice man I was about to buy juice from be hauled off by the police- a little disconcerting, wandered the museum of paintings of obese people, and talked for hours. Awww, how sweet it is to have such a neighbor!

Cindy, the girl I help at the foundation, invited Rebecca and I to spend a Sunday afternoon with her family last week. So we climbed up over the mountain and out of the city to the Bogota Sunday afternoon eat and drive circuit in La Calera. Bogotans drive a bit crazy so it was a good ride through traffic and up the mountain to the beat of the Beatles hour. (We actually drove back on a winding two lane road turned into a big one lane road and as traffic wove in and out I learned a little what Nascar might be like...) We stuffed ourselves while sitting on rustic wooden stumps outside in the fresh air from a finger food plate of fried yucca, arepa, beef, chicken, baby potatoes, and a type of chorizo. Then we moved on for desert and more conversation with Cindy's parents, little sister, older brother, and a cousin. I was refreshed and humbled by their generosity and invitation! I also spent last Friday with the family munching on popcorn and watching my first movie in a very long time.

The pregnant girls home (where I work in the mornings):

Last week I started work at a home where 37 girls between the ages of 11 and 18, who are either pregnant or have little babies, are given a home, occupational training, school, and specific training related to their difficult backgrounds to train them to be good mothers. They are housed in a hospital/prison like tall narrow cement building, complete with white walls, in one of the worst areas of Bogota. A side note is that I actually drank my first cup of coffee ever in this building. I figured that in the middle of the capital city of Colombia, which is a global coffee capital itself, might be the appropriate place to give in and swallow the stuff.

I arrived for my first morning and was let in by staff I had not met yet. Even after explaining that I didn't have a program to present to all the girls, they were gathered for me to teach an English lesson to on the spot. My attempts at working on "Good morning" and "How are you?" melted into teaching them a kids game with number counting and hand slapping that I was endlessly annoyed by in the orphanage in Honduras. (That random game I hated in Honduras is actually unheard of here and has become a lifesaver as I became the bearer of an exciting new game at the children's foundation and I've even converted it into an English numbers teaching game.) However "class" here devolved further into popcorn questions fired at me in slurred Spanish about the U.S ranging from: "What part of Colombia is the United States?" to "Why do you know how to speak English?" to more sophisticated questions about what the four seasons are like.

Next I was sent to the crib room where the mothers leave their babies scattered across the floor while they eat lunch. With one or two other people I attempted to prevent any serious injuries from occurring in the tiny room filled with twenty-five rolling, crawling, and toddling babies. And we were successful…at least life is always interesting here! Yesterday I was left with twenty babies by myself for forty minutes and again was successful by my generous measure.

Play dough day and Monserrate:

Yesterday was a play dough day. After all the madness I relaxed and even built a small play dough land with Alejo, the neatest fourth grade son of the family Rebecca lives with. I began walking home quite relaxed and then turned the final corner to my normally quiet street to find a woman crying into her cell phone hysterically and then I heard the pulsating beat of La Macarena pouring out of the house across the street from mine. The song then proceeded to melt into a medley of tutti fruitti, rock around the clock, surfer music, you ain’t nothin but a hound dog, and the tequila song before reverting to Latin pop and salsa. Ahh, Saturday night in Colombia.

I attended mass this morning in an unorthodox service in the cathedral at the top of Monserrate, the mountain I look up to every morning on my way to work. The cathedral is reached by either a pulley train or a MacGyver style cable car and the view from the top is excellent. Rebecca, Jaime (another student teacher), Sara (a German girl we connected with in a very random way), and I wandered downtown today. There are always new things to see. In later explorations on my own I even discovered an active student protest in front of the bull ring and saw a very intimidating water cannon truck at the ready and watched a very talented street performing Colombian Michael Jackson.

I’ve got a week left in Bogota and then I’m moving on to Ecuador and traveling for a while. I’ll just conclude that it’s never really quite dull here and I’m enjoying myself after adjusting to being in a big city!
_________

Thank you, Rachel!

Pre-Kinder Rules.

2010-02-09T20:59:00.001-06:00

In pre-kinder, there are three rules: obey right away, love and respect others, and raise your hand in silence. I sometimes refer to a rule when I am teaching a Bible lesson. Today I was teaching about when Samuel anointed David. "God told Samuel to look for a new king because Saul was not a good king," I said, and I pointed to the rule poster on the wall: "Saul did not obey right away. Saul did not love and respect others."

One five-year-old very seriously piped in, "And he did not raise his hand in silence." I smiled at my cooperating teacher and continued with the lesson.

A good day to be tourists

2010-02-07T17:36:00.001-06:00

We've been planning since last week to go up to Monserrate, so today we did. Last Saturday we thought we were going to go up Monserrate, but since we found out it's cheaper on Sundays, we ended up just walking around and exploring instead and we went to a wonderful restaurant to get bandeja paisa and soup and we ended up talking to the family that runs the restaurant and they gave us the phone number for a student from Germany who is living with them. So last night I worked up the courage to call and we told her to meet us at the transmi station and to look for three blondes. We were easy to find.

The four of us had a great day being tourists, which is a good change from being teachers all week. We rode the funicular up to Monserrate, the cathedral on the mountain overlooking downtown, and attended a surprisingly contemporary mass. We spent a lot of time just staring at the hugeness of the city, from the skyscrapers to the slums.

Then we rode back down to the level of the city and explored. Our progressive lunch included tamales, mango biche, and pastel gloria, which is a flaky pastry filled with cheese, guava, and arequipe. We spoke in English and got lots of stares and compliments (like "Son muy lindas.") and it was a good day to be tourists. Tonight I'm working on lesson plans because tomorrow begins another week of school!

Great Colombian Foods

2010-01-24T20:40:00.002-06:00

Great Colombian Foods that Ryan Could Eat:
1. Coffee.
2. Rotisserie Chicken.
3. Mango Biche. Slices of mango with lime and salt.
4. Bandeja Paisa, except for the ground beef.
5. Plantain Chips.
6. Candied Coconut.
7. Bakery bread.
8. Arroz con Pollo, and all the other foods that are made from rice and chicken.
9. Fresh fruit.

Great Colombian Foods that Ryan Couldn't Eat:
1. Avena (oatmeal). It's actually a drink made with milk, served hot or cold.
2. Buñuelos. Why are these fried spheres of dough so good? There is cheese in the dough.
3. Chocolate. Hot chocolate, which is sometimes served with cheese in it.
4. Grilled field corn on the cob.
5. Arepas, which are round corn breads, often filled with cheese.
6. Maracuyá ice cream.
7. Empanadas made from corn pastry.
8. Tamales. Corn dough filled with good stuff and boiled inside of plantain leaves.
9. UHT milk. Like milk, except it tastes different, and you can keep it on your shelf for a year. It comes in bags here.

It's good.

2010-01-19T14:27:00.002-06:00

It's good when it is good to say,
"Tomorrow will be like today."

Help me to remember

2010-01-08T21:17:00.002-06:00

I should get back in the habit of blogging. It helps me to remember things. I just updated my list of places I've slept throughout college. Am I forgetting anyplace?

91. Somewhere south of GR at the house of an ACMNP board member.
92. The house on Kalamazoo.
93. Pella, on the way west.
94. Ft. Collins for Alissa's illustrious graduation.
95. Coeur d'Alene for two nights at Josh and Kelsey's.
96. Paradise.
97. Cougar Rock Campground with the ACMNP team.
98. Sunnyside. We saw Tobias when he was four days old, and then I saw him again at his baptism.
99. Yaak for the Vander Wilt family reunion.
100. Ft. Collins.
101. Pella, on the way east.
102. Alumni 109.
103. Michigan for October birthdays.
104. Amy Laib's house, after our spontaneous trip to Natalie's house.
105. Sioux Falls for a night.
106. Ft. Collins.
107. Sioux Falls again. Does that count?
108. Pella for Christmas.
109. Jamie's house, so we could go straight to the airport.
110. The Moyer's. We'll move to Spanish-speaking homes soon.

I very much like Bogotá so far. It's a huge city, but the school is on the edge of it and you can always see mountains on the east and the west, so that makes it feel less endless. We have been riding around and bussing around with the Moyers and the past three nights we have had supper with different families from the school, and it is so good to get to know them. I am looking forward to school starting. The school seems so empty during these days as we go about getting ready for the spring semester.

This semester

2009-12-08T17:37:00.001-06:00

This semester I didn't write poetry.
There weren't any rhymes in my head–
just wishes to wander
and longings to linger
and dreams about going to bed.

in suspense and incomplete

2009-10-05T14:18:00.002-05:00

I have been very frustrated with school this semester, mostly because I have a high concentration of education courses. I have a hard time motivating myself to do work that teaches me nothing except that I don't like to do work. To make sure that we are ready for student teaching, all my education classes are designed to review previous education classes. This might be okay if the first education classes weren't already a review of common sense. I'm sure you remember the pain of being told "show all your work" on simple algebra problems in middle school. Imagine the pain of being told to spell out your whole thought process behind every lesson plan so that a professor can tell you ten ways to make it more creative. I know I'm not quite ready to teach on my own, but I feel like my training is just turning me off to the profession. I just want to student teach, graduate, marry Ryan, and teach. Funny that it was in one of these wearisome education courses that I was exposed to this encouraging poem by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin:

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way
to something unknown,
something new.
Yet it is the law of all progress that it is made
by passing through some stages of instability–
and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you.
Your ideas mature gradually. Let them grow.
Let them shape themselves without undue haste.
Do not try to force them on
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace
and circumstances
acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new Spirit
gradually forming in you will be.
Give our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.

Autumn

2009-09-30T11:05:00.000-05:00

I lost half of my tan today.
The melanin was washed away
with soap and water down the drain–
and summer's gone and done the same.

Back to School

2009-09-25T21:19:00.002-05:00

I've been back at Trinity for almost a month, and I finally feel like the school year has started. This week was my first yearbook meeting, my first work shift, my first tutoring sessions and the honor's kick-off fest. Best of all, novice teaching started. Being in the classroom with a group of bilingual sixth graders was a pleasant reminder of all the reasons I do want to be a teacher.

It's great to have both a cousin and a sister on campus. Last weekend we went up to Grandma and Grandpa Vander Wilt's and spent the weekend hanging out at the campground at Lake Red Rock. It was a lot of fun to carry on an old tradition.

Ryan is planning to visit in about two weeks! We're engaged. Yippee!

a pleasant surprise

2009-06-07T22:41:00.002-05:00

I was walking home from work with Ryan when I saw Rachel walking up the hill. I let go of Ryan and dropped my bag and ran, embracing her with, "You're here! You're here!" I had hoped to see my best friend from Spain sometime this summer, but her arrival was a complete surprise. "How long can you stay?" I asked.

Rachel stayed long enough for us to hike to Alta Vista, Camp Muir, and Bench Lake. She met some of the people I've been meeting and shared the food I was eating. The weather turned from lovely to yucky while she was here, but walking through the cold fog between Rachel and Ryan, I coiuld not forget that I live in a wonderful place.

Today was our first church service, and I spoke on the springlike renewal of the Holy Spirit. The snow is melting fast, and gradually more guests are coming. This cloud won't linger around Paradise forever, and while it does, I'll relax with a good book.

I'm for summer.

2009-05-19T22:54:00.001-05:00

Let me just say that my college is much more concerned about making first impressions than leaving a pleasant aftertaste. When we move in, they provide t-shirted helpers, shopping carts, and a few extra days just to settle in. I don't always get there a few days early, but at least there's the option. In the spring, they don't even bring us shopping carts to use. As if we had less stuff to bring out than we brought in at the beginning of the year. It's no wonder I never miss school when my most recent memories of school during breaks always include long nights, long papers, cramming, cramming stuff into boxes, hauling boxes, and cleaning the suite under ridiculous time constraints. Everyone out by five on the last day of finals. Naturally, I am often sick during this week. If this is what college is about, I'm for summer.

This summer, I am going to miss my school roommates.

I wonder who my roommates will be this summer. I wonder about a lot of things. I am excited about a lot of things. I am going to Paradise.

preferences, priorities

2009-05-04T22:24:00.003-05:00

What would you rather have in the room with you?
An inkless printer?
A stained t-shirt?
An angry person?

What is more valuable?
A minute?
A year?
A person?

A lifetime or a life?

scented song

2009-04-20T16:39:00.002-05:00

I can almost smell Mt. Rainier. All summer, it will smell like spring. The breeze will wind up the valleys and past the waterfalls and under the sun to melt the snowpack slowly. I can almost smell this when I listen to "Noticed" by MuteMath. Songs roll like snowballs through our lives, gathering memories that cool the breeze at our backs.

April to April

2009-04-15T01:05:00.003-05:00

It is April.

I went back and read all my journal and blog entries from a year ago. This is what I wrote on April 18, 2008: "It was about a year ago (today is April 18 and I sent out that first email on April 27 last year) that my roommate was trying to make me see the foolishness of my decisions. Yes, I know I do some crazy things, but I'm not doing them blind…"

Oh yes I was doing them blind. In April 2007, when I sent that first email out to ask if I could ride with anyone to Mt. Rainier, I had no idea that the man who said "sure" would end up being my best friend that summer. In April 2008 I didn't know just how good it would be to be that man's girlfriend. If I had known, I would not have been a bit worried about what my roommate had to say.

On April 23, 2007, my mom sent me this note: "I'm working on processing the thought that you might not be around this summer. It's kind of yukky, like with Nathan, you guys go off to college, we think it's a 9 month stint but then you're not back in the summer either which turns it into 21 months which basically means you've moved out. I guess I just need to get a grip on reality."

On April 7, 2008, my mom sent me this note: "I know you're enjoying Rome right now, but a few things to get off of my mind and into yours: #1 Dad is accepting the Ft Collins offer…" That job lasted until this April. When Dad called and told me he got laid off, I thought he was kidding at first.

On April 4, 2008, Ryan asked me to be his girlfriend, and on April 11, 2008, I said "yes." Call me cruel for making him wait that long, but he had no way to know I had internet in Rome. Besides, this was no ordinary dating decision, and I thought it deserved a week-long anniversary.

This year, April 11 fell between Good Friday and Easter, so Ryan and I were able to celebrate together in Pella. We hung out with my grandparents, who have been married almost 48 years. During their first April as husband and wife, their first son was born (Happy Birthday, Dad!). They've had 46 more Aprils together since then. That's a lot of Aprils.

A lot can happen from April to April. That is why we walk by faith and not by sight.

this scrap of paper

2009-03-29T15:45:00.001-05:00

Sometimes, when I am feeling a little melancholy, I put a sad song on repeat, and as I get sick of the song, I get sick of being sad, too. And so I turn off the song and get happy. Today the song was sad, but so pretty it turned happy as I did. It was a song by Hem and it includes these words:

"Think of every town you've lived in,
every room you lay your head."

68. The house on Kalamazoo.
69. Anita's apartment.
70. The hostel downtown. Two nights, hanging out with Marissa.
71. Bryna's house. The 123 four made it a weekend.
72. Pella for Thanksgiving.
73. At my parent's house in Ft. Collins.
74. The bottom bunk at Hofland's.
75. Inspiration Hills.
76. The couch at Ryan's house, soon after midnight on January 1.
77. The top bunk at Hofland's.
78. The house on Kalamazoo.
79. The plane from O'hare to Heathrow.
80. The plane from Heathrow to Tel Aviv.
81. The kibbutz in the Negev.
82. The kibbutz by the Dead Sea.
83. Christ Church in the Old City of Jerusalem.
84. The kibbutz in the North.
I didn't sleep at the hostel in Tel Aviv, although I had a bed.
85. A little on both of the planes back here.
86. Alumni 123. Still the best suite ever.
87. Dave and Julie's, and I didn't get sick.
88. Dave and Carlene's.
89. Amy's house, between talking until 3:00 in the morning and getting up before 7:00 to bring her siblings to the airport.
90. Nine nights on a different couch at Ryan's house– the couch he set up downstairs so that Grandma/Obaachan wouldn't have to worry about making noise in the kitchen.

"And what is it that you remember?"

Maybe I was feeling melancholy because spring break is over, and I am back at Alumni 123. I'm thinking back to those days when I woke up on that couch to the sun shining past Obaachan's houseplants and Ryan and slurps from his coffee mug. We cooked and walked and read and talked together. We did many things on our list of things to do, but we are not done. And that's fine with me.

"I am carrying this scrap of paper
that can crack the darkest sky wide open–
every burden taken from me,
every night my heart unfolding
my home."

four days of teacher aiding

2009-03-10T22:44:00.001-05:00

I'm getting into a rhythm of teacher aiding, and I really like the high school that I am placed at. Today and my three days last week were quite exciting. Last Tuesday, the school was placed on a lockdown. After twelve minutes of sitting along one wall on the tile floor in the dark listening to canines barking in the distance, the intercom let us go back to instruction. Five minutes later they told us it was a drill. On Wednesday, I got a tattoo. Just henna actually, and the stained skin cells are slowly being shed. It was World Languages Week, so there were many multi-cultural activities going on, such as friendship bracelets, an activity to which I was able to lend my junior high expertise. On Thursday, I volunteered to translate for an individualized instruction plan meeting between the special needs teachers and a parent. I can't decide whether I'm more pleased with myself for getting the information back and forth or for volunteering in the first place. The father was very appreciative. Today, I pulled two students out of class to give them some individualized instruction. They both moved here recently from Mexico and were eager for a chance to get out of the English-filled classroom where they felt lost. We read a kids book. I made sure that they knew that I knew that they were not kids. They asked me if they should call me 'tú' or 'usted'. I told them 'tú', and they agreed, because I am not a viejita. I'm not a kid either.

Tomorrow we are going to talk about question words and ourselves and life and the world. I love teaching.

keep on writing

2009-03-02T09:09:00.002-06:00

I feel like I can't write right now. I'm totally out of practice. Why can't one of my professors assign a twenty page paper? That would squeeze some journaling out of me, if only as a procrastination technique. But this semester is all about reading fifty pages before the next class.

I have to somehow keep on writing
even when it's not exciting,
because this is somebody's home page.
If you're someday coming home to me
awake is what I want to be–
still writing, with a light on.

So what have I been doing, if I haven't been writing? Here's a quick overview of the semester: The first weekend of the semester I worked ahead on homework, because the next week, Anita came, and a few hours after she went back to her school, Ryan visited for the weekend. The weekend after that, Mom and Dad and Alissa came, and we visited Dave and Julie and then Northwest Illinois. That was a study in anthropology. The next weekend I rejoiced because I passed a history test that lets me take just eighteen credits instead of twenty-one. The next week I started my teacher aiding placement at a nearby high school, and I was able to drive there in a very spiffy car (thanks, fam!).

And this weekend (actually week, but I go more by the sentiment than the calendar) we went to Iowa. Very few times have I gone to Iowa without seeing family. We went to see the brothers at New Melleray monastery. It was a good way to begin Lent. For two and a half days, I had my own private guest room and nothing on my agenda except vigils, lauds, terce, sext, none, vespers, compline, breakfast, lunch and dinner. I spent the time walking the field roads, reading, and trying to journal, and until the way home, I wasn't sure I was getting much out of it. But coming back I realized that I had finally been able to clear enough head space to think again. Hopefully all that thinking will lead to some more writing.

The Sounds of Israel

2009-02-15T22:06:00.008-06:00

A lot has happened since I was in Israel, and I'll write about it eventually, but for now I want to share some videos from our trip in January. Listen for these sounds: pure talent, praising, praying, youth, Holy Sepulchre bells, tour guide/Muslim call to prayer/the singing of Vietnamese Christians, the wind, happy children, "air raid," and "get in here, you guys."

Hear Jerusalem Moan: Galilee

2009-02-02T16:54:00.002-06:00

We started off from Jerusalem by driving through the West Bank, where we saw many Arab farmers and many gated communities. Along with lots of fruits and grains, they grow cactus there, in big, long rows. When they grow bananas, they wrap different bunches in different colored bags so that they ripen at different rates and they can increase their profit.. We stopped at Beth-Shean and saw the tel and the valley and sang in the Roman ampitheater. Soon we were entering the area where Jesus had spent most of his time, and we recognized more street signs, like "Migdal Junction," Mary Magdelene's place. We saw a zodiac on the floor of a synogogue from the Byzantine era. We made several archeological diversions on our way to the Sea of Galilee. Finally we saw the lake and Mt. Hermon, big and white, on the other side. We pulled into our kibbutz with plenty of time to read, talk, journal, play, explore, and shop in the little grocery store.

The next day we talked about the Beattitudes on the hill where Jesus said them, we talked about Jesus eating fish on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, we talked about Jesus speaking at the synagogue in the ruins of Capernaum, and we road a boat across the Sea of Galilee. That day three people in our group got baptized in the Jordan, and we saw nine peacocks in a tree at our kibbutz. The next day we went through the mine fields up to the Golan Heights, stopping at a national park where we talked about the lame man being lowered through the ceiling and how Jesus brushed the dirt clods out of his own hair and forgave all the man's sins. We saw Syria and Lebanon and Israel and the battlefields between them. We also drove through a town that had been hit with a missile the day before. The next day we went up on the Mount of Megiddo and talked about the past and the future. And we went up on Mt. Carmel, the site of my favorite Bible story. It was so clear we could see Mt. Hermon and a glimpse of the Meditteranean Sea.

On Saturday night Ryan and I looked through all 1,306 photos I took in Israel. It took a long time. When he saw all the pictures I took of Mt. Hermon, he knew what I was talking about. I was talking about a place I want to go back to.

I signed up to go to Israel because I knew it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and yet the whole time I was there, I felt like I would be back someday. This feeling heightened as we rode north into the region of the Sea of Galilee. If I lived in Israel, that's where I'd live. There are green fields and green mountains and a big lake that called a sea and way up in the north there is a mountain that looks like a big white chunk of home. Everywhere I go I want to go back, so why do I keep going new places?

Next year in Jerusalem! I'd like to say that with confidence, but I'm not stupid. Next year probably student teaching in Latin America. Next summer at Mt. Rainier! We all have places we hope for and people we long to see. Someday maybe I'll go back to Israel.

We had to go back to Tel Aviv that night because we had to go back to Chicago. After supper, five of us went out to have a goodbye-and-goodnight snack, but then Emily said "pass it" to three kids playing soccer in the park, and we ended up playing with them in the dark on the side of the hill for an hour and a half and their dads came and served us refreshments but we still had our own snacks so we went out to the shore of the Mediterranean to enjoy and by that time we decided to stay out all night, since we would have to get up at 3:30 to catch the plane. We enjoyed every last minute we had in Israel before we took off for our home on another shore. I can still hear Jerusalem moan.

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Hear Jerusalem Moan: Jerusalem

2009-01-25T19:40:00.002-06:00

We arrived in Jerusalem a sunset and a sunrise before the sabbath, and oh was it good to eat supper and bring our bags to the room upstairs. We stayed at Christ Church, a place with a long history and a guest house. We went out walking that night in the light in the streets. We went to a modern shopping district and an unearthed shopping district and made our first of many stops to watch and pray at the Western Wall. Whenever I prayed there, in reach of the stones of the temple mount, I prayed for the peace of Jerusalem.

The next day we went to several museums, including the Holocaust museum, where I was reminded of all the stories I've read that are not just stories. For many, those stories are the reason their family now lives in Israel. My favorite falafel of the tour was that day in a crowded stall of the crowded Jewish market on the afternoon before Sabbath. Rush hour before a day of rest. That evening after a Sabbath dinner at the church, we went back to the Western Wall. Hundreds of Jews were gathered in their Sabbath best, dancing and praising and kissing the old-hewn stones. They want so badly for the temple to be rebuilt upon that mount that they have a menora ready, but there is still a mosque, a minaret and a loudspeaker up there. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.

I made myself too busy on my Sabbath, as always, but I felt it more in a land where so many others are very busy at resting. I walked up and down the streets, spying out souvenirs and bartering with shopkeepers. We went to the church of the Holy Sepulchre (pray for peace) and touched some revered stones. Sunday we explored Zion and went through a tunnel along the temple mount underneath the Muslim Quarter. On Monday we followed the path of Jesus during the days before his death. We sat in the Garden of Gethsemane while the gardener pruned. I am grafted onto an olive tree. We went inside a tomb where Jesus' body may have lay. Now it is just stone.

Jerusalem is full of stones: the wall that surrounds the Old City, old walls that used to do the same, underground tunnels, overground tunnels, ancient ruins, and brand new apartment complexes. When the sun rises in the morning, it all looks like gold. But Jerusalem is more colorful than that. I couldn't tell you specifically what an Israeli or a Jew looks like or acts like because the diaspora that has repopulated carry with them the lands where they lived. There are Russian Jews and Polish Jews and French Jews and rich New York Jews. And there are Orthodox Jews and Secular Jews and Messianic Jews (though very, very few). And then there are the Catholics, the Armenians, the Muslims, and the tourists. One time we were sitting in the garden of the Garden Tomb, trying to listen to our Canadian (we guess) tour guide talk about our Jewish Savior while the Muslim call to prayer resounded above the city and a tour group of Vietnamese Christians sang a song I know well in English but cannot remember. Is this diversity, or chaos? Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.

On our last night in Jerusalem, a few of us went to a pub where we spent a peaceful, relaxing evening. On our way out, we met a couple people who were also enjoying an evening at the pub, but in a less redemptive way. They were Americans, and we had a good chat. They were with some peace promoting tour group, but I don't know if they had enough peace for themselves, much less enough to share.

When you hear Jerusalem moan (or just listen to the bluegrass song), pray for the peace of Jerusalem.

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Hear Jerusalem Moan: The Negev

2009-01-21T09:53:00.002-06:00

As mentioned briefly in the last post, I went to Israel. About sixteen students went for about two weeks. We began our journey in the Negev, the sweaty place, the South, the desert, the wilderness. Since night had fallen long before we reached the kibbutz (communist ranch) where we stayed, we felt like we were in the middle of nowhere. We met a couple guys our age who had hitchiked to the same kibbutz. They had recently gotten done with their three years of mandatory military service. We wandered around in the dark and asked them what it's like to grow up in Israel. One of the guys had never been outside of Israel. They both felt like their lives had been on hold while they were in the army, so they were happy to be out and wandering around. We wandered around the kibbutz for a while and they showed us the spot where Ben-Gurion (like George Washington, but for Israel) was buried. By the light of the waxing moon, we saw that our lodgings were seated next to a canyon.

The next morning the sun came up over that canyon, and we saw just how big it was, and how dry. We went by bus to the Ramone Crater and hiked for miles and talked about the Israelites wandering in this desert. Then we hiked a few more miles. Then we ate some manna in the form of falafel. The falafel stand on the first day served it hot and cheap with all the best condiments. We raved. Within ten days, though, we started to grumble against our beloved tour guide Rami whenever he mentioned falafel for lunch. In the afternoon we wandered some more, this time among the ruins of Avdat. For supper that night, we ate meat, since we had had dairy for breakfast, and it would be over six hours until we ate dairy again. That night we sat under the stars and listened to distant rumblings from the direction of Gaza and talked about God and the world.

We saw water the next day: a lovely stream running through the desert of Tsin. The water allowed green things to grow. After falafel, we visited the Negev shack of Ben-Gurion, who moved to the Negev to be an example of pioneerism. He wanted to show that the desert could bloom if they just added water, which is what people have been doing for millenia, as we saw in the ruins of Arad. That night we resettled at another kibbutz near the Dead Sea. Again we opened our suitcases, knowing we would have to repack everything the next morning.

We woke up early to watch the sun rise over the Dead Sea. That day was full: Masada, En Gedi, Qumran and a swim in the Dead Sea. The water at En Gedi dives into a turquoise pool; the water in the Dead Sea beads up on top of itself and won't let you drown. It was a beautiful day. All of our time in the Negev had been beautiful, but I was ready for the city, as strange as it may sound to hear that from me.

In Jerusalem, we'd stay five nights in one place. We'd be able to let our suitcases explode and the contents spread throughout the room. We'd be able to settle in, feel at home, and drink the water straight from the tap. And best of all, at night it would not be dark because the streetlights would come on and we'd be able to explore as far as we could walk.

I was ready for Jerusalem. I could hear Jerusalem moan.

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Can't you hear Jerusalem moan?

2009-01-19T20:22:00.002-06:00

Someone at David's baby shower on December 13 asked me when I had gotten back. Back to the country? Back to school? Back from Thanksgiving break? I had been to Colorado before, but never to that chidrens' hospital, so I couldn't really come back. Alissa had to say "Friday" for me. Yes, Friday, December 12 was the day that I landed in Denver.

When Milt asked me the same question on Sunday, I was ready. I told him that I got into Denver airport on Friday night, then rode up to Ft. Collins, then rode back to Denver, then rode back to Ft. Collins, then rode back to Denver. "You can't say 'back' when this is only the third day I've been in Ft. Collins, and I've spent two of those days in Denver." Point taken.

People thought I was "back" because they thought I was home, but I knew that home wasn't Ft. Collins because I didn't even know where the bathrooms or the oven mitts were. I suppose there are plenty of senile people who have lived in houses their whole lives and then forgotten where the bathrooms or the oven mitts are, but that's different. They are still allowed to call their houses home, even after they are taken away to a nursing home. And they are also allowed to call the nursing home "home." Or both can be home. Or neither.

If home is where the heart is, my home is in pieces all over the world. There are chunks in the swamp, in the camper, in the senior hallway, in Glacier Dorm, in my señora's house, in this dorm room, and in Fort Collins. My home is even in places I've never been, like George Fox University's Asian house and Singapore and orphanages in Uganda. Some pieces of my home no longer exist (like Putermobile), and some pieces exist only in my imagination (like my own full kitchen). This is all very complicated, so I prefer a definition of "home" that goes beyond nostalgia and desire and includes something of relative permanence and practical function. I don't have this definition completely worked out, and I don't even want to know what the dictionary has to say.

Lori asked me yesterday if I spent Christmas in Iowa or at home. The truth is I spent ten days at my parents' house and then spent Christmas in the Buick with my sister and the next few days at the Hoflands' house, the next few days in a cabin, the next two days at my boyfriend Ryan's house, another night at Hoflands', the next day in the Buick, and the next day and a half at the house on Kalamazoo. And then I went to Israel. No, Lori, I did not spend Christmas at home.

"Where is your home?" she asked as I finally unpacked the suitcase, duffel, and backpack that I'd been living out of since December 12. "Here," I said.

But that's only half the answer. "I've got a home on the other shore (Oh, can't you hear Jerusalem moan!) and I'm a gonna live there forevermore. (Can't you hear Jerusalem moan?)"

Done!

2008-12-12T14:59:00.000-06:00

I am done with another semester, another season in another place, but it doesn't seem that time has passed. Thanks to air conditioning, the air felt just this cold when I got here. I have so few entries to add to my list of places where I've slept. I've gotten acquainted with many new people, but I've lost contact with many more. I have made a few new friends.

I am done with seven presentations, eight classes, thirteen textbooks, twenty credits, and one hundred and fifty one single spaced pages of academic writing. I know I know more than I used to, but what? Would I know more if I had actually read all the textbooks, or maybe at least bought them? No. I would just be more poor, more tired.

I am done with a big chunk of work that I needed to do to prepare myself for my vocation. And for all the times I thought I wouldn't be able to get it all done, it really wasn't that bad. It was good.

God is not done working on me, not even for the semester. As I rest in celebration of God becoming human, all the pieces of me that are still flying through the air will settle into something, and I will see what God has done. For, when all is said and done, God has done it all.

Walk

2008-12-07T10:28:00.001-06:00

I'm squeezing snow into heel-shaped wafers
as blank-flavored as this air,
from which all impurities have fallen
because it is so cold.
The far away is louder than the near
because it is so quiet here.
The only sound is squeaking, squeezing snow.

I sure hope not.

2008-11-17T01:01:00.001-06:00

Professor Vallone keeps saying that I am a researcher, but I'm pretty sure that I am an old woman reading poetry on the porch of her cabin in the mountains. I must go there to meet her. Country road, take me home, to the place where I belong. Somewhere west. The whole world is west of here, but only half the universe– assuming we are in the center of the universe. I sure hope not.

not my own

2008-11-10T22:19:00.002-06:00

When the toaster oven timer quit ticking, I paused from preparing a lesson plan for students I still don't have. Someday I'll find out if preparing lesson plans really takes so much time. I hear that I won't really find out what busy is until I get to "real life." Well, this is my life.

This is my life: eight classes, a lab called "teacher aiding," a job at the writing center and an endless drone of assigned reading and assigned writing. Sometimes this life gets interrupted to live a little bit– to share with roommates, to talk to my boyfriend, to cook something at my dresser-top kitchen.

I opened the toaster oven door on my supper: pumpkin bread with raisins, pears, and chocolate-chip swirls. It was still dough for the most part, but since the top was starting to burn, I had to take it out and eat it. Delicious. Not bad at all for a half-dead toaster oven that I bought at the thriftstore, that Lori brought home in her backpack, and that Bryna immediately started making plans for. I still call the toaster oven mine, but I'm not too possessive. Especially since only the top coils ever glow.

While I enjoyed the aroma of my almost-burnt-but-still-not-ready creation, I glanced at my watch. "Gospel choir soon," I thought. I looked from the computer to the open syllabus on the floor to the books sprawled across my bed. "It's going to be a late night."

Tonight I'll study for a quiz, finish that lesson plan, and write the rough draft for a twenty page paper. Tomorrow who knows what I'll do. I'm not worrying. I will keep on doing what I need to do each day because I know this isn't my life. Sure, I might always be this busy, but not this busy. And someday I'll cook in a convection oven… or in ember-covered earthenware. As long as I don't always cook in a half-dead toaster oven, I'll be fine. As long as things keep changing, I'll know that one thing stays the same.

I am being made whole and wholehearted. I won't always distract myself with half-cooked messes. I won't always feel so brain-fried and so undone at the same time. I'll find my consistency, but not for myself. No, this isn't my life. I am not my own.

Scars from a Semester

2008-11-08T19:10:00.001-06:00

It's easiest to see the scars when it's cold. One is on my left hand, on the middle knuckle. Sometime while I was lugging my luggage from Heathrow to my hostel the handle of the rolling one took off a piece of my skin. I still have my London transit card that I bought that day. It's called an Oyster card and it's sitting on my desk. The jacket that it came in says, "Don't throw away your Oyster card, you can use it again and again." It's not the comma splice that bugs me. London can make up their own English grammar and I don't care. I just don't like it because it's false. I can't use my Oyster card anymore. But I still won't throw it away.

The other scar is on my right hand, on the middle knuckle. It is in perfect symmetry with the first scar, except that it is four-and a-half months fresher. The handle of my rolling luggage gave it to me on the day I left Spain.

In Spanish, notable sentences like questions and exclamations get punctuation on both sides. My body is making up its own grammar, where notable periods get periods on each luggage-pulling fist. The little round scar on the left let me know that something was definitely going to happen and the little round scar on the right let me know that it was finished. Now I hold my cold fists at my sides and try to read this sentence inside me. I question, I exclaim, I declare, and I hope these scars never heal lest I start to doubt.

Election Night

2008-11-04T22:17:00.003-06:00

I promise to be in bed in an hour, which might work out to be right around the sugar low of the giant bowl of ice cream that I just ate. It was for the election. Ice cream is the extent of my political involvement. I didn't vote.

The week that my voter registration card proved useless and my car got donated to the Right to Life, I didn't really care about the government. It makes me sad– not that I don't have a permanent address and not that I don't have a car, but that I am less informed about the candidates than the average homeless woman. Whoever gets elected I better learn about, because I'm going to be teaching full time in a little over fourteen months. Somehow my students' president means more to me than my own. I don't think that's a sign of selflessness. I think that's just a sign of procrastination.

summer and winter

2008-10-27T23:03:00.000-05:00

I saw it snow today. First time since the night I sat behind the wing and watched them de-ice the plane as we counted down the last ten seconds before 2008. I've seen snow since then– that mountain range somewhere between Heathrow and Madrid, those ski runs in the Sierra Nevada and those ice fields we trecked across to summit Mulhacén. One morning at Sol Duc I woke up cold and looked at the peaks past the pools and saw fresh snow. Even when Rachel visited me at the end of the summer we slid down snow to sit by the lake just inside the high divide. But I think this is the first day that I saw it coming down.

I saw a raccoon tonight, hanging from the sidewalk like an upside-down sloth. He reminded me of Ricky and Rocky and the one that showed up later who I called Rooky. Those raccoons would do laps around the edge of the roof of the Sol Duc lodge in the middle of the day. The guests would get so excited. Sometimes in the evening they would peak into Ryan's window. Amy would go outside and feed them out of her hand, and I still regret not doing the illegal deed with her. That's not the only thing I regret not doing this summer, but it would have been the easiest to do.

I saw a bare-branched tree shaking in the wind and I felt my nose stiffen from the cold. Winter will seem so long this year. But then, I've had a long summer.

Waking up.

2008-10-21T23:43:00.000-05:00

Lately: I wake up and hit the snooze button at 7:50 and turn back towards the wall, burying my face in my body pillow, wanting to sleep again. But I dread that noise, so within nine minutes I turn and open the blinds, shedding light on the passage in Lucas. After a chapter, I stumble to the bathroom, then back to my desk, where I read any emails I've gotten in the last six hours– usually just the trollview.

This summer: I wake up when I hear Miranda tell her best friend Paige, "I hate you! I ----ing hate you!" as she plops onto the creeking bed next to mine and pulls a loose sheet over her torso. They are drunk, so I figure the hate will only last until sunrise. I make my watch glow and read "3:43." Three hours to sleep until I must start setting up the breakfast buffet. The sun will rise by the time the coffee brews.

Sevilla: I wake up as Alaina gets ready for school. I fill in my grammar worksheet and read some Don Quijote while she blow-dries her hair. After she hurriedly gathers her books and tells me "paz fuera" I shuffle to the kitchen and pour myself a bowl of cornflakes. Sometimes I sneak a breakfast cookie. I get ready by 8:36 (or was it 9:36? I really can't remember) so I can walk the mile through Triana, across the Guadalquivir and up the marble staircase to school.

A year ago: I wake up to a roommate's cell phone alarm, strategically positioned about a foot from my head and three fluffy pillows from her head. After about a minute of that song playing too loud for that cell phone's speakers, I gently set the phone next to her ear and curl into a fetal position facing the window and start to think. I know I won't fall asleep again, so I turn off my alarm and follow my well-planned route from my bunk to the little patch of floor on the far side of the room.

That summer: I wake up to the first buzz of my alarm and turn it off right away. I slide out out of my slick sleeping bag and sneak to the bathroom. I find my athletic pants by the light coming from the bathroom, then I grab my backpack (Bible and camera inside) and walk out to greet the mountain and the morning.

Freshman year: I wake up at whatever odd time I set my alarm to. It drives Lori nuts, because she thinks alarms should only be set to the even hour or fifteen minute increments. I eat my fruit, yogurt, and granola.

The summer before that: I wake up when the sun overcomes the fact that I worked until one. I lounge around the house or put on my mowing pants and hit the cemetery.

Two and a half years ago: I wake up at 5:47 and think about pillows and blankets while I take a quick shower. By 6:20 I'm eating breakfast and at 6:50 I am driving Pootermobile to the corner. Kind of like last Sunday.

like the monarch

2008-10-16T11:16:00.003-05:00

I wonder if the monarch knew
that he was about to die.
It would be the last time he flew.
Tears welled up in my eyes as I
stopped my walk along the highway
and stooped to hold someone
more broken down than me.
The feel of his flaked feathers
were as soothing as feeling
my frantic fingers touch leather,
finally finding my wallet underneath the seat.
I had that at least,
But what I needed most
I had to turn down.
You're not supposed
to accept an offerred ride.
So I walked with the monarch riding in my palm–
he was too broken to say no–
eyeing the chain link fence
that told me that I,
like the butterfly,
don't belong
along the highway
without a car.
It wasn't too far
of a walk to the shop
where I startled the man
whose wrench I had heard.
My throat was tight and I looked a sight
with my socks, pants and shoes
drenched deep in ditch dew.
While I dialed, he said, "My car is broke too."

Like I lifted the monarch,
the creeking old tow-truck
lifted up my broken-down car.
Now I rest beside Pootermobile
in perhaps his final resting place.
Five years, but only two birthdays together.
On this day of rest, we must wait to find out.
Like I let the dry wind take the broken butterfly
and carry him to rest in the dew,
I might have to let my car go too.

Hope

2008-10-09T01:03:00.002-05:00

Sunshine coming this way.
My boyfriend said it would be here in a day.
Living over there, he gets the weather first.
He lives ten hours from here.
How far is that? One fourth of a year.
Seven weeks now, so it could be worse.

Nostalgia

2008-10-09T00:45:00.005-05:00

'Nostalgia' is an ugly word.
I'm sick of all these beautiful pictures.
What does it matter if I can remember
if I can never return?

I'm not asking to leave where I am.
I want more than a time machine.
I'm asking to reach from my past to my future
and not loose a bit in between.

food for brains

2008-10-06T10:05:00.007-05:00

written during Honors Philosophy:

In class my brain is stirred and combed.
I'm drained when I return to home
and spread my stuff upon the bed
of limp spaghetti in my head.

Fishing in Michigan

2008-09-27T10:50:00.003-05:00

Last weekend all four inhabitants of room 123 made a road trip to Michigan. Let me just say that these three young women mean so much to me. This is what kind of people they are: when they recommend a book to me, I know that I need to read it. Their lives inspire me and encourage me. Their words provoke me to laughter and deep thinking. I am so blessed to live with them.

If that wasn't enough, they also rock at fishing. Here's some pictures of us plus our hosting roommate's boyfriend and her little sister (who caught the biggest fish).

See my Tabblo>

Cooking because I can.

2008-09-27T09:52:00.001-05:00

You've seen some of these pictures before, but I wanted to make a tabblo. So here you go!

... See my Tabblo>

What music?

2008-09-24T21:24:00.002-05:00

I listen to cynical music
when hurting makes me doubt.
I listen to let it out,
because pressure brings more pain.
What do you listen to
when you feel the same?

I listen to happy music
when there's no other way to smile
because I haven't slept in a while
and there's only so much one can do.
When you feel like that,
what do you listen to?

I listen to wordless music
when I have to be verbose
because mixing words is gross
if you don't do it right.
What do you listen to
when you must write all night?

I listen to calming music
when I'm about to explode,
my wires can't handle the load
and I have too much to lose.
When you feel like that,
what music do you choose?

I listen to happy music
when it's a happy day,
everything's okay,
and I feel not a fear.
When you feel that good,
what music must you hear?

I listen to cynical music,
when I feel all is right–
so right that I must spite
all of those for whom it's not.
When you feel just that proud,
what music's got you caught?

hold it all together.

2008-09-19T16:18:00.009-05:00

Cathedrals and catacombs are
nothing like this cinderblock sanctuary
with its sky-like simple ceiling,
though not as blue as some I've seen.
My sovereign Lord will hold it all together.

My mind is on my homes and
my heart is with another.
This language is too easy for my tongue.
How can I praise like this?
My sovereign Lord will hold it all together.

Well-rounded, like a puddle spreading
with nothing to contain the hopes I start
excepting space and time
and a desire for shape.
My sovereign Lord will hold it all together.

The smell of autumn drying wind
wets my eyes as I ask:
How will whatever is left be one
once my chaff is weathered away?
My sovereign Lord will hold it all together.

Happy Kitchen

2008-09-19T16:18:00.006-05:00

I recently wrote an angry letter about how angry I am that we are required to have very expensive meal plans here. I'll save the angry for a talk with the dean, and share some happy pictures with you.

First, tuna and cheese empanadas, browned in my rice cooker.

Next we have a pilaf of oatmeal, swollen raisins, apples, cinnamon, honey, and alfalfa sprouts.

I also made some apple sauce from the crab apples by the gym. It's nice and… tart.

Something New

2008-09-12T15:32:00.002-05:00

I said I wanted to do something new. I said I wanted the free feeling that comes with an adventure. I said I wanted to go someplace I'd never gone before.

So I finished half my homework for Tuesday on Thursday night.

1:40 to 3:40

2008-09-06T03:40:00.001-05:00

So much for catching up on sleep this weekend. There's poetry in my head, and I can't sleep. Especially when I've been praying for some poetry for so long. And now there are words all over the place.

I could blame this sleeplessnes on the chocolate fondue, but I'd rather say it's everything. Everything. Like when the boy in The Black Stallion answers the question, "What happened to you?" with "Everything." Sometimes that's how I feel, except not so dismal.

But not everything has happened to me yet. Sort of like how I still don't know everything. But I want to learn as much as I can. I guess I'm in a good place.

This is a good place. I like my room because there is enough room to dance, and there are no mice. My laptop has a desk for the first time in eight months, but right now I type between two dressers in the walk-in closet. My black dress is strewn across my stack of plastic tubs. I've changed a lot since the last time I lived on this campus, but I'm still not the cleanest… dish in the cupboard? q-tip in the little blue bowl that Mom made in ceramics class?

Lori said it's kind of like she has to get to know me all over again. She graciously allows me to have changed. Bryna says she feels different. More confident. More grown up. Me too. Spain was good for us.

Was Sol Duc good for me?

Right now
I want to go back into room number seven
and work on that song we were writing.
As I write now,
I want to change all that hell into heaven.
I think of the wrong God is righting.

God, my Only Hope,
can you give me one hope more–
that this season somehow
showed them Who I'm living for.

My roommates could see my love for Ryan. "You two really love each other, don't you?" Indeed. Was my love for God that obvious? God, I can't hug you in the hallway! What am I supposed to do? You tell me to trust you. I'll trust that you will work in soil I can't break. I want to be weak-kneed with love for my Savior, because your strength is made perfect in my weakness.

There's a hundred things I would change if I did this summer over again, which is a sign that I am now different than when the summer started. Not yet wise, but wiser. And now I am in another circumstance, but it is not just what's around me that has changed. I'm glad I've changed.

What would happen if I left the country again, this time for longer, this time to somewhere differenter? Would it be ethical to experiment along this question, flying myself all over the world, thrusting myself into culture after culture? Would that get me closer to who God wants me to be? Or would it just get me confused?

And what would happen if I stayed in one place? Would I get lop-sided like a potted plant that is never rotated? Would I stop growing all together? When I was in Camarma, I asked a single teacher who had been with the school for fifteen years how she kept her spiritual walk moving. Because I seem to grow most when I move.

She said that becoming established was the only way that Spaniards would give her the time of day. Completely true. Maybe that's why I don't imagine myself living in Europe. Well, not long enough to get established.

Is there a place I could send myself that would change me so that I can see all the good connotations in the word 'established'?

Maybe I could learn something about that here. I told Bryna the other day, "You know what I just realized? It's just going to be the four of us. They aren't going to add any roommates. There will be no surprises. We won't have to rearrange. I can let down my guard. This is the way it's going to be, for four whole months!"

"Rebecca," she replied. "Eight months. We're going to live here for eight months."

Woah. When she said that is when I began to make escape plans. But if I have to stay somewhere for eight months, this is a good place.

It's a good place to splash in the rain
and giggle 'til passers-by think we're insane
and wade in big puddles that come past our knees,
then run to the dorm before we all freeze.

It's a good place to talk on the couch
about all the things that make our hearts ouch
and all the heart-wishes that push us to heal
and all we will do to make them come real.

It's a good place to spend Friday night.
Our feet tap to jazz 'neath our best black and white.
We win best-dressed four in the store's spinning door.
Watch a flick and fondue 'til we can't anymore.

It's a good place to sit on a chair,
lean over a textbook and prove that we care
enough to still study although we want sleep.
There's a reason we're here. We've a promise to keep.

It's a good place to crawl into bed,
to rest in the quiet and quiet my head,
to know that I'm loved and to pray for the grace
to love in a way that adds good to this place.

There's still more poetry (or is it chocolate?) surging inside, but it's time to try that last verse out for myself. And for the sake of all those who live in this place. It's kind of hard for me to show love when I don't sleep.

Goodnight.

Joy Surprise

2008-08-27T21:14:00.005-05:00

I'm settled in and smiling. The room is roomy, the roommates intelligent. One of them has a 4.0, and it's not me. One's pre-med, one's doing her nursing homework while working at the library, and I haven't been late to class yet. Well, I was, but the professor didn't show up, so it was okay. At least for me.

My desk is already a mess: postcards from Singapore, a cinnamon bark box filled with céntimos, my vitamins (which I haven't taken in a week and a half), a parking ticket (oh, strife!), my new water bottle, some financial aid letters that are perhaps significant, the key to Sol Duc employee dorm #4, a list of things to do, and a list of things to buy. And a bouncey, bouncey ball.

Today I had one class that actually occurred. The professor's articulate English reached into parts of my brain that haven't been used in quite that way in about… 8 months. In all seriousness, I felt the ache of nerves reconnecting. A good kind of pain, but it made my eyes droop. I have downloaded the audio of Beowulf, so I can start my homework.

There's so little chaos here. I had to tell you about my desk, because that's the messiest spot in the suite. This is different than Sol Duc. I'm practically on community overload right now, but I still haven't gotten sick of the smiles. Have you noticed that if you smile at someone, they'll smile at you, which makes you happier? And it doesn't smell like sulphur here.

And this is different than a year ago. The things I was confused about have been made clear. I am full of hope, not dread. And I am not ashamed.

I have some places to add to my list of places I've slept. We'll say that Sol Duc Room #4 was #60. So:

61. Sol Duc Room #2 on the night that there was a drinking game going on in my own room.
62. Tom and Karlene's house.
63. Nate and Hannah's.
64. One and a half (actually, half and a one) nights in Ft. Collins.
65. Johnny and Christina's.
66. Four nights at the hotel in Minneapolis, where all of Ryan's family stayed for his sister's wedding.

67. Alumni 123. The best suite ever. That's what I've decided. And I will do everything in my power to make it so. Where will I get that power? The joy of the Lord is my strength.

Plus, I have a boyfriend who prays for me.

Packing

2008-08-14T14:58:00.002-05:00

I have to start packing, but I know that all my belongings will play one more measure in the rhythm of my life here. So I started by taking down the maps I had masking-taped all around my bunk. The London Tube map, the plan of Sevilla, the print-off of Oxford, the map of our hike through the Pueblos Blancos, the directions to our bungalow in Lisboa, the wrinkled map of attractions in Rome. And more: Mt. Rainier and an accompanying map of Southeast Asia.

I'm trying to find one of those Olympic National Park maps that I've seen around so I can add it to my collection before I pack them all in my "to college" pile. I guess that's the pile that I belong in. But I'm not there yet.

This is my last week. It got off to a great start with a sunny day at the coast and a long walk on the beach with my boyfriend. When we got home, Rachel, my best friend from Spain, was napping on my bed. She had fallen asleep while looking at my maps. While sh was here, we hiked like there was no tomorrow, just like we did last semester, and we talked it all out. Everything from our first memories together to our future plans. I have a lot of hope. And I want to share that hope with the people here. I was able to do that in a couple conversations this week. This sulphury soil is slowly softening.

And I must leave.

When I'm finally ready to minister.

Here goes culture shock all over again.

I'm trying to imagine what life is like at Trinity. It's hard to think about, so I usually just don't, but I know I must get mentally prepared. Imagine a place with three rooms for four people instead of one room for six. Imagine not getting toe fungus in the shower. Imagine a grid of roads and traffic everywhere. Imagine doing homework. Imagine having my own designated place in the closet and places in the closet where I am not allowed to sprawl my stuff. Imagine seeing the carpet.

At Trinity, there will be a few hours in the wee of every morning when every girl will be in a girls bed in a girls room on a girls hall and every boy will be in a boys bed in boys room on a boys hall. In fact, even during the day, boys will be afraid of interacting with girls too much, as in, being friendly.

At Trinity, there is a legal drinking age. And I am still twenty. I am twenty? How old is twenty? What kind of jokes are funny to a twenty-year-old Christian girl? What is a twenty-year-old Christian girl supposed to do? What am I not allowed to do? Who am I allowed to spend my time with?

Who am I?

I am a world traveler. But I can still only be in one place at a time.

I am a Christian minister. But I still need to be ministered to.

I am an outdoorswoman. But I still miss my desk.

I am somebody's darling. But I still have just one comfort: that I belong to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.

And that Savior will always be with me. He's already in my "to college" pile. And my "Ft. Collins" pile, and my "Goodwill" pile. He's even in my "not sure" pile, although he's the one thing I'm absolutely sure of.

Alright. I have to keep packing.

Pastoral visit #1.

2008-07-02T18:06:00.004-05:00

I don't think I've ever received a pastoral visit before. The elders made their rounds when I was a small girl, but I was sent upstairs, and it was very hard to hear anything from the other side of the hall railing. Yesterday Ryan and I received a visit from a member of the Christian Ministry in the National Park's year-round staff. Pastoral visits are awesome.

Day after day, Ryan and I consciously seek out interactions that have the potential to be uncomfortable and leave us exhausted. But yesterday, someone flew and then drove many miles to seek us out and make us feel comfortable enough to be rejuvenated. She listened and prayed and offered the resources that she had.

And I feel like I got an extra night of sleep.

Sol Duc

2008-06-25T16:56:00.002-05:00

... See my Tabblo>

a journey

2008-06-25T15:11:00.000-05:00

... See my Tabblo>

Goodnight

2008-06-21T15:15:00.003-05:00

Revelry down the hall.
Chivalry at my side.
Walk with me through all the noises,
Surround me and hold me real tight.
Desire to hide here forever,
the knowledge we must say goodnight.
Just me now, the mice, and the answer
to my prayer that my soul be all right.

Happy Father's Day!

2008-06-12T18:05:00.001-05:00

My father lives in Colorado now.
He spends this Father's Day in a new home.
From far away I sit and ponder how
he'll celebrate this Sunday on his own.
Without his son, who followed him around
learning from his skills and his mistakes–
and now they both are starting from the ground.
They're freely learning from the risks they take.
Without the girl who'd ask to squeeze inside
his smallest business briefcase just to go.
I still am always looking for a ride–
The man I spend my time with now would know.
Without his youngest, spending one last time
going through the stuff up in her room.
She'll find new roads to run, new trees to climb.
Her plants will find another place to bloom.
And so will Dad. His roots will pierce the dirt.
His sap will warm, begin to flow again.
May blessing water cause his leaves to perk,
May southern breezes blow in form of friends.
Please, let him know that he is not alone,
although for now that house seems dull and dim.
May Colorado soon be truly home,
And give us days to gather there with him.

Places

2008-06-01T18:16:00.003-05:00

Places I have slept in the less than two years since Nate and Hannah got married: A year ago Aunt Ruth and I were talking about how in the year since their wedding, she had only slept in that house on Kalamazoo. In the past year, she has spent one night in Chicago, two nights at my cousins, and three nights at 3184 E. Borchers Rd. I've still got her beat.

1. Dordt dorms
#. Did we sleep at Hofland's that week ever?
2. 3184 E. Borchers Rd.
3. Emily's in Michigan, a road trip with Amy.
4. South Hall. Was it room 24? I don't know, that was a long time ago.
5. Reading weekend at 3184 E. Borchers Rd. I sang Fernando Ortega's Don't let me come home a stranger as I drove there.
6. My first time in a hostel, downtown Chicago, for the humanities festival.
7. Thanksgiving in Pella
8. Christmas vacation in Pella
9. and that house on Kalamazoo
10. and at 3184 E. Borchers Rd.
11. Interim in Phoenix. We camped. It was very cold.
12. It was so cold that one night we stayed in a Motel 8. That was great.
13. And back in South hall. I had been gone for a month, and we moved all the furniture around, so it counts again.
14. Easter in Pella. I hitchhiked back, in a strange way.
15. And Tulip Time. I rode with the guy I hitchhiked with the first time.
16. 3184 E. Borchers Rd. For about 48 hours. I left a moving mess for mom. Good practice.
17. Hofland's, the night of Derek's grad party.
18. Lynch's, in Idaho, about twenty hours after meeting Ryan and hopping in his car.
19. Glacier Dorm. Paradise, really. But still depraved. But I still miss it.
20. Camping in that one valley. It's a good thing Emily could come.
21. Pastor Willy's. That was some fun Dutch bingo.
22. Johnny and Christina's. Ryan almost forgot that I wasn't even twenty-one. I'm still not.
23. Shelbi's dorm. Saying goodbyes.
24. 3184 E. Borchers Rd. Mom grabbed my legs and shaved them.
25. Tibstra 33. That number. Not my favorite semester. It kind of got squished.
26. Reading weekend at that house on Kalamazoo
27. and Anita's house. Dude, a house. Imagine.
28. Chicago humanities festival in that hostel again.
29. Thanksgiving in Pella.
30. Christmas at 3184 E. Borchers Rd.
31. and that house on Kalamazoo
32. and Pella.

And this is where it starts getting crazy.

33. New Year's morning in a transatlantic plane.
34. One night in a hostel. Too much luggage for three narrow flights of stairs.
35. The Kirkwoods. They made London great.
36. Camarma. I had my own bathroom.
37. Calle Olivares, 3-1 A.
38. The empty hostel in Algeciras. Creeptastic.
39. The hostel in… Jerez. Hehe, that's funny. I had to look that up in my journal. I didn't even know we'd been to Jerez. That was back when all pueblo names just sounded like exotic Spanish words.
40. The hostel in Granada.
41. The other room in the hostel in Granada because we had to make two separate bookings because Alaina went home before all the hiking.
42. The hostel in Lagos.
43. The bungalow in Lisboa.
44. The hotel (what luxury!) in Toledo.
45. The hippy hostel in Granada, with a view of the Alhambra.
46. The cabin in Trevélez, where Rachel and I confirmed that we were the parents.
47. The pension in Matalascañas. We could've invited a couple friends, because we didn't even use the beds.
48. The bus to Madrid.
49. The hostel in Rome. Yes!
50. I slept for a good twenty minutes at Rachel and Gretchens house. But don't tell.
51. The hotel in Grazalema. Sharing a Spanish size single.
52.The bus to Madrid.
53. Camarma. It is good to return to a place.
54. The bus to Madrid, and a little more on the transatlantic flight.
55. 3184 E. Borchers Rd.
56. Hofland's.
57. Johnny and Christina's.
58. Lynch's. It was easier to find the second time.

59. Sol Duc Hot Springs Resort employee dorm. I'm sitting here on my bed (my second since I've gotten here), trying to tune my ears towards the children shouting "Marco" and "Polo" in my backyard and away from the Sex and the City that one of my four roommates is watching. Aromas waft up from the kitchen below. Mountains stand on each side of this place, and clouds cover it over.

It's hard to get enough sleep here, with all the things that surround me. But still I say, "I will lie down and sleep in peace, for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety."

Communication. Upwards, please.

2008-05-29T13:36:00.001-05:00

I hesitate to admit it– here, amidst the mountains, in the thick, mossy forest of the Olympic Peninsula, forty-two miles from the nearest grocery store and almost as far from any cell phone reception: I have internet access. After I type this from my perch high on my bunk in the small room I share with five other college girls, I will bring my laptop to the lounge, plug in the ethernet cable, and put this on the internet.

Why don't I want to have internet? Because I just want to be here. I want to focus on my tasks here: my job (busser), my friendships (still to be formed), and my ministry (not only leading the Sunday morning worship services in the ampitheater between this dorm and the campground, but being a light in this group of seasonal workers).

I don't want to have internet just because last summer we didn't have internet. I am pathetic.

And I don't know if I'll blog as much. Don't expect it. This summer will be defined by the people here, their standards, what they do… and how I react. My written reactions will be in my journal, not on the internet.

Please pray a lot for me.

Today and Tuesday

2008-05-23T20:43:00.003-05:00

When I was in Lisboa, Portugal, I had no idea what would all happen between Northwest Illinois and the Pacific Northwest. I've been doing a lot of packing this week. Today I am here. Tuesday I'll be there.

Already

2008-05-14T03:26:00.003-05:00

I can't believe it is already the end of the semester. Today is my last day of class. I don't want to go. I hate saying goodbyes.

I looked up 'goodbye' in my journal, hoping to learn from things I learned before. A song that doesn't have a tune yet, from March 9:

I hoped and I prayed
for you to be
there with me.
I couldn't do it without you.
While at the moment
of each prayer
you were there
and everywhere else, too.
Because there's nowhere to run,
nowhere to go,
nowhere under the sun
where you aren't already.

You were already here
when I landed.
Before I planned it
you knew I'd be coming.
You were ready and willing
to let me know
wherever I go
I won't be running.
Because there's nowhere to run,
nowhere to come,
nowhere under the sun
where you aren't already.

You are back at my house
with my sister.
How I miss her,
But I know she understands
that you're still with the ones
I hugged goodbye.
Don't have to cry.
You will be there when I can't.
Because there's nowhere to stand,
nowhere to stay,
nowhere in any land
where you aren't already.

You are there where I'll go.
All my plans
are in your hands.
You will never be surprised.
What peace and amazement
that you know
where I'll go.
I couldn't hide if I tried.
Because there's nowhere to run,
nowhere to travel,
nowhere under the sun
where you aren't already.

You'll be there when I leave.
On the plane
you will sustain.
And you'll prepare my heart
to be as ready as can be
to go home.
I'll always roam,
But from my home in you I'll never depart.
Because there's nowhere to run,
nowhere to go back,
nowhere under the sun
where you aren't already.

And that's for all the things I can't control.

2008-05-12T06:01:00.001-05:00

When we went back out into the waves, they were crashing harder, as if there was something bothering them. They were the kind of waves that don't mind if you smack them right back. The punching commenced: the first few punches just because it felt good to throw all my strength into one thing, and then a punch with the shout, "And that's for making me leave Spain!" That brought up anger further down: "And that's for making me leave Mount Rainier!" Then a punch for not knowing Spanish yet. Then more personal punches: "And that's for making me leave…" There were tens of names I wanted to enter, and as the waves kept coming no matter how hard I hit them, I kept naming friends. I hurled at least five punches for having to leave Rachel, then dove beneath the waves, hoping the Atlantic ocean would make up for the tears I can't seem to cry.

six liters and some autostop later

2008-05-09T04:52:00.002-05:00

On April 25 we went to Ronda with our school. When the official field trip came to an end, our adventures had only begun. Rachel, Stephen, and I had made plans to go hiking in the sierra de Grazalema. We had even booked a hostel there. A hotel, actually. We decided we could afford such luxury if Rachel and I would share a twin size bed. Twins are smaller in Spain. But by the time we got to our little room, we had already had enough adventures to sleep well on.

The fun started when the bus schedule, which we had walked all over Sevilla to find, turned out to be wrong. The last bus of the day from Ronda to Grazalema doesn't run anymore. There was a bus going to Montecorto, which was slightly closer to our destination, so we hopped on. When we hopped off again, we had nothing to do but walk.

So we started walking, knowing we'd have to end the walk in the dark. We discussed the possibility of maybe doing a little autostop. Look that one up in your Spanish-English dictionaries. It's one of my favorite words, now that we've done it.

The next day, the day of senderismo between Grazalema and Algodonales, was incredible. It was a about 34 degrees celsius and sunburn sunny from the sunrise we saw over Grazalema to the sunset we saw as we rode the bus back from Algodonales to Sevilla. The road travels 26 km from Grazalema to Algodonales. We took such shortcuts that I think of it as at least a 35 km hike. These shortcuts were through hills with bajillions of bushes covered with intense thorns and down ridiculously sloped almond groves that ended in fences.

On our perch in Zahara, we ate tuna and tentacles on tortillas, then waded in the lake below to cool down our torn-up legs. Back on the road to Algodonales, we were honked at by our housing coordinator, who just happened to be driving that road that day.

In Algodonales, a friendly local explained the cause of all the music and firecrackers as he walked us to the bus stop. We sat down on the pavement and ate more galletas, peanut butter (thanks Mom!) and tuna until the bus came and took us back to Sevilla.

When I got back to the house that night, my Señora didn't say anything about my body odor, the scratches on my legs, or the six-inch rip in my shorts. She just lovingly brought me a pear, a banana, and a glass of water.

I drank over six liters of water that day, and only peed three times.

But everything else…

2008-05-09T04:51:00.001-05:00

Things I won't miss about Spain:

Those days in Don Quijote class when the professor asks me a question and I have no idea how to answer.

The smell of Spanish ham.

Yup, that's about it.

You don't need opium in spring in Spain.

2008-05-06T06:30:00.003-05:00

I'm passing through a place
where poppies grow like weeds
and better-tasting mountains grow
from mustard-sized black seeds.
It's not that I'm on opium–
it's really like a dream.
This place is much more beautiful
than words can make it seem.

¡Feria!

2008-05-01T06:24:00.004-05:00

This was the weekend of April 10-13. Imagine your county fair, except the fairgrounds are surrounded by residential highrises, the livestock exhibits are replaced with tents full of dancing people, the jeans are replaced with flamenco dresses, and the Bud Light is replaced with Cruzcampo and sherry.

The song is about a beautiful Andalucian woman with black eyes, black hair, a tense body, and a lingering look. It sounds sweeter in Spanish.

You have to say it sometime(s).

2008-05-01T06:07:00.003-05:00

Goodbye to the garden, the orchard, the grapetree, the trickling septic tank overflow, the trees we planted, the nests we watched, the chicken coop, the shed roof, the oil pit, the pile of rocks, the mulberry trees, the spots on the yard we used for bases and goals, the cement slab where I put a dent in my forehead, the river rock and gravel where I scraped up my knees falling off the bikes that we stored in a row next to the long work table.

Goodbye to the bumpy bottomed basement with the spiders and the pole with the square notches in it, the spaces behind the filing cabinets and under the steps and on the other side of the furnace. Goodbye to the shinier cement that I remember Dad pouring, the mountain of craft supplies, and the pottery wheel I requested but hardly ever used, except to pile laundry.

Goodbye to the orange-carpeted bedroom that I always had the smaller half of, the blue-carpeted bedroom that used to have fluky gray and red carpet, and mom's bedroom with the carpet that is really more like felt. Goodbye to the attic, and hello to deciding what to do with the stuff in my boxes. Is anything worth keeping?

Goodbye to the steps. I will never forget the sound of Nathan descending them, and the little string that used to run up and down the eastern side, next to the slide we used to try to ride. Goodbye to the bathroom, and the unique smell of sitting there, looking through the screen at corn growing, the trash burning, the apple trees blossoming, and the laundry drying in the breeze. Goodbye to the sink where I gagged on the horrible tastes of toothpaste and listerine. Goodbye to the spot on the floor where I cried.

Goodbye to the big window in the living room, and the beam where mom would command me to dance.

Goodbye to that curved line dividing carpet and linoleum, the corner where so many shoes gathered, and the ladybugs gathered in the tracks of the sliding door.

Goodbye to my kitchen. Oh, kitchen. You know how hard it is to cook in someone else's kitchen, compared to your own. That kitchen is my kitchen. First cupboard: jars, bowls, folders, and medicine spinner. Second cupboard: mugs, glasses, bowls, and plates. Then there's the window, where you can see the two oak trees, which are finally producing enough acorns to support a squirrel, and the pasture, and whatever cars might go bye on that gravel road. Third cupboard: glass casseroles, hot and cold cereal, a box of metamucil that probably felt unappreciated. Fourth cupboard: everything. Lot's of baking stuff. Fifth and sixth cupboard: spices and cans and boxes of rice-a-roni and hamburger helper. Seventh cupboard: snacks and cookbooks. Well, the cookbooks are now below the microwave, because nothing ever stays the same.

Goodbye to hours experimenting in a kitchen I know like the backside of my front teeth, getting everything to feel and taste just right. Goodbye to that new stove that is so much better than the old stove. Goodbye to the countertop I recently realized was made to look like butcher block. Goodbye to the place I learned to make yeast bread and white sauce and spritz cookies and pancakes and aloo gobi. Goodbye to shoving that leg of the chair back into place and pulling off pieces of the table and the Bible we read at the end of each supper.

Goodbye to having Anita over on a Sunday afternoon, blasting Fiddler on the Roof from the speakers on top of the hutch, and cooking supper while dancing around the table. Could we do that one more time while I am 'home' between Sevilla and Sol Duc? Could we do it without crying when it came to the song 'Anatevka?'

"A pot… a pan… a broom… a hat. Someone should have set a match to this place long ago. A bench… a tree… So what's a stone, or a house?"

Eh. It's just a place. Goodbye.

Señora

2008-04-28T13:55:00.000-05:00

She lives alone.
She's got her t.v. and her telephone.
Young ones come here but they always go home.
This place is just a place to stay.
I saw a man
holding her look-a-like by the hand.
Fifteen years past, perhaps I'd understand
this place is just a place to stay.

clips from our trip

2008-04-22T06:13:00.005-05:00

Here's some footage from the trip that Bryna, Alaina, and I took to Rome. Yup, we got blessed by the Pope.

…and still I hold the pestle.

2008-04-22T04:43:00.004-05:00

You tell me "rest" and wrestle
with me for the pestle
my hands are tightly gripping
knowing time is slipping
where I cannot ever find it,
put it in the mortar, grind it,
milk that time for all it's worth,
before with tears it's spilt to earth.

You let me cry and dry
the tears beneath my eyes.
My sight is slowly finding
love so bright it's blinding.
I can't see time that's been wasted.
It's all been worth what I have tasted:
milk and honey spoken sweet,
resting, grounded, at your feet.

Inspired by this cuadro by Velázquez, "Cristo en casa de Marta y María."

Trevélez

2008-04-21T11:28:00.006-05:00

This was Palm Sunday weekend.

See my Tabblo>

Rebecca and Rachel ride rollercoasters in the rain.

2008-04-21T11:27:00.003-05:00

We were walking home in the rain together, talking. I noticed that if I angled my umbrella just right (concave towards the building and a little in front of me) it would echo my words back to me. Sweet.

The sky kept speaking rain to the earth and we kept talking. Something I said hit Rachel just right (in the poetic part that loves creation and relationships) and she echoed the feeling back to me. Sweet.

The blissful moment of being together and knowing just exactly what each other felt left us plunging into the abyss of knowing that this is just a semester. "I can't leave!" we agreed. Words could not express the agony of this impermanence, so we followed the example of the Spirit– we groaned. Audibly, pathetically, we interceeded each other's pain.

It was good to know that someone felt just as horrible as I did. It wasn't spite, it was a connection. Friends laugh together. Good friends cry together. Really good friends laugh and cry at the same time together. They ride together in the front car of the roller coaster with their hands in the air and when they turn a sudden corner, they don't mind slamming into each other, because it's a connection.

I'm digging in my heels, knowing that God's about to lead me to another place where I'm going to make a whole bunch of friends that I'll just have to say goodbye to. I've waited in line for this rollercoaster too long to not enjoy it. And I know I will. But if you´re going to sit in the front car of this roller coaster next to me, get ready to get slammed into just a few times. Because I know I can't hang on, but I'm still looking for connections.

Rome pictures for you!

2008-04-21T09:06:00.000-05:00

See my Tabblo>

Rome. And this isn't even the half of it.

2008-04-18T06:37:00.002-05:00

a week in review:

Friday morning: take the bus to the ruins of a Roman city a few miles from my house.

Friday afternoon: lay talking to my friend Rachel under a palm tree for hours.

Friday night: "sleep" on a bus.

Saturday morning: miss an international flight.

Saturday afternoon: get to Rome anyway.

Saturday night: receive an email with the subject "Give the Pope a high five for me!"

Sunday morning: see the Pope. I gave him an air high five.

Sunday night: taste my first vodka. Quite likely my last.

Monday morning: read Romans in Rome while waiting in line to see the Sistine Chapel.

Monday night: find out that my family is moving to Ft. Collins after twenty years on Borchers Rd.

Tuesday afternoon: realize a half-a-life-long dream to visit a catacomb.

Tuesday night: attend a concert of opera in a beautiful gothic church and realize that the locals can actually understand the words.

Wednesday: lay on a black sand beach by the Mediterranean.

Thursday: eat tortillas, fish paté, and tomato sauce while sitting outside the Madrid bus station in the pouring rain.

Thursday night: email my family while sitting along a street in Sevilla and being passed by tipsy people in flamenco dresses.

Friday morning: type up my seven thousand word journal that I kept throughout the week just to keep me sane.

that's how

2008-04-18T06:22:00.002-05:00

scrawled in a notebook on April 7

I slept better than I'd thought humanly possible in a hostel room with ten other people and just a blanket on top of me. The secret to sleeping well is being tired. The secret to being tired is to live life like we do– going crazy with the dream of knowing, maybe, someday, enough small bits to make up the big picture. Yearning, we are burning two-ended just to get closer and closer to wholeness. One flame. The tryer I hard… let's try that again: The harder I try to become whole, the more I feel like I'm falling apart. But the smaller pieces I am in, the easier it is for me to be scooped up and given as a blessing to others, pressed down, shaken together and running over. Because that's how I've been blessed.

eighty extra euros

2008-04-17T05:44:00.002-05:00

After we missed our flight to Rome (the things we teach ourselves the hard way after "getting a night of sleep" in a bus) I was asking God just how much it cost to get from one place to another:

God, how much does it cost to get from one place to another?

"More or less my child. More than you thought it would, but less than the value of my thoughts about you. I love you, and I paid for you to fly direct from hell to heaven. I will pay for Alaina's training to become my messenger. Don't let her worry, I won't let her fail at the task I have given her. I bought the smile on Bryna's face. I will carry your family to their new home. And I will carry your heart through its mountainous journey until you yourself have a place to call home.

"None of this is what you expected. None of it will be as you plan. That is because you asked me to make this less about you and more about me. And I answer prayer.

"I will give you less and less of what you expect. You think your life is crazy now? You haven't seen crazy yet. The only place your going to settle anytime soon is in my heart. Isn't it funny how some gentle shaking has a settling power? I will never shake you to hard.

"Borchers Road will not disappear. This summer will not return you broken. I will carry you from Sevilla to Sol Duc in the palm of my hand. I will watch over your coming and going both now and forever more."

Coming and going. God, how much does it cost to get from one place to another?

"More than you ever dreamed, but less than I am willing to pay. For you, my child."

I'll get back to you about Rome.

2008-04-14T06:13:00.004-05:00

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.

whilst sitting in the airport

2008-04-12T05:57:00.000-05:00

I'm going to Rome–
farther from home–
but where is my home anyway?
Is home where I live,
or home what I give,
when I offer a safe place to stay?
It could be an ear
that I offer to hear
the wandering train of a thought
of a wandering soul,
who like me is made whole
by seeing, themselves, they are not.
It could be a hand
when too tired to stand
or an arm when too tired to walk.
It could be my eyes
to see through the lies,
clear the sand, build a home on the rock.

The tentmaker went.
His last months he spent
in the city where I will soon fly.
In a house, under lock,
he was stuck in one spot.
But he knew he'd go home when he died.
The tentmaker stayed.
He wrote and he prayed,
living and giving a place
to stay and be blessed
by God's full peace and rest
and to go with the strength of His grace.

Easter Sunday: from low to high at sea level

2008-04-02T06:51:00.004-05:00

9:30. The alarm rings on a Sunday morning. I hit snooze, but soon enough we are up and eating pine nut cheesecake. Mmm.

10:45 ish. We check the schedule on the Catholic church's door. We have a little over an hour until the Easter mass. We decide to go take pictures on the beach.

11:55. Back at the church, but there is no one there. Just one man dinking around on the other side of the flowers. We make a loop around the church to see if there is another door open, There isn't.

12:01. A man comes across the street and asks us something. I tell him, yes, we'd like to attend an Easter service. He tells us to wait there and he'll unlock the door.

12:20. Still sitting in the second to the front row, looking at the life-size bleeding Jesus on the cross, watching the two sacerdotes throw together an order of worship and get a tiny amount of sacrements ready. The three other non-locals who were waiting for something to happen have already left. We want to leave too. If the service ever starts, we are just going to make fools of ourselves by not knowing how to cross ourselves correctly. We laugh off the awkwardness in a whisper.

12:25. The sacerdotes are in the room off to the side singing/chanting. Then they walk out to the courtyard. That's the last straw. We get our things and go. They say "buenas" as we walk out.

There was no more nervous laughing as we walked down the street, quickly so as to shake off the silence and uneasiness. I was mad. There had been seven Christians in that church for a few minutes that Easter morning, but there had been no gathering in the name of the resurrected Savior. Jesus was alive again and all we did was stare at a statue of his bloody body.

I missed my protestant church. At that moment, the congregation of Iglesia Prosperidad was overflowing and God's word was being spoken with passion and conviction. At that moment, my parents were getting out of bed to go and attend the Easter sunrise service followed by a breakfast potluck. All over the world people were singing, "Christ the Lord is risen today," and "Up from the grave he arose!"

It made me mad that no one, hardly even the sacerdotes, seemed to care that Jesus had really brought himself to liberating life again after being very violently dead for three days. Maybe they didn't know. How deeply do I know this myself?

We went to the beach, ran in the water, screamed at it's coldness, laughed and splashed, collected shells, then settled into the cliffside to warm in the sun. Alissa brought out her iPod and we celebrated the rising of the Son of God as the sun slowly set over a rising tide. At the top of our lungs, we sang Keith Green's "Easter Song." I hope that we didn't bother the girls who were tanning topless twenty feet away.

Palm Sunday: from low to high at 13,000 something

2008-04-01T11:32:00.003-05:00

We weren't even to the trailhead and I could tell that something was going to have to change. It wasn't just that my camera was too big to wear at my waist or that my shoes weren't tied tight enough. It was that I was struggling to keep up with my friends, Rachel, Steven, and John. They just walked so fast. I felt the weight of my camelbak and sipped water, hoping that carrying the water inside of me rather than on my back would make me feel lighter. Each time that the group stopped to rest and take pictures, I had just enough time to catch up, and we were off again.

Stephen decided to walk behind me so that I wouldn't be walking alone. That was really a good feeling, except that now the group was divided into two. "I'm sorry guys, I just can't walk any faster." I panted. "Unless we all slow down, we're going to have to walk in two groups the whole way." My friends let me set the pace. It was a pretty slow pace.

The mountain didn't get any easier. Besides the vision of my fading leather shoes clumping one in front of the other, I don't really remember much of the ascent to Siete Lagunas, our main landmark on the way up. We stopped there to eat oranges. I felt that nauseous feeling that you get when you are trying so hard to hold still while threading a needle that you forget to breath. I sat down with my head in my knees and dreaded the moment when I would have to stand up. I made myself drink. I was realizing how dehydrated I was.

The dreaded moment came, and we started the next stretch of the hike. The other part had been "easy" and this part was going to be hard. Added elevation, added wind, added snowfields and a dramatic decrease in temperature. The wind pounded at the scarf I had wrapped around my head and I longed to scream back at it. I might have if I had had the energy.

I was getting behind again, but my friends never let me walk alone. The peak, the highest point in Spain, Mulhacén, was in site now, but it was so far away. I told Stephen I wasn't sure if I could make it. The next time we caught up with Rachel, I asked, "How are we doing on time? Because I can't go any faster and if I'm not going to make it to the top at this speed, I need to find a rock to hide in while you guys make the ascent."

Rachel looked at me seriously and said six words. "I think you can make it."

And I did. Once Rachel said I could make it, I decided to quit thinking about not making it. I didn't even stop. I walked so slow I didn't have to. We made it to the top of Spain together. We sat in the 100 km wind at the top of Spain, 1.45 miles higher than where we had woke up that morning, under the bright blue sky. We felt triumphant as we read about the triumphal entry of Jesus Christ into Jerusalem.

Hosanna! It means, 'oh save!' and that's what God does.

more fun than mom

2008-03-28T07:33:00.004-05:00

I had a great time hosting Alissa when she came to visit me over the past ten days. We put together this video to submit to a contest and to show you all how much fun we had.

Click here to watch the video.

Internoting

2008-03-27T06:56:00.003-05:00

Right now I'm catching up on a couple weeks of internet usage. Here's what I'm noticing:

1. Using internet minimally during the past two weeks probably had a lot to do with how much I did and saw during the past two weeks. More posts on that later.

2. I have to register for next year's classes during my five days in Rome. How's that going to work? I don't know. And how am I supposed to plan out what classes I want next year if I don't even have anything planned out for Rome except flights and a bunk in a hostel?

3. I miss Honors Tea back at Trinity and I think one of these days I'm going to buy some scholar cookies and munch them and think. Think about this quote that was quoted in the email I just read from my philosophy professor: "We didn't get into teaching to make trains of thought run on time."

4. Speaking of running on time– Happy (belated) birthday Grandma! I love you!

note to self

2008-03-27T06:55:00.000-05:00

Rebecca-

Take a siesta today. It is about time.

-Rebecca

Why I think I have a right to call Sevilla home:

2008-03-14T07:02:00.002-05:00

Everything looks familiar.

A pigeon pooped on me.

Seeing couples making out at the park doesn't phase me.

I didn't get lost on the way to the convent. Or on the way to the park.

The other day I was sprawled out on my bed, gazing up at the northwest corner of my room, and I thought to myself, "I feel at home."

I am a member of Club Día, which means I have a little tag on my keychain that gives me discounts at my favorite grocery store.

When I travel, it's easier to say "go home" instead of "go back to Sevilla."

I have been here two months, and I have two months left.

I suddenly realized I have hardly blogged about Sevilla, because it feels like just routine.

I can maneuver the sidewalks at rush hour.

I am hosting a guest: Alissa!

Estudiante andante. The traveling, walking, wandering student.

2008-03-11T07:41:00.003-05:00

From the last chapter of the first book of Don Quijote de la Mancha, by Miguel de Cervantes: "Es linda cosa esperar los sucesos atravesando montes, escudriñando selvas, pisando peñas, visitando castillos, alojando en ventas a toda discreción, sin pagar ofrecido sea al diablo el maravedí."

Loose translation:

"It's a beautiful thing to be traveling through the mountains, looking forward to the next thing that just happens to come along, surveying the jungles, treading rocky crags, visiting castles, and staying the night in all qualities of hostels, trying to save euros as if spending them pleased the devil."

That's what Sancho Panza said. He's Quijotasizing, and so am I. Traveling around the Iberian Peninsula will do that. I've fallen in love with being an estudiante andante. Sure it's not very down to earth. Neither was Don Quijote. Sure, it's exhausting. Learning is.

I'm learning a lot. Last weekend we went to Toledo. I learned that, like El Greco, I am more partial to the life of the monastery than to the life of the cathedral. I learned that, like Toledo, it frustrates me to feel like my best is in my past. I learned that, like the knife vendor, I don't have to worry– I will have food to eat.

I discovered I have some amazing friends. This weekend's trip was a whole-school-in-a-charter-bus trip. I got to know some people that I hadn't. I found out I had judged some people unfairly. We played cards. We talked for hours. I realized how much I will miss these people.

Yes indeed. I won't just miss the adventures, the excitement, the newness. I will miss my friends. But it's worth it. Es linda cosa.

a typical week

2008-03-06T10:24:00.001-06:00

Life's found a rhythm,
a very fast beat.
Here's what I do
in a typical week:

Lunes, the first day
on a calendar in Spain,
to school, where I try hard
to put Spanish in my brain.
That day is Sevillanas,
a class to learn to dance.
I realize every week I really
haven't got a chance.

Martes, class again,
and we start to make our plans,
book hostels, check bus schedules,
to see all that we can.
That night I usually skype
with a good friend of mine,
reflect on what's been going on
and wish I had more time.

Miércoles, a good day,
the middle of the week.
classes, homework, travel-planning–
all are at their peak.
In the afternoon we practice
two languages of songs.
At seven (still called afternoon)
our friends come join the throng.

Jueves feels like Friday
on a typical week aquí
because so very often
we have the Friday free.
That day I walk an hour
to a convent where kid's stay.
Sister Gema's like their mother
and I just go to play.

Viernes, half the time,
is a day that I have off.
So we get up extra early
and head to the bus stop.
With passport, camera, pajamas
and a bocadillo in my pack,
we're seeing as much of here
before we must go back.

Sábado I wake up
in some comfy hostel bed.
We breakfast, strap our packs on
and to the sites we head.
We walk to where we want to.
Sometimes we take a bus.
We shop at mercadillos.
We're happy to be us.

Domingo in Sevilla
is a true day of rest.
We worship in a packed house
Half locals and half guests.
If we're out somewhere traveling
Sunday's the day to come back.
Exhausted, I do my homework,
talk to my roommate, and unpack.

Life's found a rhythm
a very fast beat
That's studying in Spain
on a typical week.

Portugal

2008-03-06T05:42:00.000-06:00

"Portugal!"
That's what we said
as we continued to head
west in order
to cross the border
to leave Spain
and enter another domain.
"Portugal!"
That was our battle cry
each time
we stepped on the gas
in order to pass
some car insufficiently fast.

Portugal is where four friends (Rachel, Rebecca, Jen, and John)
spent four days (Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday).
We went to Lagos, Lisboa, Sintra and Évora,
and lots of other pueblos in between,
since we had a rental car, and a lot of curiousity.

See my Tabblo>

Granada

2008-02-26T07:00:00.002-06:00

We had a three day weekend, and we had just studied the Alhambra in art history class, so we took off to Granada. Granada was the last stronghold of the Muslim presence in Spain and the place where Ferdinand and Isabella completed their Christian conquest. We saw the home of Boabdil and his concubines, and we saw the crowns and the crypts of Ferdinand and Isabella. <br><br>Granada today is cool too. It is a very diverse city, especially compared to Sevilla, I feel. We saw lots of hippies, backpackers, gypsies, and of course, tourists. People like me, but different. <br> ... See my Tabblo>

The day I ate five oranges: Feb 10

2008-02-25T05:48:00.002-06:00

Rachel and I rode the bus (we are getting really good at riding busses) to Arcos, a cute little white pueblo with some history and some artisans. We sat in the plaza on top of the hill, next to the castle and the cathedral, neither of which we could go in. But that was okay because the blue sky and wispy white clouds that God suspended over the hills and the valleys and the orange groves was better than any architecture that gold could buy or decorate. We talked with a Dutch guy who travels all over Europe taking pictures for travel literature, and he said that my counting to twelef wasn't bad. After attending mass at another hilltop church, we bought a kilo (or was it two kilos?) of oranges and headed down into the valley. Once we got there, we realized that the dirt cheap oranges we had bought at the top weren't as good of a deal as the thought, only because the ones at the grove are even cheaper, and a little fresher too. Oranges are delicious here, and they are in season now. I ate four of them that day, one at each bench we stopped to gaze from. At supper that night, I sat down to find an orange on my dessert plate. It was yummy.

The day I went to Gibraltar: Feb 9

2008-02-21T06:30:00.000-06:00

We went to Gibraltar, which is British. Gibraltar is a rock, a town, a trophy.

We went throught the town, following the bra trail.

We went to the end of the rock and flew (on our feet) through the wind.

We went inside the rock– through the tunnels, into the cave, deep within the siege mines.

We went to the top of the rock, where we ate our grocery store lunches and thought about what would happen if we were to fly an American flag there.

We went across the active airstrip.

We went to the bus station, where we met a permanent traveler.

We went by bus to our hostel. On the way we formulated plans to become permanant travelers ourselves.

for lack of words

2008-02-20T06:25:00.001-06:00

See my Tabblo>

The day I went to Africa: Friday, Feb 8

2008-02-20T06:08:00.005-06:00

This is not a summary of that day. That would be impossible. This is just an abridged version of an excerpt from my journal:

Next we went to the restaurant, another whitewashed building tucked back into the alley, that once inside, was surprisingly spacious. Rachel and I immediately recognized many elements of Arabian art. I especially liked the lacería. I have decided that if I ever own a house with a kitchen, I am going to decorate it with boldly colored azulejos en patterns of lacería. Indeed.

I ordered a Fanta, which came in a bottle, rather than water, and got ready to enjoy a delicious feast that I hadn't even expected to be part of the tour. Rachel decided to eat as well and save her bocadillo for supper.

By my watch, I noticed that they were feeding us lunch at typical Spanish time. Since the restaurant was basically deserted, I wondered when typical Moroccan time for lunch is.

We were seated with the Brazilian family. We were in for a treat.

The waiter came with our sodas and popped off the metal caps with style. Our first course was an opaque soup, in which we dipped triangles of the round bread that I had wanted to try in the market. The next course was skewers of savory beef pieces, and after that we had our main meal of couscous with chicken on the bone and the most delicious carrots ever and other vegetables. Everything was so delicious, but what was even better was the conversation.

I like languages.

The Brazilians, at least Mom and Dad, knew a little English and quite a bit of Spanish, as well as their first language, Portuguese. Rachel and I were fluent in English, but spoke quite a bit of Spanish as well. Actually, more than they did, although I'm sure they can hear Spanish better than we can. But we didn't know any Portuguese. And their son knew nothing but Portuguese and the basic words he had learned of other languages in school. In effect, we could not have a conversation in either of our first languages, which made us equals in the realm of Spanish.

We talked about languages, travels, plans, food, and school systems. This family was on vacation in Europe for an extended period of time. They really enjoyed the breakfast at the hotel where they were staying in Algeciras. We talked about breakfast for a while. In both English and Spanish, the word means "breaking the fast." In Portugese, it is "coffee of the morning: café de la mañá." And desert in Portugese is literally "sobre la mesa" and it sounds very similar. I said that if I were to invent a language, I would call desert "en mi boca" but I don't think that they got the joke.

In Brazil, many schools serve breakfast at school. They asked us if that was true in the United States. I told them that that was usually only the case in districts where many poor people whose parents can't take care of them live. "Poor people in America?" They scoffed. It's true, I told them. America is not what you see as a tourist or as a moviegoer. But then I thought about it from a Brazilian's perspective. In Brazil, a poor person doesn't have what a poor person in America has.

The main problem in Brazil, though, they said, is that there is such a huge wealth gap. There are a few rich people, they said, and then there are masses of poor, and there are very few people in between. They must be among the rich few. Maybe they consider themselves middle class. I don't know. Or maybe those people on our tour were famous or high up in the government. Maybe he is an embassador and feels he has the right to travel all over Europe and still comment on the sadness of the wealth gap. What gives me the right?

Their ten-ish year old boy was so fun. He liked to jabber, and I don't think he realized that we couldn't understand Portugese hardly at all. Being a bright little kid, he probably understood everything we were saying in our ultra-slow Spanish, so he wondered why we couldn't understand what he was saying. Or maybe he didn't even notice until later that we weren't understanding. It was super cute though, and his dad tried to translate some of it into Spanish or English if he knew it at all. It was fun to just play around with the languages, push them and stretch them, because we had nothing to lose.

At one point towards the beginning of the conversation, the dad was really trying hard to speak in English for us. Indeed, stuff like that is what he was learnign English for. But alas, he finally threw up his hands and shook his head and said, "I am just confusing myself. Let's stick with Spanish." Except he said that in Spanish. But I haven't learned to store Spanish tone and wording in my head yet, so there you have it in English.

We talked about learning languages, since that was obviously something that we were all involved in. How had they learned Spanish? School. And necesity for travel. How had we learned Spanish? School, and necessity for travel. What languages do they teach in schools in the United States? Do many people learn a second language? Mostly Spanish and some French, German, Japanese, and such, but sadly not very many people ever learn a second language. "Many people in the states never travel outside of the country and never pay any attention to what is going on in other countries." Rachel commented.

"But don't be to hard on yourselves. The same is true for Brazilians," Mr. Brazilian replied. "We don't like people from Chile [if that's right next to Brazil; I'm forgetting now] and people from Chile don't like people from Argentina. Just because. But we are okay with Argentina, for no real reason. People don't really know anything about each other, they just decide things and live their life however they want to. It's the same everywhere, that no one really cares enough to know."

"Podemos decir que todo el mundo tiene un problema porque todo el mundo no sabe nada de todo el mundo," I summarised. We laughed. But claro, we weren't including ourselves in that mundo of ignorant people. As we spoke (in three languages) we were seeing the world.

We finished the meal with "Whisky de Marruecos" which, alas, was not one bit alcoholic. It was syruppy sweat mint tea, with texture at the bottom, and it was absolutely delicious.

The beauty of being in Morocco was that suddenly I was a Spanish speaker as opposed to an Arab or Beréber speaker. In Morocco, hearing Spanish was like hearing English while in Sevilla. Not too uncommon, but special enough to say, "Hey, I understand that! That's my language!"

I was in Africa when I first could say of Spanish, "Hey, that's my language!"

Super fun. Language high. A trilingual table. Una mesa multilingüe. Don't ask me how to say that in Portuguese.

Field Trip

2008-02-14T06:44:00.002-06:00

Here's some pictures that I put on Flickr earlier, now organized in a Tabblo.

I went with the other students in my Spanish Art History class to Córdoba on Friday, 1 Feb 2008. ... See my Tabblo>

Más

2008-02-12T06:58:00.001-06:00

< See my Tabblo>

Pass tea vents.

2008-02-12T06:28:00.000-06:00

If you were to pass tea vents, it would smell good, I think. If you would like to see more pictures of passed events, take a look at this Tabblo about my day trip into Madrid with Becky and Avery on January 19.

See my Tabblo>

Consider yourself kissed.

2008-02-11T11:19:00.000-06:00

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!

pictures

2008-01-31T03:52:00.000-06:00

Sorry about the lack of pictures since I've been in Sevilla. Tabblo, the site that hosts my photoblog, has been has been fluking up my posts lately, so I haven't been able to publish anything. But the people there are working on it. For now, I've put some pictures on flickr. I've captioned the photos, so if you view them as a slide show, click on 'options' to turn the descriptions on.

around Sevilla

los parques

a typical day

2008-01-30T06:34:00.000-06:00

Typical day:

-Get up at 8:00am
-Eat cereal for breakfast. My roommate Alaina eats toast like a normal Spaniard, but I'm just special because my body can't eat yeast every day. Try explaining that to someone who doesn't speak English and who has only ever eaten toast for breakfast every day of her life for all of her sixty years. That was my first full-length conversation with my señora.
-Shower and get ready for school.
-Walk twenty minutes through Triana (my barrio), over the canal Guadalquivir, past the Torre de Oro, past the McDonald's, to my school.
-Attend three classes, completely in Spanish (we are not allowed to speak English at the school). I take advanced grammar, art history (We are visiting the mosque in Córdoba this Friday!) and a literature class on Don Quijote.
-Spend some time on the internet, since we don't have internet at our apartment.
-Walk home for our 2:30 lunch.
-Do some homework during the siesta. It's been gorgeous every day, so we often go to the park.
-Explore our barrio. One of my favorite spots is Antonio's store.
-Return to school to use the internet, meet up with friends for tapas, or attend a school activity.
-Walk back home for our 9:30 supper.
-Finish homework, journal, and talk until bedtime.

You can't be a multilingual, world traveling musician and lazy at the same time.

2008-01-29T13:33:00.000-06:00

We are sitting inside now. We were sitting outside, using the internet from school, because school is closed for the evening. I think the reason that the cashier came out and asked us to either buy something or leave was that my new friend had started to play the harmonica.

He wasn't exactly a new friend, just a man on the street. I was reading my email when I heard a voice say "Hello, girls." (How did he know that we spoke English? Do I really look that much like a foreigner? It might have had something to do with my roommate Alaina skyping in English with her parents.) I looked up and saw a man in a flannel shirt carrying a sleeping bag, a knapsack, and a violin in a plaid case on his shoulders. "Please visit the site lazybeggars," he said. "It's my friends' site."

I didn't know what to say. So I said "okay" and hoped that he would go away and not wait to see if I visited the website. Because I wasn't going to visit the website.

But he stood there for a few more seconds. He was the picture perfect beggar. "Can I take a picture of you?" I asked, since my camera was sitting in my lap.

"Only if you pay me. I am not a tourist attraction."

I noticed that he was gripping his left hand with his right and that there was an inch long gash on his left thumb. "What happened to your hand?" I asked.

"Last night I was drunk. Now, I am not a man who is always drunk. I am only drunk maybe two or three times a year. But last night my friends and I had a party. And I fell and hurt my hand and it's really hurting me now."

I had a hard time believing a man holding a large bottle of beer in his hand when he said that he rarely gets drunk. I said "Well, be careful," and pointed to the twenty ounces he had left.

"This?" he chuckled. "Don't worry. I am just… waking up. But please, visit the site lazybeggers. And if I see you again, we will talk. We are not all the same." He walked away, and I went back to reading my emails. I did not visit his recommended site, but something told me that he would be back to ask.

Sure enough, in just a few minutes, he was back, and he continued to pester me to visit the site. Please don't be porn, I thought as I opened a new window and typed "lazybeggars.com" With my permission, he sat down in the cafe chair next to me. I noticed his crooked, yellowed teeth and tried not to breathe in too much of his beer breath.

When the site came up, it was not what I had expected. It was some professional looking site with various services and offers. It was not what he expected, either. "I think you spelled it wrong" he said. So I spelled it more phonetically. 'lazybeggers' didn't get me anything at all. "No, spell it like that," he said, and he touched my screen. Have I told you how I feel about people touching my screen? After a few more tries and a few more fingerprints, we gave up on finding the site.

I asked him where he was from. "My nationality is a traveler." I was about to ask him where has born when he said, "I was born in Croatia, but I would be offended if you called me a Croatian. You know there was a war there– I'm sure you've heard something about it– and I was never able to complete my education. So now I am a man without a degree, without an education. But that is really not the reason why I do not like Croatia. I am not blaming them for everything. A Croatian just isn't who I am. I don't have the same mind as they do. They are very nationalistic. When I go to Croatia, I have to act like a Croatian, but if I leave Croatia, I'm told that I'm not a Croatian anymore."

"You don't fit in there?"

"No, I don't fit at all. So I travel. I have been everywhere in Europe. But only in Europe. I want to go everywhere in the world, though. I think I am not going to die soon, so I will be able to go many places. I want to go everywhere."

Me too, I thought. We have that in common. But unlike him, I wasn't fluent in Croatian, English, Spanish, and whatever other languages he's picked up along the way. "How did you learn English?" I asked.

"They teach it in school in Croatia. They did give me that. My Spanish is not quite as good, but I can say everything I want to say." Just then a friend of his walked by, giving him a chance to prove his Spanish skills. As they talked, the beggar sitting in the chair next to me reached into his pocket and brought out a little harmonica in its case. He showed it to his friend, but his friend said that he would come back later.

As his friend walked on, the beggar explained the harmonica to me. "This is not my instrument. That guitar is my instrument." He pointed towards the pile of possessions he had left leaning against the wall. "But some people stole my guitar once, so my friend gave me this harmonica. That's why I told him to come back and get his harmonica, since it is his. I can't play it very well, but I can play."

He took the harmonica in his hand and set the case on the table between my laptop and his flask of beer. He played a few notes, frowned, switched the harmonica upside down, played a swoop of notes that hummed in the opposite direction of his expectations, laughed at himself, switched it right side up again, found his starting pitch, and was about to begin the song. He paused for a moment. "Is it okay with you?" he made sure. I nodded.

He started to play, and I recognized the tune. "Silent Night!" I said aloud. Harmonica might not have been his first instrument, but it sounded good. But I didn't get to enjoy it for long, because that's when the cashier came and told us that we had to be consuming something from the cafe to be sitting there.

As we stood up to leave, he to his wandering on the dusky streets, and we to buy a fanta and fries and sit inside, I asked him where his favorite places in Europe were. "If I get the chance to travel, where should I go?"

"My favorites," he replied without hesitating, "are Rotterdam and Rome. Besides Sevilla."

Para Hacer

2008-01-24T13:24:00.001-06:00

To do:

√ settle into my room in Sevilla
√ do a bunch of laundry (er, have my Señora do it)
√ buy another converter
√ decide what classes to take
√ learn how to say, "I wonder…"
put some minutes on my cell phone
send for my Sevici card
decide whether or not to take flamenco lessons
catch up on my photo blogging
practice bass
finish my teacher aiding journal
read some Don Quijote
make a tabblo of my walk to school
sort through the pictures I took yesterday
buy some Spanish music
read all the labels in the grocery store
get my voice back
get an intercambio
learn how to say, "I'm overwhelmed."

Guess

2008-01-24T05:54:00.000-06:00

Guess which picture required more effort to record:

If you guessed that the still life of a television antenna and flowers on a tile roof at dusk was easier, you are wrong. In the United States, sure, but this is Spain. As I stopped on the sidewalk for a couple minutes to set up the shot, an old local man came up and asked us if we wanted to buy the house. It was his house. Why was I looking at it? I told him I was just taking a picture of the pretty flowers, if that was okay with him. He asked to see the picture, so I showed him. He looked back up at the roof. Indeed, there really was an antenna on the roof, so he had to discuss that with his friend for a bit. I don't know what they were saying. He asked again if we liked the house and if we thought that it was for sale. It was his house.

He asked us who we were. He asked us where we were from. He figured out that Becky was Chinese. I told him I was Dutch, but I was from the United States. He didn't understand the word I used for Dutch, so he was confused. Finally he repeated the exact same word (with exactly the same intonation, I'm sure of it) and I told him he was right. Note to self: I am Dutch when I am in the United States, but I am American when I am in Europe.

We told him we worked at the school ECA. He said that one of the other teachers was his neighbor, and that this neighbor of his was a good man.

Finally we had convinced him that we were good people, that we didn't want to buy his house, and that we weren't spying on him either. It's a good thing I got the photo when I did, because by the time we had really got the home owner's permission, it was too dark to take pictures.

But not everyone in Camarma is suspicious of photographers. Construction workers think they are cool. There was a happening construction site right across the street from our apartment, and every time I walked past, I just tried not to be noticed. But one time I had my camera with me, and I just had to take a picture of a man smoothing plaster from high on a scaffold. I put my camera away and was about to go into my building when I heard one of the construction workers ask me to take a picture. I turned around and he was standing there expectantly with his friend, just waiting to be digitized by an American.

When I gave in (it didn't take much to convince me) he got excited and called some more friends over:"Quick! Get in the picture! C'mon!" As I stood there with my camera, Spaniards hurriedly put down their power tools, wiped their hands on their pantalones, took off their hats, ran their fingers through their hair, and lined up for the photo shoot.

En Camarma

2008-01-23T06:33:00.000-06:00

I am starting to get settled into my semester here in Sevilla. Communication with my Señora is getting easier, and I started classes today. There are so many places to go, activities to sign up for, new foods to eat, and new friends to make. And there is so much language to learn!

I am pleasantly surprised with my Spanish abilities. I did well enough on the placement exam to be in the hardest grammar class and when I am speaking Spanish, I remember to conjugate into the correct tense (I'm not saying I can conjugate with any great speed.). Right now the hardest part about speaking Spanish is speaking at all. My voice is very gone.

My roommate, Alaina, is also studying at the advanced level. We try to speak Spanish to each other, especially when we are out and about. But we pull out the English when we are having conversations lasting several hours or when we've only been awake for several minutes. We are quite a team, especially when it comes to dinnertime.

Part of settling in here in Sevilla is catching you all up on my time in Camarma, which flew by because I was having fun. Here's some pictures:

Camarma de Esteruelas (or just 'Camarma') is the small town were I stayed for two weeks. It's a commuter town to the capital city of Spain. ... See my Tabblo>

Sunny Day

2008-01-09T17:14:00.000-06:00

Saturday was the sunniest, warmest day in London, so I'm glad I started out without too much of a plan. I ended up spending most of my time just walking around. Victoria Tower Gardens was one of the places where I found particular beauty. ... See my Tabblo>

when I went to Oxford

2008-01-08T16:35:00.001-06:00

Last week, I spent a day in Oxford.

Two PUbs that Tolkein and Lewis Frequented. I ate Fish Pie and Drank Cider at their Alleged Favorite, the Eagle and Child.
... See my Tabblo>

Thursday all over the city

2008-01-07T17:03:00.000-06:00

The weather was miserable, but it was a great day.

>> I love musicals, I love Tolkein's works, I love live theater, I love front row seats in the balcony.

I love that I was blessed to end my Thursday in London at the Royal Theatre, watching as all three books were wrapped in a whirlwind of special effects and dramatic staging at the performance of the new musical The Lord of the Rings. Definitely a highlight of my time in London. ... See my Tabblo>

Wednesday at the British Museum

2008-01-07T15:59:00.000-06:00

The British Museum is free and amazing. It's about all I did in London on Wednesday before going back up to Kirkwood's for a delicious supper of chicken and mashed potatoes.

On Wednesday, I lugged my luggage to Kirkwood's, then returned to the city center to explore the British Museum, if only to see the Rosetta stone. There was so much to see that I might've missed what I came to see, if I hadn't ventured through that room before they suddenly pointed everyone to the doors. Parliament should make a law expanding library hours past 5:00 p.m. It's ridiculous. ... See my Tabblo>

First night in London

2008-01-06T16:49:00.000-06:00

I am in Spain by now, but I'm trying to catch up on posting pictures. Here's some I took the night I got to London.