Blue

Since yesterday evening I've been rather...blue. I've been in Spain for a bit over two months now and as warned by many pre-trip discussions and the like...the newness of Spain is starting to wear away and homesickness is starting to set in. Being around the time of the "Holiday Season" starting up and talking to people about Thanksgiving plans and family gatherings exaggerates these feelings. More than the general "home", I miss community. I have a lovely church here, but I'm still a "visitor" and living in the next town over, it's hard to come to more than just Sunday morning service, so graduating from "visitor" status is a bit tough. Yet, this morning I was given a beautiful reminder that Christ loves His children and hears them when they cry out to Him.

I tend to arrive about half an hour early every Sunday morning, as that's when I get there after the bus drops me off half an hour's walk away. This morning I decided to pass the time writing in an ongoing letter to Joel. Writing to someone you care about that's far away when you're already a bit melancholy doesn't tend to put a smile on your face...at least not often for me... So, when the band was finished practicing, my eyes were about to spill over into tears. One of the jovenes (literally "youth" but they use it normally for folks in their mid-twenties..), Fran (short for Francisco, so male), came over to ask me how I was doing. Whenever someone asks me how I am while I'm on the verge of tears...I can't handle it and rather uncontrollably break out into sobs. I think this surprised poor Fran, but he waited until I had almost collected myself and then asked what was going on. After listing off a multitude of things from missing home to being frustated about not having "comunity" and being so far away from everything (Benicassim to Castellon is twenty to thirty minutes and on top of that, only when the bus is scheduled to come by), he nodded in understanding, added some encouragement, and mentioned that the church "youth" are at the university most days and I could eat with them or just generally spend time with them sometime if I would like. Then he asked if he could pray for me. It had been so long since someone asked if they could pray for me right then and there...I had forgotten the wonderful encouragement and refocusing to Christ that it brings. I'm still a bit melancholy, but now my sky has turned bluer, with the clearing away of some clouds.

This is a photo of part of a really high, pretty scary, but rather fun ropes course. And of course, some lovely sky.

Here's a pic of a lovely castle I saw yesterday... El castillo de Morella... You can see so much from up there. As we were going back down the mountain the sun was setting. Beautiful.

My room

These are my closet doors, along with decorations provided from the friendly tourist information office in Benicassim. They give away posters at the tourist offices here. Isn't that cool?
This is my bed and slightly cluttered nightstand. Note the bunny on the pillow and the box of crayons next to the lamp. How old am I? Heheh.
More free posters and maps on the back of my door, and my bookshelf!!
This is my cluttered desk! It's littered with postcards I'm attempting to write, a rather large dictionary, my agenda, water, and Joel's laptop (he's letting me borrow it...so nice of him). :-)


So, this is my room, in case anyone wanted to see what it looked like! I also have some pics of me with my Spanish family that I'll try to post sometime soon.

Really random

My school is just a little bit crazy... These pictures are from a random theatre troupe...band...thing... that happened to find themselves in the lobby of the humanities building doing a show. They then proceeded to the cafeteria where my friend Ilea and I were waiting to get food. A prime time for photos, no? Then, one of the members of said group took my camera, gave it to Ilea, picked me up, and waited for her to take a picture. After setting me down he motioned for me to give him a kiss on the cheek. As this is standard practice here, I thought nothing of it and proceeded... He turned his head and kissed me on the lips! Terrible trickster! Now Joel is complaining to me for giving him yet another thing to do, tracking this guy down in order to plan the "disposal" of him... So, here's is the photo of him, in order to more easily ID him. He's the one holding me in the last pic.

Frustrations

So, I'm in a class called "Philosophy of Peace". For this class we were to buy the professors book and read through it, go to class once a week for two hours to listen to him recite it (and sometimes start discussions), and each week answer six questions in an online forum(and by six questions I really mean about twenty, as each has nmerous "sub-questions"). Also, the questions he only posts in Valencian, which I don't happen to understand very well, so I have to wait for other people in the forum to answer the questions, hopefully in Spanish, and then try to derive what the question actually was from their answers, or have my friend translate them for me each week, when he has the time....

This is all well and good until I get to trying to answer the questions... Where is the balance between telling the professor what he wants to hear, picking a fight, and trying to answer the question as best as I can from my still-developing Christian world-view? All of this in a language whose intricacies are about as clear as mud to me, while also trying to dedicate enough time to my other classes, let alone dwelling the Word of God to continue shaping that world-view of mine... I want to answer the questions in a way that will engage the other students into thinking about the only true peace and our inability to alone accomplish what the class is attempting to guide us toward. At the same time, where is the balance between working towards peace and knowing that because of sin it will not come about through changes in government or new philosophies?

So, I spend hours trying to answer these questions, reading and rereading the text, the questions themselves (or rather a translation of them from Valencian to Spanish and then often another translation into English, though that one is only mental...), and other students' answers while eventually squeezing out something that might be recognizable as an answer, though with poor Spanish grammar and a limitted vocabulary and never to my satisfaction. I always feel as if all I've done is regurgitate the professor's own words, even while trying to do the opposite, or else not even answering the question itself.

But I have to have the questions done by tomorrow, at which point I will be assigned a two page paper to summarize the first two chapters of this very same book, along with another set of six questions, which I will have one week to complete.

Another problem is I'm terrible procrastinator, especially when I have multiple things that have upcoming deadlines. I have trouble deciding where to start, so I get lots of other things done, like cleaning my room, updating my blog, catching up with my parents on Skype, etc...

"And He has said to me, 'My grace is suficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.' Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me." 2 Cor 12:9

I'm going to get back to my homework now.