Sunday, November 30, 2008

montaña rusa

i hope you are all reading this still full of turkey and feeling good from a weekend with family. for me, it's a good thing that thanksgiving is over, because last week was pretty tough. this whole spain experience has been a bit of an emotional roller coaster, with a whole week being the really exciting part where you shoot out of the tunnel and the next day i feel like i'm stuck in the upside down/backwards part of the ride or the part where you feel like you literally may fall out of your seat. overall, it really has been a great experience so far, and i would say 85 percent of the time i am perfectly happy being here, but this week was the upside down/backward/fall out of your seat loop on the rollercoaster. i just had a hard time knowing that i was here and my family was in boerne, all together, having fun and eating delicious food. i never realized before how much i really love thanksgiving. so, i am thankful that i get to come home for christmas because after this week, i know that i would be an absolute basket case if i wasn't. i wanted to say that little bit about how hard this week was for me, because i also wanted to post this quote from donald miller's book through painted deserts (not so you all feel sorry for me). i found it on someone else's blog and it's encouraging to me, because even though sometimes it's hard being away from home, i know that it's a good thing for me.

"Life cannot be understood flat on a page. It has to be lived; a person has to get out of his head, has to fall in love, has to memorize poems, has to jump off bridges into rivers, has to stand in an empty desert and whisper sonnets under his breath:

It's a living book, this life; it folds out in a million settings, cast with a billion beautiful characters, and it is almost over for you. It doesn't matter how old you are; it is coming to a close quickly, and soon the credits will roll and all your friends will fold out of your funeral and drive back to their homes in the cold and stil and silence. And they will make a fire and pour some wine and think about how you once were… and feel a kind of sickness at the idea you never again will be.

So soon you will be in that part of the book where you are holding the bulk of the pages in your left hand, and only a thin wisp in your right. You will know by the page count, not by the narrative, that the Author is wrapping things up. You begin to mourn its ending, and want to pace yourself slowly toward its closure, knowing the last lines will speak of something beautiful, of the end of something long and earned, and you hope the thing closes out like last breaths, like whispers about how much and who the characters have come to love, and how authentic the sentiments feel when they have earned a hundred pages of qualification.

And so my prayer is that your story will have involved some leaving and some coming home, some summer and some winter, some roses blooming out like children to play. My hope is your story will be about changing, and getting something beautiful born inside of you, about learning to love a woman or a man, about learning to love a child, about moving your self around water, around mountains, around friends, about learning to love others more than we love ourselves, about learning oneness as a way of understanding God. We get one story, you and I, and one story alone. God has established the elements, the setting, the climax and the resolution. It would be a crime not to venture out, wouldn't it?

It might be time for you to go. It might be time to change, to shine out.

I want to repeat one word for you:

"Leave"

Roll the word around on your tongue for a bit. It is a beautiful word, isn't it? So strong and forceful, the way you have always wanted to be. And you will not be alone. You have never been alone. Don't worry. Everything will still be here when you get back. It is you who will have changed."

here are a few photos of my spanish thanksgiving. instead of buying a whole turkey, we just got five turkey legs, which made me feel like i was going to a fair. i let the spaniards take care of the turkey, bc i haven't the slightest idea of how to cook turkey, and it turned out really, really tasty. i made dressing, but it wasn't as good as my grandma's and i'm going to blame that on the ingredients, not on my abilities in the kitchen. we also had sweet potatoes, salad and a kind of spanish tapa(kind of like appetizers) called croquetes. the whole meal was really good and a lot of fun.



Thursday, November 27, 2008

estoy agradecido para...

this week in my classes we have been talking about thanksgiving. i told them the history of the tradition, how we celebrate it today and i told them a little bit about how we watch football and the macy's parade. then i showed them on the board how to trace their hand and draw a turkey, and even though i had just finished telling them how we eat turkey at thanksgiving, they all thought my hand turkey was a pigeon. they also had to think of two things they were thankful for and write them on their paper. i don't really know if they understood why we celebrate thanksgiving... probably not, but at least they know that it exists, and if need be they can draw a turkey using their hand. i took some pictures in one class of the kids and their turkeys. happy thanksgiving!












this was my favorite turkey out of all of them. check out those large talons!

Monday, November 24, 2008

dia de accion de gracias en oxford

i got to spend the last 4 days in one of my favorite places in the world with one of my favorite people in the world. i went to oxford to visit my friend dre and i also got to partake in the thanksgiving dinner at the acu house where i studied abroad two years ago. for those of you who have been faithful readers since the beginning, dre should be a familiar face bc she was probably in most of the pictures and stories that i put up from my first european experience. she is back in oxford this year getting her masters in english at oxford brookes university. she lives in a house with two other ACU and Siggie alums, Lindsay and Johnna, and it was great to get to see them as well. the weekend was amazing and i loved every minute i spent there. the city is beautiful and the weather even cooperated pretty well, meaning that it didn't pour rain the entire time i was there. actually it only started raining when i was leaving on sunday. dre and i visited most of the places we used to go all the time but we also went to some new places that she has discovered since living there. the best thing about the whole weekend though was being with someone that knows me so well and who gets my jokes and knows what i'm talking about even when i don't really make sense. i think that is definitely the hardest part about living in spain, that i am away from the people that i love. i knew coming into this year that it would be the hardest thing for me and i was right. the culture and the weather and the language are nothing compared to not having my friends and family just a phone call or a short drive away at any time. so i guess what i am trying to say is that i am extremely thankful for you guys and i hope you all know that i love you all a lot. a lot, a lot.

wow. enough sap, here are some photos from the weekend.

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dre and i visited primark, a store with ridiculously cheap prices. sometimes it also has ridiculous items, such as this braided headband. we later found out that lindsay, dre's housemate, bought one and wore it to work. she said it was just as a joke, but im not too sure.

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magdalen college.

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dre and i and on the hoof. the bacon, turkey and cream cheese panini was JUST as good as i remembered.

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our contribution was delicious but simple sweet potatoes, served on a foil regal platter. that's right, the label says regal, and you better believe we threw that word around as much as possible.

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dre, johnna, lindsay and i at the thanksgiving dinner.

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me and dre.

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someone brought some "corn".

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janine and i. it was so great to get to spend some time with her and ron, and i wish he had been around to be in this picture.

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seek through christ.

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on saturday dre and i went to peppers burgers, a place we frequently visited before. it had been shut down for a little while, but it is so much nicer now than it used to be and you can actually sit inside! it's great. i weawy, weawy wuv peppas burgas. please ignore that if you didn't study abroad with me.

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i finally made it to port meadow, this huge meadow in oxford that basically hasn't been touched since 1086. nothing has ever been built or grown on it, and its supposed to stay that way forever. somehow i never went while i was there before, so we decided that it was at the top of the list. we went with janine and ron and walked through the meadow to the trout, an old restaurant where we sat outside and had coffee and tea. it was suuuper cold on the way out there because there was nothing to block the wind.

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he looked at me, he loves me.

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dre and i at the trout.

this week i am teaching the kids about thanksgiving and they are drawing hand turkeys and writing things they are thankful for. i'll try to take some pictures tomorrow and post them later. hasta luego. eat a lot of turkey and dressing for me on thursday.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

excursion a huesca

last thursday i got to go on a field trip with the 6th graders at Pedro Primero. we went to the nearby town of huesca and saw a gothic cathedral, a roman church and a museum exhibit about a bunch of pre human skeletons that were found in a cave nearby. these two sixth grade classes are probably my favorite out of all of my classes, so it was a lot of fun to get to spend more time with them outside of class. I spent most of the day with Pili, one of the 6th grade teachers, and she was super sweet. She started to get motion sickness on the bus on the way there, and i really thought she was going to throw up in the seat next to me. then later on when we were at the museum another girl started to feel sick and almost passed out, so Pili stayed with the girl and I had to take the whole class back down the street to meet up with the other group. I did not feel old enough to be leading twenty 11 years olds down a crowded street. Hopefully they couldn't tell what i was thinking, but i kinda think some of them knew I wasn't too confident. haha. it was a fun day and i really enjoyed seeing the two churches because in oxford we talked a lot about the differences between gothic and roman architecture.

tomorrow morning at 6:50 i'm getting on a bus to barcelona and at 10:05 tomorrow night i will arrive in oxford!! i am suuuuper excited and even though its going to be a long day of traveling i know it will be worth it. i'll post pictures when i get back!

Monday, November 10, 2008

las montañas.

ever since i got here i have been hearing about this town called ainsa (ine-suh) and i how it was one of the places i definitely had to go see. so, this past sunday, susana, sarmite and i went on a little day trip up to ainsa. it's a really old town, i think it was built in the 1100's. it's almost in los pirineos (the pyrenees), but not quite. we walked around for while, got some coffee, then drove a little further north to stop at a hotel and eat lunch. the drive was incredible!! we got into the mountains and the view was just breathtaking. the trees are all changing, and you can snow on the tops of the mountains and sometimes we would pass little waterfalls. i was in awe the whole time. lunch was great, i ate lamb for the first time, and i liked it a lot. i really like how when you sit down for a big meal here it takes a long time. they do the multi-course thing here and i think we should adopt it back home. it lets you really enjoy the food and the company. so after our long lunch, we kept driving north through the mountains and got almost to france(all we had to do was drive through a little tunnel. so lainers, i guess you could say i was in spance?) when we turned to the west and drove to the national park of monte perdido and ordesa. it was GORGEOUS. the pictures dont do it justice at all. there was snow everywhere and it was one of those moments that i couldn't believe what an awesome life God has blessed me with.


the pirineos in the distance.



one of the towers in ainsa.


monte something, i cant remember the name







Thursday, November 06, 2008

barcelona!

last weekend i went to barcelona with 4 girls- 3 spanish and 1 latvian. we were going to see Mamma Mia in a theater, and at first i thought it would be in english bc its a musical and i didn't figure they translate those. but apparently they do, even the songs. the singers were all pretty good so it was entertaining and kinda funny to hear the more famous songs in spanish. i found out afterwards that abba released a lot of music in spanish. if you would like to hear some abba classics in spanish, here's a "killer mix of the worlds greatest group in the wonderful language Espanol! :)" that's a direct quote from the youtube page.



just in case you opted not to listen to the entire 7 minute sample of abba in spanish, i will just tell you that sometimes they leave a few words in english so that the song will still flow, for example they still say "super trooper" and "dancing queen". in some of the songs though, they would change the lyrics so it said something completely different, but still sounded similar to the original. the funniest one to me was the song "take a chance on me", which they changed to say "chico, ven aqui", which means "come here boy". so you know the part where they say the "ch" sound a lot of times back to back? well in the spanish version they are saying chico instead of chance,and for some reason that one made me laugh a lot. it also made me think of kojie sing song which was a little unpleasant.

during the day we walked all over the place and went to see a lot of the places i had already seen when i was in barcelona before. but it was still cool and we had a lot of fun. the musical didnt start until 10:00, so before we headed over to that we went to a manga expo, which was maybe the single weirdest experience of my life. manga is a japanese cartoon that is really popular all over the world and apparently really big here in spain. the girl we were staying with was working at a booth, so we went to see her and ended up staying at this places for atleast two hours. it was insane. people were dressed up like cartoon characters ALL OVER THE PLACE. and i dont mean like mickey mouse or daffy duck. these are weird anime characters that i couldnt even begin to descibe to you. so lucky for you, i took pictures.

mas fotos.

here are the rest of the pictures of one of my classes.






Isabel, the teacher, is the second from the left. She is great and i really really enjoy working with her. This monday i accidently slept through my first class and when i showed up for the second she was so nice about it and kept telling me not to worry. but i felt really really bad.

here are some of the projects the kids have done. they had to make some posters about the USA, and then for Halloween last week, i told them about what we do in the states, and then they had to follow instructions like, draw a yellow moon in a black sky, or draw a jack o lantern in the bottom right corner, and then they got to color the houses.