Well I have officially reached the one month time to get homesick point. This past Friday I had my first tension headache since ive been here (praise that it’s the first and prayers that it’s the last) and found myself literally curled up on my bed crying for my mommy like a 20 year old baby. Something about not feeling well, not having your mom to comfort you, and being in a place that isn’t home makes the homesickness really set in. Luckily I have episodes of Jon and Kate Plus 8 to fill the lonely nights. I also find shopping to be very theraputic, naturally.
This week my madre asked me why it is that my roommate meets tons of guys and I don’t. Dear madre, thanks for rubbing that one in. She told me I was very pretty and should have already found a Spanish boyfriend by now… thanks, I think?
My trip to Italy is officially planned. We now have buses, planes, and trains scheduled… all we need now is a car and a boat (maybe a Venetian gondola will count) and we have all modes of transportation covered. We spent the majority of this week online finding and comparing hostels, but we now have hostels for all 3 of our planned stops (rome, florence, and venice). My travel partner, Sameera, is really looking forward to riding in a gondola. I don't have the heart to tell her that online it said a ride costs over $50. I figure we can just close our eyes while we are on the water taxi and pretend its a lovely gondola ride through the Venician waterways (maybe we will even sing to get the real authentic experience going). It has been pretty neat to see that I can plan a trip on my own. That can be a pretty stressful and difficult process, but it’s been fun to try the independent travel planning thing and see that I can make it… minus the one wrong train station snafu; luckily it was an easily adaptable mistake.
Classes are going really well so far. I have now read a novel in Spanish (quite the accomplishment) and understood the majority of it (even bigger accomplishment). I’m really enjoying my business Spanish class because the teacher is really great and we are learning about topics that are very practical for working in the international business world. My Spanish Art class would be great if the professor wasn't an 80 year old man, with a painfully monotonous voice, and spanish vocabulary that is close to impossible to understand (p.s. I type this while sitting in his class, trying very hard to pay attention, but clearly failing).
This past week I visited EnVivo, a Christian group in Salamanca which was started by a group from Georgia Tech's large Christian ministry, CCM. The group includes university students for Spain as well as the US, so it is a nice mix of Spanish and English. The worship songs and message are both in Spanish, which is a pretty cool experience (Its like CSU Spanish style). I was blown away when the first song they did during worship was the Spanish version of Desert Song, which happens to be one of my favorite worship songs! It was one of those signs telling me I was right where God wanted me to be. The group invited us to church with them Sunday so we got to experience a church service in Spanish which was another cool experience. The church, one of the 2 evangelistic churches in all of Salamanca, had a very simple yet powerful form of worship. In the service we attended they had communion and then the rest of the service is open for anyone to request a song for the congregation to sing or share something that God has laid on their hearts. It was very similar to how I would imagine the early church was set up. I always find it to be a really powerful experience when you worship in another country and even more so in another language. I think sometimes we all, myself definitly included, get caught up in our United States, JMU, Harrisonburg or even Christian Student Union bubble and get comfortable with the friends and style of worship that we experience everyday. When we step out of that comfort zone and experience worship in another country it is a very moving visual of the size of God's kingdom and the vastness of His power. Its amazing to see that people all across the world are worshipping the same God as you and that we all have this incredible connection with one another through Christ. Its cool that no matter where you are in the world, you can (hopefully) count on a group of Christians to make you feel welcomed and loved. Its also a good challenge to make sure that we are the Christians who welcome and love those who feel alone and afraid (this may be a good challenge to take on as the week starts).
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