just doing my major!

In college I majored in communications. I loved my major, I loved going to class because you couldn’t get in trouble for talking in class, because talking was the very thing we were studying and majoring in! Hahaha

One time my teacher of Com Theory told us to get in groups and come up with our own definition of communications. This was how we defined it: Communications is the act of living because we are never not communicating. Like we are always sending messages even when we’re not talking through our non verbals. (For example, even when you’re sleeping, you are communicating… you’re saying you’re tired… I know, it’s deep.) So I decided that if that is the definition of communications well, then all my classmates and I were actually majoring in life!

A year ago when I came to Spain I remember thinking how ironic it was that I came to a place where I could least likely use my major, the very thing I had been studying for for the past 4 years: communicating… because I couldn’t speak or understand the language.

So here I’ve been for over a year learning a completely new means of communications, communicating in another language. But in my process of learning Spanish I have learned something else more important: that communicating really is the act of living. Our lives, our actions, our non verbals, our behavior, our love for people is what communicates much more powerfully and honestly than our verbal words. You can listen and speak on much deeper levels through facial expressions, tone of voice, actions, body language, touch, and time spent together.

The place I have learned this is with my Spanish friends. From the day I met them (when I couldn’t understand a word they said) til now (when we can laugh and joke and understand eachother) there has been a constant, unchanging message that I have understood on the deeper, noverbal level: love.

I believe God communicates on that level and uses us to communicate his love to eachother in and through our lives and our actions. So if life is my major… well I am definitely a freshman… and probably be one forever because I fail so often to live and communicate like that… even so, I still love it because there is grace and forgiveness when we don’t… and maybe receiving it makes us more prone to live lives that speak love.

a year in another world

A year away from home. A whole year has gone by. So I have realized some of the ways I have changed and have become a part of this culture or that this culture has become a part of me:

I consider 1:00pm to be morning time still and 8:00pm is still the afternoon.

Shaking hands is sooo akward when meeting someone, we gotta kiss on both cheeks!

I like to eat any part of the pig, I never thought much about ham until I got here and became surrounded by people who love to eat ham, pork, (other cuts I don't know the names in english...). I even ate pig skin at a bbq the other day. You can't really even find turkey very easily here.

A "normal" size coffee would be about 1/3 of a tall at starbucks.

If I go home at 5:00 in the morning; that is getting in early.

I am shocked if I don't get free food with a drink I order. (When Katie Smith and I went to Sevilla we went out for tapas and I found out that they charged us for the tapa and the drink! I was kind of mad, I found out that only in Granada the tapa is free.)

I think I forgot how to drive a car. I walk everywhere and a 20 minute walk is normal for most places I go.

The guys in the pointy kkk looking hats (photo above) are perfectly normal to see walking thru the streets in the processions of holy week, its also normal to see them drinking and smoking in the bars later.

I find myself clapping with my hands positioned like in the photo above. Clapping is an artform here, not just a way to express approval.

Olives and olive oil are its own food group now... for real I saw a spanish version of the food pyramid.

I wear pointy boots...

Most of my thought reactions to something are in slang spanish. Like "venga ya tia"

I get dressed up to go to the grocery store.

3:00 is lunch time and it's by far the biggest meal!

I think I have like 5 maria's in my phone.

When people ask where I am from I tell them "Granada! :)" just to see if they'll believe me... they don't believe me.... i guess I still have an American accent... or maybe its the whole blond thing... I don't know, but somehow over this year, this place has become home to me in so many ways. There are many things about the culture that if I would've known before I might not have come, but now those are the things I treasure.