semi-final destination :)

Did you know that the geographical coordinates of Bogotá and Philadelphia line up longitudinally, almost exactly? I did, because I googled it. That is so much fun. And with the help of Skype, all those latitudinal lines separating me from a beloved continent seem to fade.

Here I am, headed out to my home for the next four years: the Templeton Honors College at Eastern University. I’m glad for many things at this time—not the least of them being excellent goodbyes from many diverse groups of friends. Glad for the van that can contain all my crap from here to there. Glad for the hand of protection over our vehicle. Glad for the changes, glad for the old. Glad for the prospect of meeting lots of neat new people this year. Glad for the friends I leave behind. Glad for the new Mumford T-shirt. Glad for the PA hills on all sides right now and for four more years.

But, more to the point, I guess I’m thankful. It’s been a while since I had such a cool way to spend my time as digging in deep to academia. I welcome the daily challenge of returning to schoolwork. I even welcome the tests and quizzes that will inevitably come (but just ask me in two months). And this time, it’s not just school; I get to have the fun of dorm life added on! If we’re being honest, I have awaited this time of life since the first day I set foot in high school. I recognize, now as ever, that none of these blessings are earned by my Wheaton-North-worthy GPA, my list of extracurriculars, or the work experience I have gained this past year. Nope. All are God-given gifts to spur me on my journey in the path he hasn’t hesitated in forming for me.

            If the next decade could play out exactly as I am dreaming it would (which it won’t, and I am okay with that), it would look a lot like this:

            Four excellent years of undergrad at THC, gleaning knowledge in all topics that interest me and learning from truly great minds. Grad school—either in Costa Rica (there's a particularly good program there) or here in USA—to add to the palatability of my resume. Then, off to Bogotá or Buenos Aires to work for Globant. That’s the sueño.

            Other than that, the plan is to enjoy the heck out of the next four years at college. What a bummer there are only four, and they’re going to fly. I’ll not waste a day.

            With regards to the blog, I think I’ll keep going. Why stop a ball that’s already rolling? Plus, there are some people in the world that read it. Thanks, guys. :)

            Blessings on you readers, wherever, whoever, however. May your autumn bring you such excitement and novelty and joy as I am almost sure to have. And thank you for sojourning with me through this most marvelous Gap Year.

HERE’s where Bunny’s got to.

Shalom. xox

Back in the USA. What a beautiful evening to be here. For the whole entire day, actually.

Due to the again-impressive storm last night that certainly cooled things down a tad, today was a brilliantly sunny day. Definitely of the variety that makes me stop and think, wow, life is a beautiful gift. It did also help that I got to wear my cute new rose-colored blouse today. Pretty outfits are best appreciated, by me, on beautiful days.

My sisters and I sang in church today, and I loved it. Maddi played guitar, and Bella and I sang. It was also my last Sunday at Immanuel Presbyterian Church for a while, and we had communion. I don't know what that's like at many other churches, but at ours, it's nothing short of beautiful. After all going forward together, we return to our seats and wait until everyone's been served. Then, to close the service, we join hands and sing as a congregation the first and last verses of "Amazing Grace". I was sitting with my family in the balcony today because we were up there to sing, and I had the privilege of looking out over the whole congregation as we sang. The congregation that so welcomed our family, fresh off the plane from England, about 13 years ago; the people that taught my Sunday school classes all through schoolyears, and those with whom my parents arranged play-dates. I have grown so much in the time that I have attended IPC, and I have loved it as it is, but the family that I have accrued there will continue to grow and change even while I'm not there. I am okay with that. It has helped and nurtured me carefully for long enough--now I'm going to college.

I am going to college. And I cannot wait! School supplies are just the most material/commercialist joy of starting school again--joys which range from studying to having roommates to extracurriculars. I leave in only eleven days. So much to get ready before then! But that's a good thing, because without activity (as this summer has laid painfully obvious) I go bonkers. I await the goodness this year holds quite expectantly--but the excited kind, not the nervous kind. I will be saving my nerves for my first paper in over a year, my first exams in over a year.

Heck, I'm even looking forward to papers and exams: it's definitely time for school. :)

xox

Reflections

In this summer that seems to me to be somewhat meandering, purposeless, or random, God seems to find a way to remind me that even the rest he designates from time to time is intentional. I have felt, throughout this summer, a sense of waiting--probably due to being so excited for school to start up in the fall! But of course, that is a big distraction, and doesn't make the time go any faster. What it does do is make me realize that I still am dependent on God for giving my life purpose at any given moment; for how I hope to identify myself, which is by the child of God that I am, not by the activities or acts that I achieve. But, you know, work in progress.

Last night I found myself in a state of bliss on a southern-Bogota terrace admiring the majesty of mountains surrounding such gorgeous (and prettily illuminated) city. Inhaling air from the steady, frigid breeze, and just watching the unfading glimmer of life.
Life is so very real here. I am constantly surprised and renewed by it. The attention to family. The giing thanks for waking up well and safe every morning, and the thanksgiving for the food on the table. The natural beauty surrounding us. The intrigue in observing all the varieties of activities people here get down to each and every day. Even driving in all the traffic and with all those crazy drivers--how fast and recklessly and hazardously some people take to driving is just a reminder of how fleeting life is, and how full of excitement and feeling it can be.
The same was true being in church on Sunday, at a church called Centro de Vida y Adoracion, and singing in Spanish a worship song that I had previously learnt in Argentina. It is so cool to me that my adventures are intertwining, constantly and carefully. That certainly adds to my life's cohesiveness, which encourages me. Making a Colombian friend in Argentina led to a friendship while I was in Buenos Aires, another couple of visits when we were both back in Bogota, and then to my return trip to stay with his family these two weeks in Bogota.

I am so grateful for this year of travel. I have learned about life in general, as well as understood more how I want to live it. All the little memories and lessons are things I can bring to college and beyond. All the photos and the foods and the souvenirs that I have enjoyed only serve to trigger memory of all the special moments that have made this time such a blessing. As it draws to a close now, I'm going to savor both these remembrances and the new adventures to come. On whatever continent, in whatever country, with whichever people they may be.

xox

Red House For Sale--Memories Not Included

I think I grew up a little yesterday. Little more, I mean, as I have recently been stretched and reshaped in various unexpected ways. But today, starting late the night before, was different.

As we drove in the dark past the big red house that holds many of my all-time fondest memories, the realtor's sign flashed in the headlights. I was really jarred by that sight--so blatant, so in my face, so real.

Yesterday we went back to Nana-and-Poppy's "old" house: for clean up, for yard work, for packing up, for goodbyes.

Farewell to that "we-finally-made-it-to-Nana-and-Poppy's house" view.

Goodbye to the basement workshop, where many toy cars and figurines were fondly carved, sanded, pinched into the vice grip within an inch of their wooden lives.
Farewell to the many clocks, with their hanging pendulums now unhooked and sitting on the table.

Goodbye, Nana and Poppy's bedroom...so many early mornings pretending to wake them up, and the snuggles that ensued.
Goodbye to the hallway that held all of Poppy's antique signs from various American inns.
Goodbye to the tiny first floor bathroom that overlooks the flowers in the front yard.
Goodbye to the tantalizing fragrance of the candy cupboard, and all the times I snitched prohibited Reeses or Wilhelmina mints.
Goodbye to the dining room table that marked celebrations of countless holidays, and the corner china cabinet that held our mini Bible story books on the lowest shelf.
Goodbye to the couch on which I spent Christmas Eves' nights of sleep, in great anticipation.
Goodbye to the crayons in the cupboard.
Goodbye to the piano room, and all the caroling that occurred there.
Farewell to the kitchen, the hub of family life together.

Goodbye to the staircase with the landing, that I always found so fascinating and Slinky-ful.
Goodbye to the various bedrooms upstairs that belonged to aunts and uncle and Mom through the years.
Goodbye to the bathroom, the linen closet, the hallways.
Goodbye to Poppy's office, always crammed with papers and decorated with a lovely, nearly shocking amount of sailboats.
Farewell to that attic--the grandchildren's playroom, only after it was the children's--choc-full of records, babydolls, antique children's chairs, the toy kitchen, archaic board games, and books. I will never forget the absolutely perfect smell of summer in the attic.

Goodbye to the toolshed, boat shed, raspberry bush, the antique well, badminton net, "outhouse", trees, flagpole, creek, forest, birdhouse, red house replica dog house, driveway, and the front rock.

So, I suppose what made me feel like this farewell grew me up was the realization that this goodbye was needed as a reminder that the lovely, cherished moments are still with me. They are found in the people I treasure, not in the building. It's like the difference between "house" and "home"; one means more the building, and one more the memories and sentiments and people.

Either way, both the red house and my family I will, as Poppy once said, "treasure always".

Rest in peace, Poppy. Shalom. I'll see you there someday soon.
xox

variation on a theme, in another's words

Keep walking, though there's no place to get to.

Don't try to see through the distances. That's not

    for human beings.

Move within, but don't move the way fear makes 

    you move.

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and 

    frightened.

Don't open the door to the study

and begin reading. Take down a musical 

    instrument.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.

There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the 

    ground.

--Rumi

After a lengthy hiatus...

Why, hello there. I seem to have forgotten I have viewers/readers. Life has gotten, I must say, rather mundane again. It has a tendency of doing that. But I guess I still do have some observations and anecdotes to share with the general public.

One of them is that I forgot how much I enjoy summertime. I usually do not like for school to be over--partly academically, partly socially--but then I get to stay up late with my best friends watching multiple Paul Newman films (mmm), or blow bubbles and draw with sidewalk chalk with a group of friends mid-afternoon just because we can, or staying up all night, sleeping in, and doing lots of bike riding and yoga-ing. That is when it is nice to be back in Wheaton.

I have also been lately wondering why this summer I do not have a job. I had a job lined up for this summer last fall, before I started traveling, but things at the office changed and that was not an option when I got back. But, it was also too late to plausibly pursue other options. There was also the fact that my summer schedule will not really put me in good standing to get hired; two weeks here, two weeks away, etc. My mom started commenting, "You should really get a job for the summer." Oh boy. Now, finding work had become an actually important stress.
I wanted to protest, maybe more to explain the whole thing to myself than to my mother: "But I've been working all year--I just haven't been paid. I have been learning and thinking and growing and stretching and observing and listening and waiting and trying

                                                                       SO


                                                 HARD.
This is not the beginning of an era of laziness--not even Latin America could truly cause that 180-degree change in my personality. Don't worry. I have no designs of mooching all my life. I have just taken this time to put the learning and the discovery before materialism, just as I set out to last fall. I am healing, growing more, changing, reacting, putting-into-place, preparing, and processing life this summer. That's the job ahead of me. Its only salary comes in non-monetary goodness: peace (putting things to rest), joy (in new things I now know I love), and maturity."

After making known those things to myself, and explaining them to Mom (whose core concerns, it turns out, were more against my very possible summer boredom than about the laziness of it all), we both realized that I am "redefin[ing my]self, not by all [I] do, but how [I] choose to serve and grow....[that I am] lying fallow for a purpose right now". 

My dad's comment on the same conversation was this: "[S]sometimes the purpose may be realized not in what you do, accomplish, or change, but just as much with how God is molding you amidst the relative quiet."


So, several things came out of this. A new, peaceful state of mind when approaching this seemingly lazy and slobbishly unemployed summer. The re-realization that I have amazing parents that really do mean the best. And that God holds every moment, shapes every moment; not that I have to look for his reasoning or try to make out the story from his omniscient point of view. After all, the best novels and fables and stories unravel in a way that the characters cannot predict but the Author can appreciate. No, I'll leave to him the omniscience; for now, I will accept the fact that he is here in Wheaton with me, too, just as he was in Argentina and Colombia, and that now--as then--he is teaching me, and my work is to be receptive.


xox

These are a few of my faaaavorite things... :)

I have been re-remembering, re-noticing, re-observing my Wheaton life, and making note of all the things that I love about this area. This is for when Colombian or Argentine friends finally come to visit me--the parts of the United States closest and dearest to me.

• Lawson field (home to many great afternoons with Kipper and/or evenings stargazing)
• Cantigny park (tanks and roses--a perfect symbiosis)
• Immanuel Presbyterian Church
• La Roca Eterna Church
• Wheaton North High School
• Oberweis ice cream
• Prairie Path (good long summer bike rides)
• Cosley Zoo (particularly when the lambs are born)
• Glen Art Theater (for an afternoon movie on a rainy day in the tiniest, cutest, cleanest theater I know)
• Wheaton College
• Einstein Bros. Bagels (because they do not have bagels in South America)
• Dunkin Donuts (the Dunkin in S. Am. is very latinized--and tasty--but the original would be cool to show)
• the Metra (train into the city--double-decker would be a big difference!)
• downtown Wheaton
• Tate's Old Fashioned Ice Cream
• Popcorn Shop
• Adam's Park
• Mai Thai Restaurant
• Wheaton Public Library

then if we extend the bounds of the tour to the city...

• beach
• Millenium Park summer concerts (with a picnic on the lawn)
• Shedd Aquarium
• The Cheesecake Factory (US-sized portions of very good food :) )

then if we extend to the midwest...

• Michigan or Indiana sand dunes
• the prairie sky :)

then to Pennsylvania...

• Erie
• orange-and-vanilla-twist ice cream at Sarah's
• the beaches of the Peninsula
• Nana & Poppy's old house
• Red Hots (greeeeeasy little diner with fantastic chili cheese fries)
• Philadelphia
• Eastern U's campus
• Q Mart (a weekend flea market in Quakertown)
• the Liberty Bell

I hope this list inspires you to think of what places YOU consider to be lovely treasures in your own neck of the woods. All places were created to be enjoyed to the fullest. And shared with good friends.

xox