"¡No pasa nada en Granada!"

One month and ten days in Granada.

I need to sit back sometimes and remind myself both that I've already been here that long, and other times that I have only been here that long. I'm afraid now that time will pass too quickly but I feel so comfortable and at home here. And I love speaking Spanish! While many here have told me that I'm very good at it, some more honest people have confirmed that, yes, I do make quite a few mistakes, and that's probably because I often talk without really thinking. This is both good and bad ;) Anyways I came to the conclusion of the following after some intense 2 minutes of philosophizing...

Just as words can be translated to say the same thing in a different language, I feel that I translate my 'self' in a different culture. I’m the same person, I just perceive and feel differently, and become somewhat altered on the surface.

I think this is true for anyone who finds themselves in a different culture, using the language. Friends of mine have confirmed this. But it's so interesting for me, even after a lifetime of feeling so close to two countries, to come to yet another and see my reflection through a different angle, if you will. This is definitely a growing experience which has only inspired me to hope to seek out some bigger culture shocks in the future!

I'm going to conclude by mentioning some more concrete things. I have visited Córdoba, Toledo, Madrid, and Segovia. Next weekend I am going to Lisbon, Portugal, and at the end of April I will get to experience life in Morocco for four days! Here in Granada I have discovered my favorite place to be the Mirador de San Nicolas (especially during sunset) which gives you a breathtaking panorama of the city, Albaicín, Alhambra and Sierra Nevada.

More to come on the details of my first walk through the Albaicín... stay tuned!

[Here also is a link to a song by a well-known singer in Spain named Chambao who is from Málaga in Andalucia. Her music is a blend of Flamenco with electronic. Enjoy!]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKnvxHkk8NA

I just had a very enlightening encounter with someone. I'm at the library trying to write a paper and I went over to the coffee shop in the student center next door. While in line, one of the ladies that works at the student center whom I have gotten to know simply from seeing her there all the time was, surprise, there as well. She came over to me, and after saying hi and whatnot, said, "I'm working the post station for a while now, but a professor just came over, and he said to me, 'You have beautiful hair. You're beautiful.'" Clearly anyone would be somewhat perplexed if a person you have hever met before just said this. She explained to me that, being an African American woman, with her braided hair and beads, she usually only gets those kinds of comments from men who are like her. The professor, she continued, said, "'You look like no-one's ever told you this before.'" He was at the post station for the purpose of sending in a theory which he was hoping would get published. What he said to her was also what his theory was about. He had told her, "I see myself in you. I see beauty in other people when I see myself in them. When one sees this, it gives them a permanent level of respect for the other person. This is what many people fail to see, and this is why we run into so many problems between races and cultures. We need to learn to see ourselves in everyone." This made so much sense. She said to me too that she really felt what he had said. So deep! "So what does he teach? Philosophy?" I asked. She brought over his business card he had left her. "Molecular Biology."

A few days ago I paused to catch my breath, and I prayed for peace of mind.

Inspired by the personal reflections posted by a friend, I got started thinking about the Individual. Who are we? Who are you? Deep questions, I know. The type quoted by philosophers through centuries. But stop and think, deeply, who are you. If you could close your eyes and remove everything outside of yourself that you associate with, be it people, possessions, culture… what would be left? Some may find this more difficult than others.

In elementary school I was afraid that when I grew up I would forget who I was. I would practice sitting down, closing my eyes, and not thinking. What’s left is… well, you can’t really explain it. I can’t explain it. Spirit perhaps, which is communicated to others through these different venues such as culture. Different cultures describe the same things in vastly different ways. This is because there is no right or wrong way to describe certain characteristics, personalities, emotions, perhaps even the world itself. But I think the world could only be properly explained by describing everyone that makes it up in a universal language. Because underlying all these differences must be something universal that makes us all human.

But no-one can speak this universal language.

We are assuredly part of something much bigger than ourselves, and it is because we are given the ability to be unique that we understand so little.

And I am so unspeakably thankful for that. And for every individual I meet to share a moment, or a lifetime with.

Where and back again?

So, I realize it's been a while since I last posted a moments
reflection, lifetime experience, or what have you. Anyways, here is a
breakdown where in the world my family currently resides. My older
brother has been attending the Kingly Technical University of
Stockholm as of a year and a half ago. I have not seen him (other
than through skype sometimes) since he backed out of our driveway
summer 2009. More recently, however, are my parents and little
brother who moved down to St. Lucia, a paradise of an island in the
Caribbean. Yes, that vacation spot everyone talks about. They moved
just about a month ago for my dad's job, and I am absolutely stunned
by where they've been located. The good news is that that's where I'm
going "home" to for Christmas! Roughly following this school year
they may be relocating yet again to Sweden, permanently. In sum, I
will be the last member of the family living in the U.S. next year.

But hold on to your hat! More happy travels... my plans are almost as well
as set for studying abroad in Granada, Spain this spring! My dad faxed
me the postcard I had received in the mail from Granada - it is taped
up in my dorm room, giving me so much more well-needed motivation for
the workload I have taken upon myself at school this semester. So if
everything works out, for which I am crossing my toes and fingers and
picking up every heads penny I see, I will be traveling first to St.
Lucia, then to Spain, then to Sweden, and back again thereafter.

This is exactly what I need, to figure myself out a little more. I just spoke the other day with a friend at school who had spent 12 months in Argentina, and him and I are on the same page when it comes to understanding the importance of just getting out and living life. Opportunities come up along the way. Life is spontaneous!

I had a good friend from Sweden visit for just over two weeks now. She left a couple days ago, and so I’ve been quite occupied. But in a good way! This is the first time she has visited the US, and I know she had been wanting to visit here and/or England since before we met at confirmation camp in Sweden summer of 2004. Among the variety of activities we fit into the schedule we stayed down in Washington DC for four days at my friend’s apartment just outside Georgetown.



It was fantastic! With just a map and a lot of water in the 100 degree weather we traversed the city and local areas. The Lincoln Memorial was our grand finale at eleven at night. It was so beautiful, as some of you may know who have been, and it is and remains my favorite site to see. While being in DC my friend developed a much stronger interest and understanding of America’s roots than she had before. A lot of the time I had been filling in appropriately with some knowledge I had of this country, and I was consequently surprised at how much I appreciated its history; I found myself talking quite passionately about the founding fathers for example, cheesy as it sounds. We saw the original Star Spangled Banner and I admit I got kind of emotional over it. (It surprised me too.) The city gets to you, and you get swept up into the pulsating vibrations of its past. That’s just how it is.



A few days after returning to our humble home we took off for Niagara Falls for the day. So, I know that it’s big; I know what it looks like before I get there. But it still throws me of guard every time! Even better, this time we rode Maid of the Mist. While all of us were crowded up on the top deck with our iconic blue raincoats on, I decidedly left my hood off. Couldn't complain about that method of cooling off.



Finally, the day we were to take her to the airport to go home we decided to go to the beach early in the morning. We arrived at Mentor Headlands from nine until eleven, walked to the lighthouse, and it was so nice because there was almost no-one there. We were talking about the sun (probably because it was crazy hot that day too) and she drew up an interesting picture in my mind of all the sand turning to glass… imagine that! Anyways, little did we know that after dropping her off at the gate later that day we would have to return an hour later only to pick her up again so that she could take the flight two days later that would, hopefully, actually arrive on time to get her to her connecting flight. The way I see airports: I love them, they’re exciting places with a rich variety of people and languages, but sometimes they can be the biggest pain in the butt, to be honest. But what would we do without them?



For whatever reader who may be browsing through here, I hope this finds with some good stories and fun times from this summer!

Where there's opposition, there's a possibility

It’s unbelievably frustrating when people tell you you can’t do something that you love doing. Or, as in my situation, they respond to your major in college by saying, “Yeah, well then you know you want to find something that will actually give you a job.” Or, someone close to you says, “Well you won’t be able to afford one of those until you switch to biomedical engineering.” Well, I have news for you. If your comments aren’t motivation enough for me to continue with my current major then I simply have to say I can not bring myself to do these other fields. Not that they aren’t good fields, or that they’re not interesting. There’s nothing wrong with them, but these fields and I go together like a musician and a chemistry lab. It’s just not me, and not an area I would thrive in. My aspirations start somewhere else. And if I don’t know what I’m going to be, I at least know who I am and where I shouldn’t be.

Now that I’ve vented sufficiently I’m going to kick back with my Stieg Larsson book “Män som hatar kvinnor” (in English it is titled ”Girl with the dragon tattoo”) and get swept away for a while. The rest of the week is to be filled with hours shelving away books at my second home known as the library. Evenings: finalize my top two destinations/programs for a spring semester in Spain. Next week: guests from Sweden begin to arrive!

I was driving today with my bichon in the passenger seat to drop off Sherlock Holmes which I had rented from a redbox. On the way, I saw a man, in somewhat dirty gray jeans and loose gray jacket over a t-shirt. He wore a cap over long grey hair and beard and he looked to be about 60 or older. He was holding a sign that said “Hungry diabetic. Anything helps.” He was standing in the corner of an intersection when I passed him. Returning home I was looking at him again as I was waiting at a red light. A couple drivers turning the corner opened their windows and handed him some money, and a thought hit me that I could drive down the street and get him a meal from somewhere. I was still thinking about it when I turned the corner and started driving down the street. But since I had not yet fully made up my mind and I hadn’t switched over to the right lane, I drove on past the places I could have gotten something. And I thought to myself, am I really that terrible that out of a minor inconvenience I wouldn’t stop to perhaps do an act of kindness that could potentially have meant a lot to that man? Of course I didn’t know the circumstances exactly, but what does it matter. What do I really know about it? Sometimes I never question that I am, for the most part, a very kind person. But it is not always fulfilling the acts placed upon you that makes you that person. Sometimes you need to create that act from a simple sense of initiative and empathy. For me, something like this is not something I easily forget.