The Hills Roll On

Flexibility is the key word for all interns.  It’s been proven true many times over during this month.  Every day holds something new.  Sometimes it’s a delight, sometimes it can be frustrating; but all in all if we hold our ‘plans’ loosely rather than clinging to our "rights" we find we are better able to live with the somewhat unpredictable rhythm of our life here.

Yesterday was a delight.  Milta & Theresa (visiting BIM missionaries in Europe) made their first stop in Spain with the Towner family and us.   Despite the swollen rainclouds blustering in from the Atlantic, we still braved a little exploration along the coast.  Jim and Martha seem to know all kinds of little hide-aways we’d never
even know to look for!

Walking downhill in my trusty Birkenstocks I find myself whispering prayers for all our safety…we are walking down a hall of history.  The Celts originally inhabited this land (a millenia before Christ was born).  We walked down the old Roman road for 200 feet until the landscape opened up to the ocean.  Five/six foot waves lumbered in, curling up and foaming white as they crashed onto the shore.  I realized then I had never smelled the ocean before until that moment.

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Well we finally got high speed internet set up (yeah, I know, it’s late October, but life runs at a different pace here).  Our first task to jump on was composing a nice update for y’all.  You prolly got it in an email, just for posterity’s sake, here it is: October Newsletter.

Oh, Spain is lovely, the people are gracious and welcoming…I won’t disgrace myself by trying to find something to pity myself about. I will be honest though, the honeymoon is over. It’s ironically fitting that just as the proverbial honeymoon is ending, so the season is changing from blue sky days and warm breezes, to the wet gray cold.

We are really feeling it( culture stress more than culture shock) in the area of language. It is SOOO frustrating to know EXACTLY what you wanna say in English but being less than kindergarden level in Spanish. It is so easy to talk to our language instructor, but then you go outside and you meet people who have thick local accents, talk ridiculously fast,or on some rare occasions are so drunk they sound as though they have marbles in their mouth. Most days your motivation for language studies goes completely out the window and you are left pacing the apartment trying to find anything to do other than studying Spanish.

So what have we learned in these surreal 4 weeks of immersion in an entirely new culture? Here are some gems from the Hills…

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