4-21-12

Toledo

Let's see, it's Saturday night, I am sitting in my dorm room right now, and somehow when I weighed all of the options of what I could do tonight, this came out on the top of the list. This is a very unlikely result, but I figure it is better to get it done and out of the way while I still have the energy to do it.

First off, I have been informed by Brian that my grandpa keeps a binder at his house of all of the blog posts I write. I may not understand his reasoning, but I would like to make a shout to my grandpa and to that binder so that in 20 years or so when I find that binder in the garage or under the coffee table, I will have made a shout out to myself.

In other news, last night, I checked my email, and the Teaching Learning Center of Walla Walla U contacted me and said that I had been recommended by one of my teachers to tutor next year in the language department. I am really excited about this, because if everything works out, it will kill two birds with one stone for me. One bird is that I need to continue working with Spanish so that I don't forget it, and the other bird is that I will need a job to help my depleted bank account after a year year of the cursed euro. Also, I will not be working at summer camp this summer, and in the past that has usually been my time to rebuild my bank account for the year.

Even though I don't get to work at summer camp this year because I will be taking Physics at La Sierra instead, Pastor Paul sent me a message earlier this week asking if I could help out with a few things at the beginning of staff training, and possibly a few days here and there if I have time. There are no guarantees that I will have any free time once classes start, and in fact, there most likely won't be, but I am very excited to do what I can to help out the camp this summer and still get to be a small part of it.

This last week has been very stressful for me. I have had to make up certain assignments from when I left on vacation a day early to go to London, and on top of that, I had a worship talk hanging over my head all week long. The guys I work with in somewhat of a committee for spiritual life here on campus asked me at the end of the last vespers we did if I would like to give a talk for this one. I eagerly agreed, because it has kind of been a rite of passage that in the past, some of the American students have given worship talks near the end of the year, and more than that, just to say that I did it sounded like enough reason to do it. However, I thought I was giving that talk in a few weeks. Turns out, we had just arrived back from our trip to Madrid, I went of Facebook for the first time in a few days, and there was a message saying that it was for this last Friday. Well, I started writing away. It didn't take quite as long as I thought it would to prepare, but then the real work began; translating everything. I could have written everything in Spanish, but I believe it was actually faster the way I did it. I am at the point where I can think in Spanish, but my thoughts somehow go down on paper about three times as slow as English. With the help of ideas from my dad, and grammatical help from Chelo, one of my teachers here, I was practicing by Thursday night. In the end, I didn't do spectacularly well, but the spirit moved, and that is all that matters. It has always been kind of funny to me how the worst music, and the worst sermon can still be sweet music and can still touch many if the spirit is moving, while on the other hand, there could be a song service where the music is flawless, and the speaker doesn't make one single mistake, but if the spirit doesn't move, it doesn't really mean anything.

On Thursday, I walked out of one of my classes, and there in the hall was Andrew Haglund, a member of the our church, randomly standing in the hall! I walked up, and very kindly asked him what in the world he was doing here. There was another man standing right next to him, and they both had identical Loma Linda polos on. I kind of put it together before he actually told me that they were here to talk to the students about Loma Linda University. As it turned out, I actually missed the meeting because I was up in my room working on my worship talk for the next night. We had a nice conversation that made me about five minutes late for class, and I didn't mind a bit. As it turns out, the other man that was there with him that I hadn't previously known was Rick Williams, and he told me that he and my grandpa had worked at La Sierra together many years ago as assistant presidents of something or other... I forgot exactly. Wow, talk about a small Adventist world. I rejoined the two of them, along with Eric at lunch time and we had a great conversation. After lunch, we all went out to the sign of the school and all took pictures together. Andrew said that he would email them to Pastor Isaac, and Pastor Isaac would probably put them up on the screen on Sabbath before church started. I have no idea what became of that, so if anyone would like to let me know, I am actually really curious to know if they ever actually did make it up on the screen on Sabbath morning.

From here on out, we have five weeks left, and counting. It is so strange talking about our remaining time here in WEEKS, instead of months. I am starting to miss this place already, especially now as the weather is warming up and the orange blossoms leave a gorgeous perfume in the air. I have one weekend trip to the Canaries left, and possibly a weekend trip to Dublin, Ireland. My time of traveling has almost come to a close! It has been a spectacular experience, and I have seen places this year that I never would have dreamed of seeing even at the beginning of the year such as Olympia, Athens, Jerusalem, Izmir, and Carentan. I think when it is time for me to come home, I think I will be  ready to take a break from any major traveling for a little while, at least for a summer until we go to Lebanon at the end of the summer. I am ready to say goodbye to bread and cheese, Ryan Air, small hostel rooms with strangers' hair on the shower floor, packing everything for a trip in a backpack, including the camera, zune, and any other carry-on items, and above all else, I am getting ready to see my own lands and my own people once more. However, I realize that as soon as I arrive home, I will wish I was right back here, so I am trying to enjoy it as much as I can.

Well, hasta luego, que tengais una buena semana!