A new year approaching...travel crunch time!

Tomorrow is New Years Eve and the start 2011 is just around the corner. This is the time of year where I sit down and think of everything I want to accomplish. My new years resolution looks a little different this year, but different in an exciting, new way! Mind you there are many goals that I have set for this year, but the one relevant for this blog is to meet my traveling goals before I leave Europe in June. So here they are!

Morocco
Ireland (Dublin, Cork, Galway)
Northern Spain (San Sebastian, Santender)
Areas in Spain- Cadiz, Rota, Alicante
Other areas of Andalucia (Mijas, Nerja, Torremolinos, Ronda)
Portugal (Lisbon, Largos)
Prague
Germany (Munich, Frankfurt)
Belgium (Brussels, Bruges)

20+ destinations, 5 and a quarter months, let the whirlwind BEGIN!

Navidad, Navidad, dul-ceee Navidad!

The Christmas season is alive and thriving in gorgeous Malaga. The streets are filled with people, lights are all around, and portraits of the nativity scene and los tres reyes magicos are everywhere you look. There are stands set up all throughout the city with special Christmas sweets. A Christmas market is open by the beach with tons of unique and cheap gifts. It's wonderful to experience the Christmas season in another country but it also makes me extremely thankful for my own family, friends, and traditions at home.

Words cannot express how excited I am to go home for a few weeks. The thing I am most excited for is to be able to share Christmas with my family. Christmas is my favorite time of year but it just doesn't seem real without them. I prayed so much that somehow God would provide a way for me to get back to them for Christmas...and He provided (not surprised :)). So tonight I embark on this very long journey back home. I will take the 11pm overnight bus to Madrid, arrive at 5:20am tomorrow, and fly out at 10:45am.

Here are a few pictures of life in Malaga during Christmas. I lost my camera about a month ago so these are googled pictures...but they are accurate :). Have a blessed Christmas everyone! Feliz Navidad!!

Love is all around

What a beautiful season we are in! I love everything about the Christmas season- the presents, the food, the joy, the giving, and most importantly, the love. It's hard to be present in this season and not feel the love all around.

Coming to Spain was the best decision for me at this point in my life for many many reasons but one in particular. I'll avoid all of the details but I'll allow myself to be a little vulnerable in this post. Before coming to Spain my heart was broken (shattered, really). Before this happened, my intentions for coming here were to travel, to learn, to experience, and to enjoy this gift that God has given me. Those intentions still remain, but then I found myself seeing Spain as a way of running away. My heartbreak couldn't have happened at a better time (not that there is really ever a good time for heartbreak). So here I am three months later, still running and still healing.

This season is beautiful because we celebrate when love was born. Love that reminds us that we are never alone and that we are unconditionally desired. Love that was born into this world with the purpose of sacrificing himself and dieing for us. My sweet friend, Julie, sent me a special Christmas devotional. I've been reading it each day but the one for today really touched my heart.

Dear God, The moments I spend in prayer with You inspire me to be a living expression of Your love in the world. The deep desire of my heart is to express Your love in all my thoughts and interactions. I pray that Your love within me will be an invitation for others to grow in the awareness of Your love within themselves. Wherever I look, I see Your love being expressed through welcoming wreaths hung on doors, colorful packages carefully wrapped for friends and loved ones, Christmas carols sung by smiling choirs, and friends and family gathering to celebrate this season of love. Thank You for the assurance that I am never alone, that Your love is always available, always within me, always supportive, always comforting, always reassuring. Thank You, God, for Your love.

I am a firm believer that sometimes God brings you to different places to teach you something you may not have learned where you were. God knew what He was doing bringing me here long before I knew. I am thankful to be learning and healing in a new and beautiful environment. I am also grateful for the reminder that I am never alone and I am so loved. The night before I left for Spain I was talking on the phone with one of my best friends, Mary Hannah. She is one of the wisest people I have ever met in my life. She very boldly told me, "Kerianne, this is going to be the year that God shows you just how beautiful you are." I'm holding on to those words and, with an open heart, seeking His wisdom.

Take a moment this Christmas season to reflect on the things in life that really matter. I promise to do the same. Always know that no matter what, you are truly never alone and you are so loved. Praying and loving each of you.

A Different Kind of Thanksgiving

My friends and I decided to celebrate Thanksgiving a different way this year. The last time I was away for Thanksgiving was two years ago when I was studying abroad in Alicante. CIEE and the wonderful professors put on a gorgeous Thanksgiving dinner for all of the American’s in the program to celebrate together. It was a really great gesture, but it made me miss home terribly. This time around, I decided that the best way for me to cope with not being home would be to distract myself by traveling somewhere new….Scotland! The “trip” part of it was absolutely amazing but getting stranded in Scotland for an extra week due to snow was absolutely miserable. More on that later. I won’t reminisce too much on that because I want to remember the amazing times I had in Scotland.

Thanksgiving Day I did my last two Thanksgiving lessons, skyped with my family, and then packed for the exciting weekend ahead! Kelly, Jessica, and I left that night, so excited we could hardly contain ourselves. We arrived at Royal Mile Backpackers Hostel, which I would highly recommend to anyone. It was your typical, fun, colorful, loud youth hostel; people running in and out with backpacks; bright colored bunk beds and painted walls; and even a cozy fireplace in the lounge. We met two really cool Canadian girls who were staying in our room and hung out with them our last night. My favorite part about hostels is meeting people from around the world!

The weekend was filled with pub crawls, palaces, Christmas markets (my favorite was the German...mmm), fish and chips, sausages (how i LOVE the sausages), dancing, stag parties, new friends, whiskey tours (we were in barrels, by the way :)), gorgeous landscapes, and of course, snow. Scotland is unlike any place I have ever seen. I know that I say that about every place I go (Rome, Ireland, Capri, etc) but it's really true. There is so much history in Edinburgh it's incredible. One minute you are in a somewhat modern part of town and the next minute there is a gorgeous, gothic, probably about 1080280218 years old, building.

It didn't start snowing until our last night in Edinburgh and we were actually quite excited. As much as I love Virginia, we don't see a ton of snow in the winter time, especially not at Christmas. It was wonderful to walk around the German Christmas market with hot cocco and snow flurries. It was even fun on our pub crawl when it started to blizzard and we had snow ball flights on the way to each new pub. However, we had no idea that this beautiful snow would delay us from getting home until a week later. Short on money and with limited means of transportation, we ended up staying most of the time in airport constantly thinking that the next day we would be able to leave. It definitely was an adventure but I'm ok with never being stranded again :). Lets just say I was very THANKFUL to finally return to beautiful Costa del Sol.

I'll leave you with a few good memories :). Missing each of you!

El Dia de Accion de Gracias

Thanksgiving is in the air and what a wonderful week it has been. I have been a little sad about the fact that I won't be home for Thanksgiving this year- no turkey, no honey ham, no mashed potatoes, no apple pie, none of grandma's famous cranberry fluff, etc. However, I have been "celebrating" Thanksgiving all week long by teaching my students about this awesome holiday. Part of my job is not only to teach the English language but also to teach the American culture. I had an amazing time doing crafts with the kids, teaching the history, and sharing a little piece of home with them. The below pictures are some of the crafts that I did with the first and second graders. The first graders colored pictures of turkeys and the second graders painted "turkey hands" (we all remember doing that in school). For the older kids, I put together a power point explaining the history of Thanksgiving and pictures of different things we eat and different things we do (including watching American football...they loved this). It made me happy that the kids were so interested and enthusiast.

Tomorrow we are off to Scotland for the weekend!! :) I'll be sure to post pictures. Miss you all and I'm thankful for you!

Love, KA

Como te va?

I must say that I have enjoyed recording my adventures into a blog for you all. I know that you want to know all of the things that I am doing, seeing, and experiencing and as promised I have done my best to keep up with recording it all. I was on a hike today with members of my church (which was absolutely amazing, by the way) and I realized that I haven't really blogged a lot about HOW I am doing.

When you live abroad for an extended period of time you hit roller-coaster-like emotions. Steven Rhinesmith best describes these emotions by explaining the ten different steps of culture shock: 1. initial anxiety, 2. initial elation, 3. initial culture shock, 4. superficial adjustment, 5. depression-frustration, 6. acceptance of host culture, 7. return anxiety, 8. return elation, 9. re-entry shock, 10. reintegration. Without being super nerdy and going in depth of all of these steps, I can safely say that I have definitely experienced a number of them. People think that living in another country, especially one as gorgeous as Spain, is blissful and happy all of the time. The reality is you have up and down moments just like you do in any place you call home. Some days I am really up for the adventures that Spain sets before me, and some days I simply want to find macaroni and cheese in the grocery store.

I look back at moments of weakness and really cherish them. Those moments have brought me to where I am right now and that is endlessly happy and completely grateful to be here. I love my Spanish life. I love my job. I love my students. I love my friends. I love my church. I love Malaga. I love being able to travel. And I love that I'm able to go home and see my family for Christmas. I am in a great place. So that's how I'm doing. Thank you for supporting me and my dream. You are always in my thoughts.

Con amor,
KA

La alabanza te daré!

What an amazing morning it was! Before coming to Spain, I researched protestant churches in the Málaga area. A friend of mine attends a really great church in Torremolinos, but that's too far for us to commute to church every morning. So I researched and researched and found a church that I knew I would love. It's called Centro de la Vida Cristiana. The church was founded in Mexico and grew to many people. Now they have plants in Mexico, Chile, and Spain (Alicante, Granada, Málaga).

The adventure getting to church was a little interesting. I had been in contact with the pastor to find out which bus we needed to take\how to get there after we get off the bus, etc. He very sweetly explained directions to us and attached a map. It looked simple enough. We walked down to the Alemeda (main road down by the beach) and hopped on bus number 6. When I saw the bus stop we needed flash up on the screen, I pressed the "off" button to get off at the next stop. Well. He dropped us off on the side of the street, with no signs and no people walking about. It looked a bit deserted. We walked uphill from there and searched on just about every street looking for this church. Feeling defeated, we walked back down to the "bus stop" and sat down. After a few minutes of sulking, Jessica points out the many people that are outside of this building across the street. We eagerly walk over and sure enough, there it was. We had gone the wrong direction from the bus stop. Figures.

We approached the church and many people were standing outside talking and greeting one another. We walked in and almost instantly were surrounded by people introducing themselves and asking about us. Either we stuck out very badly or they were expecting our visit (maybe a little of both). We met many people around our age, the associate pastor, a woman who coinsidently lives in Alhaurin (the town where we teach), and many other people from the church. It was nice to feel so welcomed! We sat with a girl named Maria who translated things for us if we looked confused during the sermon. The praise and worship was wonderful, the sermon was wonderful, and the people were wonderful. You can see their passion for God all over their faces. It's so nice to have found a church family here because I have been missing it so much! Some of the girls got our contact information and I know we will be hearing from them soon.

I am so grateful that God provided Jessica and I with a church. I know that this year is going to be a big learning year for me. I'm unbelievably thankful and excited to see what else God has in store. Like the pastor said today, "we need to jump off the boat, take Jesus' hand, and know that He's guiding us in the right direction." All we need is faith.

Until next time. Bendiciones!
KA

The City of Crepes

This past weekend was my lovely roommate and dear friends birthday. So what better way to celebrate Jessica's 23rd birthday than go to Paris! Though I went to Paris during my semester abroad, this time provided new adventures with great friends. I was able to see things that I wasn't able to see last time and revisit some of the beautiful things that make Paris so special.

Megan and Kelly bused in from their towns (Kelly in La Roda and Megan in Granada) on Thursday night. When they arrived Jessica and I took them for tapas in La Plaza de la Merced (a plaza very close to our apartment). On Friday at 1:50pm we took off for Paris and arrived in the early evening. We took a bus into the city and the metro to our hotel. Finding our hotel was a little challenging. We finally found it after what seemed like forever. We were extremely excited to finally throw our stuff on our beds and run to get food. There was a little cafe near our hotel where we stopped and ate dinner. After dinner we decided we would take advantage of the non-rainy weather and go see the Eifel Tower at night. The Eifel Tower was even more magnificent than I remember, especially all lite up. We called it a somewhat early night and woke up early to begin our day in beautiful Paris.

Saturday was sadly raining most of the day but that didn't stop us from venturing into the city with umbrellas, raincoats, boots, and lots of layers. We saw the Eifel Tower (again), the Louvre, and the Luzembourg gardens, taking pictures of about everything we saw. We wandered into the touristy shops, got coffee, ate crepes (claro), and simply enjoyed the city. It amazes me how clean Paris is...mind you, we were in pretty touristy areas, but the city as a whole is just kept up so well. It's also extremely quiet for being such a big and popular city but then again we are use to Spain where people are loud all the time.

Saturday night was Jessica's birthday celebration! We got dressed up and hit the town! First thing on our list was to see Moulin Rouge. After that we found a perfect place to eat dinner that SCREAMED Jessica. The restaurant had a jazzy feel and even had a pianist. All of the waiters were wearing typical french hats that were slightly tilted on their heads. We ordered a few drinks and devoured our dinner. When Jessica went to the bathroom we told the waitress that it was her birthday. When Jessica came out, the pianist sang happy birthday to her and the waitress brought yummy dessert. It was so fun! After dinner we headed back towards our hotel and hit up a few bars. At the end of the night we ended up at a cute little bar that played fun dancing music. We met about five SO fun guys that look turns dancing with us. They were from France, Portugal, and Finland. The best part of the night was meeting and hanging out with them. We danced until 6am and then said our goodbyes. Meeting new people is my favorite part of traveling :).

Sunday seemed like the world's longest day. We slept in until about 11:30 (not that long considering we didn't get back to the hotel until 6am) and checked out of the hotel at 12. We had a lot of waiting around to do since our flight didn't leave until 8pm and our bus to the airport didn't leave until 5pm. Sunday was significantly colder than the rest of the weekend and it was still raining. To eat cheaply and avoid the weather, we went to McDonalds :). We are so American. We went to visit Notre Dam and just hung out the rest of the afternoon. We finally arrived back in Malaga at about midnight.

All in all it was a wonderful weekend, full of great and funny stories. It was very refreshing to spend time in a different culture as well. Next trip we have planned is Edinburgh, Scotland for Thanksgiving weekend. I must say I am looking forward to this more than anythingggg!!! Until next time!

Besitos!

A Day In The Life of C.E.I.P Issac Peral

I cannot believe it's almost November! Time is really flying! I must admit that the past week I have been a little homesick, but do you know what the cure is for my homesickness? My job. My kids- seeing their faces, teaching them, being in Alhaurín de la Torre, all of those things make it so worth it. I am so very blessed to have this job and to be in this place. I thought it would be appropriate to give you a sneak peak at what I do in my school.

Alhaurín de la Torre is a CUTE little city just 30 minutes outside of Málaga capital. The city has the backdrop of gorgeous mountains. I hop off the bus at the city center, walk down several curvy streets, and sit down at my favorite cafe for desayuno where I eat un pitufo de bacon y queso (it's actually ham and cheese) and drink the famous cafe con leche. I go to this cafe so often that they don't even ask what I want anymore, haha. After desayuno I walk off a whopping five minutes to my school.

My schedule varies from each day. I work Monday-Thursday and work with many different classes. I work with three year olds (yeah...that's interesting), first, second, and sixth grade. The school is relatively new in their bilingual immersion program. There is not much I can do with three year olds since they barely know Spanish. My bilingual coordinator, the other axuliar, and myself sing songs in English and do art projects. I float around with the first and second grade to their content classes such as P.E, art, and science. In these classes I prepare activities and translate content from Spanish to English. My sixth grade classes are primarily English classes, and are my favorite :). As much as I adore the sweet younger kids, I am able to have more of a conversation with the older kids because there English is somewhat more developed. I should also mention that I have strict orders to ONLY speak to the students in English.

I'm not going to lie, it has been somewhat challenging learning to teach these Spanish students. Some classes are harder than others, but it has definitely been an adventure. I have discovered two main challenges in my teaching endeavors: 1) the adjustment from British English to American English 2) cultural differences within the classroom. You wouldn't think that British English would be a problem, but it has been somewhat difficult. First off, they use words that even I do not know. For example, "please stand in the cue" (line) or "pass the rubber" (eraser) or even "put a tic" (put a check mark). It's a learning process for us all! My American accent also poses a problem for these little ones; they cannot understand a word I say. I know that with any language learner you must speak exceptionally slow and give lots of visual cues but this is extra, extra, extra slow since they are fighting to understand my accent. I could say a few words with a slight British accent if I really wanted to, but part of my job is to expose them to North American culture and my accent is part of that. The second challenge is the cultural differences I am faced with in the classroom. In Spain, it's not impolite to talk over people where as in the US we would consider that very rude. In Spain, everyone merely talks and there is no waiting turns. It's not rude, it's just a difference. I think that this has a great affect on the classroom. If the students are Spanish, and the Spanish talk over people in everyday conversations, why would we expect them to not do that in the classroom? My point of this is saying that they are ALWAYS talking. I mean, always. Sometimes it makes it difficult to get words in :).

Despite these challenges, my job is literally the highlight of my week. I look forward to seeing the students and their smiling, curious faces. They are so precious and so affectionate. A good friend told me the other day that I have been given a gift and it's important to appreciate this gift that I have been given. Wise woman, that Brittany Bristol :). I am cherishing every moment spent with these kids.

Here are some pictures of the little ones- I'll try to get some of the older ones soon!

Abrazos, Kerianne