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!