Jan 30th – Day to learn Spanish versions of Kid Games

After my only class for the day, I went to my normal spot to go on my laptop to catch up on email, messaging and talking with my parents on webcam before they went to work. After, I had the nice surprise of talking to my boyfriend for a bit which it was the first time I had seen him since I’ve been here. Funny how seeing someone and talking to them at the same time becomes so valuable. Today some of my friends are talking about what they want to give up for Lent, and to be honest I’m not sure what I want to give up this year. I mean, I’m in a new place where everything is completely foreign to me, my resources are cut off and nothing is normal. So how do I decide what to give up when I’m not in my normal life? One of my friends had mentioned then about the thing she likes least about being here is that she feels like she spends most of her time waiting. Waiting to catch the bus to go home, waiting for the metro, waiting for the taxi, train, whatever. Always waiting, which yes this is true. But then I said that maybe it’ll help us to learn more patience or to learn to go at a slower pace. Just then it came to me. Lent wouldn’t be where I gave up a material substance but instead I would give up a philosophical substance. In the culture of living in the United States, regardless of age or occupation, we are almost obsessed with being in a rush. Being in a hurry or being stressed out and planning things back to back so that we do not create downtime for ourselves ever. Hence why we need and love vacations so much. But even on a vacation, we over plan or overstress and return feeling no sense of relaxing that tension we carry. Which I’m sure Mom, Dad and Evan would laugh reading this because I am one of the prime examples of this. Of course I’m not alone but I think that I could benefit from learning to not do this. Obviously. But in a new culture where people come and go as they please, there are no restrictions, naps are taken everyday and hours for places are purely hypothetical…maybe this would be the best place for me to understand this concept. Not only to understand it, but to actually put it into work in my own life. While I am here, the things that would preoccupy my time and energy are not feasible…so it maybe the best time for me to learn this so that when I come back I can try to put it into my actual life (or at least where it is possible). I have always packed my life and the events in it in a way where they completely overlap and sometimes I do worry that because of it, I will burn myself out. But since I don’t know when that point may come, I’m afraid it may come in between doing what I feel is what I want to do most with my life. My immediate family is definitely witness to watching me do this and sometimes the effects of it being too much for me to handle at times. I mean, technically after I return home, my plan is to finish the rest of my classes for my two majors and minor as well as take my MCAT sometime in between there, make a good score (for acceptance into a good med school), and then start applying to schools immediately into my spring semester or even late fall semester. Then graduate, and immediately start into med school after moving to wherever I get accepted to. Then it’s med school, residency, and specialization for however long (depending on the program) and then I would be done with school and officially practice. Which yes it will be very hard, back-breaking and tear-jerkingly hard at times, but it will be worth it in the end. But looking at it, I don’t give myself much time for much of anything at all. Maybe me wanting to come here for the semester was an attempt to stop myself from doing this (burning myself out I mean). Here I could learn what I need and it may help me to be better at this. So here in Spain for Lent, I am giving up packing my life so tight, feeling like I am missing something so I still keep packing, being impatient with waiting, rushing, being in a hurry and being stressed (in this sense because life stress will come when ever it feels necessary). I will learn to have patience, true patience and learn to wait. Besides waiting isn’t the worst thing in the world, and I could learn to be okay with waiting. Later when I got to my host home, after having lunch, siesta and then dinner Pepe and Adrian were playing a game. Which I had a hard time understanding what it was at first until they explained it to me so I could play; it’s called ‘Veo, veo’ (translation, I see, I see) which is like our game ‘I spy…with my little eye, something that is..’. how weird! It was so hard for me to play since I don’t really know my objects especially in a kitchen but they made some of them easy enough for me to guess. But playing the game helped me learn new words in the kitchen! Then Adrian wanted to say good night and give me a good night kiss, but got nervous and accidently said good morning! Aww…then he got a little embarrassed since we laughed.