This photo was taken at Korea’s iconic Seoul Tower, also called Namsan Tower. I waited specifically till after my program ended when my mother and uncle would visit me to go to Seoul Tower.  I wanted to share this experience with my family because of what this tower represents and show them the beautiful view from the top, also, it is a popular filming location for Korean dramas and movies.  From old times, there was a story that if lovers make a wish at a shrine on Namsan, it comes true.  Since that, this place became a symbol of the place of promising an everlasting love for couples with hanging a lock together and throwing the keys off the side of the cliff.Seoul Tower is a common place to find young couples in love.  I thought this place displayed Korea’s romantic culture at its best.  Coming to Seoul, I became very concious about how many couples there are and how much P.D.A. (public display of affection) they show to each other.  This wall of locks is just one of many other walls that are completely covered with locks.  My mom and uncle along with myself were amazed at how old some  were as well as how many different languages we found written on them.  Our day ended by riding the cable car down the mountain and eating dinner at a nearby shopping area.  I will never forget this day when my mom, uncle and I were on the top of Seoul and surrounded by peoples’ promises of endless love.

Before coming to Spain, I had started to have an interest in food.  My father had always been very talented at cooking and despite the fact that he was born in Japan, had always had a special love for Italian food.  I went to Spain without any idea of what Spanish food would be like, but aware that I would probably like it.  I didn’t just end up liking food in Spain, I ended up planning much of my experience around it.  I was particularly enamored with small bar foods served in the north of Spain known as pintxos, and was anxious to get a chance to try the hundreds of variety as well as prepare my own.  Food became an extremely important part of my life, and I began to taking cooking very seriously, with a flare for Spanish and Basque cuisine.  This is probably the biggest effect that my study abroad experience had on me.

When this photo was taken, I had probably already had eight different pintxos that day, and with some friends, had very formally scored them out of 10 (5 points for taste, 3 for innovation, 2 for presentation).  We had had some very good ones and some that were a little less than enthralling, but I knew that this bar/restaurant had a good reputation and they had interesting pintxos.  I was awed both by the food itself and the culture around it – the only time I saw more people out on the street in Pamplona was during San Fermin, which is often reputed to be one of the greatest street parties on earth.

I am still awed by the food culture of Navarra and the Basque country, and have done my best to bring some of it back with me – I still make an effort to cook a lot, and I do my best to cook both in the philosophy and in the style of Basque Spanish cooking, but I am limited – both because the food culture in the united states is not the same, and in that many ingredients that are used to in Basque and Spanish cuisines (particularly pintxos) are easily available locally, but rather difficult to find internationally.

I took this picture because I felt that this bar did the best job of presenting their pintxos and explaining them – not all bars offered anywhere near this level of explanation or presentation.  While these were not the best pintxos I ended up having, the one on the left came very close, scoring an aggregate 9/10 from my friends and I.

This is an image from the inside of the restaurant/bar San Nicolas: Cocina Vasca.  I took it during one of Navarra’s most beloved and eagerly awaited culinary events, La Semana de Pintxos (The week of pintxos).  Pintxos are small, carefully crafted but inexpensive foods sold in bars prepared primarily in the north of Spain in Navarra and Basque country.  The Semana de Pintxos is a week long competition amongst literally hundreds of bars throughout Navarra for the the best, most innovative pintxos.  Fortunately, normal people are allowed to participate as well, going from bar to bar and asking for their entries into the contest.  Here are San Nicolas: Cocina Vasca’s entries to the contest: a mini-hamburger made from baby squid with a shrimp carpaccio and ali-oli as well as sliced tomatoes with avocado and smoked salmon.

Ok, so I left off explaining some of the cultural differences that I have seen so far in Prague along with a brief overview of what I had been doing. I am now settled into my flat and it has been a blast! My flat mates are hilarious and we have a lot of fun together. It has been quite the experience living with four other girls whom I had only known for three days… but it has been totally worth it I have even cooked my own dinners (and have fallen even more in love with salads – tomatoes, avocados, bell peppers, cranberries, cheese …. yummm)!!

During our week of orientation, I was able to visit the Prague castle, which was beautiful! I got to see the St. Vitus Cathedral and the beautiful stained glass windows.

Also as part of our orientation, we toured the Jewish Quarters in the Old Town where we saw four different synagogues and the Old Jewish Cemetery. The cemetery was the only place the Jews were allowed to be buried between 1400- 1700. Tombs were piled on top of each other and people will leave pebbles (flowers of the desert) atop some of the tombstones, which parallels back to when rocks where piled on top of the sand graves.

{Photo taken by Arianna}

We also got to tour Prague from the Vltava River. It was wonderful! It was so nice to get away from the city and be on the water.

I have started school. I am still going to my intensive Czech language class. During my last class we had to go to the grocery store and find different items and figure out how much they were. It has actually been a really fun class…despite how terrible I am at the language. My lips just don’t want to make the sounds that are necessary. People here have been pretty gracious. I am getting good at asking for stamps I also started one of my art history classes and my walking tour/history of Prague class. That one was a blast! We are basically going on tours all of the city for three hours once a week. This week we learned about the famous Charles Bridge and St. John of Nepomuk.

St. John was thrown off of the Charles Bridge apparently because he wouldn’t reveal the Queen’s confessions to the King. I stood at the spot where he was thrown over.

If you look above his head, you will see five stars. Legend has it that when St. John died in the river, five new stars appeared in the sky. Interesting to say the least. If you stand in site of the statue, there are two plaques below it, each with its own scene. One is of St. John being thrown off the bridge and one is of the Queen confessing to St. John. People come to touch the image of St. John and kiss their fingers for good luck. The funny thing is they generally touch the wrong thing. On the plaque of him being thrown overboard, most people touch the woman on the shore rather then St. John’s tiny image being thrown off the bridge and on the other plaque, many people touch the dog in the forefront — ironically the dog is an evil character, seeing as it was one of the King’s hunting dogs that killed the Queen.

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Seeing all these “beautiful” things, I have been thinking more about beauty — especially that of a foreign place — and I have come to a conclusion. Yes, buildings can be beautiful – you wouldn’t believe some of the architecture here and the history behind it is even more amazing. But beauty goes much deeper than that. In terms of being in “beautiful places,” what makes a place beautiful and magical isn’t the buildings or architecture – but the people who you experience that (and life) with. That is what makes it beautiful.
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Since I have been here in Prague, I have been taking a lot of time to think. About life, about God, about friends, and about myself. God has been answering so many prayers and I can’t wait to see what else He will reveal. It is amazing how being here, so much “noise” that surrounded my day to day life has receded to a whisper or nothing at all…and I have been reveling in the silence. Being thrown into a world of unfamiliarity has caused me to stop and think about everything! My feelings, my thoughts, my actions… It is showing me things that are truly important in my life and the things that are not. The last few weeks have been hard. Really hard. I remember on one of the rainy days I saw tons of discarded umbrellas, fallen on the street and broken from the wind. I felt like I could relate to them… tired, wet, alone, overwhelmed, broke down…and in a sense I could. But I am learning to take the focus off myself and look around and above. I am learning to turn to the God who I love and I am learning to depend on Him more and more. I have been understanding more and more how much God has done for me and for the world through His Son. I have been blessed with so much freedom (in Christ). My identity is not in myself, or the world.. but in Jesus Christ. I am learning what it means to STAND in Christ. I am learning that I COULDN’T stand with out Him. Without His love and mercy, where would I be? Psalm 130 says:

“Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD; O Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy. If you, O LORD, kept a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness; therefore you are feared. I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning. O Israel, put your hope in the LORD, for with the LORD is unfailing love and with him is full redemption. ”

I am standing in the Lord and He is my rock. It makes me think about Christian in Pilgrim’s Progress and the burden on his back. When he goes to the cross and repents, the burden falls from his back, never to be seen again (I realize that this isn’t necessarily what the Psalm is talking about, these are just where my thoughts took me). Christ has taken that burden away — He was victorious and was not crippled by it — and through Him we do not have to be crippled by it either.

In Marseille, we found a tiny secret little community on the coastline that you could only find by going through a door and down some stairs off the side of a coastal road. There we found a small harbor scattered with brightly colored boats. Climbing the cliff, you could see out for miles, the ocean lit up by the setting sun. It was peaceful, and when I look at the image I am reminded of that feeling, and of all the adventures we would have in this amazing place.

It was my last week in Amman, Jordan and the thickest sandstorm I’d ever seen blotted out the sun and cast eerie shadows across the rocky desert outside my office window at the International Organization of Migration (IOM). Swiveling back around to my desk I caught the eye of Osama who was laughing at my wonderment. “You’ve been here more than four months and this is still exciting for you?” he teased, his face crinkling into a toothy grin. “Tabaan! Of course!” I replied in perfect arabeezi, the English-Arabic hybrid that keeps new Arabic speakers afloat in a fast-paced and complex world of grammar rules and grumpy taxi drivers. “Well, with such good weather, why would you ever want to leave?” Osama noted in perfect Jordanian sarcasm, glancing sideways towards my desk riddled with empty mugs of sugary tea.

The truth was, I didn’t.

The American staff I worked with this past summer at the U.S. embassy in Harare, Zimbabwe have a term for this general type of situation. They call it “going native,” referring to when an ex-pat remains long enough in a foreign post that they become attached, and begin to view life through the lens of a local. It was a term within the embassy community that was generally used to invite negative criticism upon the individual it referenced, and remains a term that I envision causes my fellow social justice colleagues to cringe at its utterance.

But the reality behind living abroad successfully, in the sense that one experiences a truly diverse and enriching exchange of ideas and cultures, is dependent upon the very ability of an individual to strip away his or her own biases, categorical lenses, and comfort zones.

And it was hard at first! I found it difficult to understand the different hierarchy of values that influenced Jordanian life on a daily basis. I originally became frustrated with the pressures life in Jordan placed on my usual freedom of dress, limitation of movement, curfews, familial obligations, and behavioral expectations. I found myself wanting to fight the differences, being indignant that I was being compelled to change so drastically in order to integrate into the society in which I found myself. Then, I woke up a month into my program and realized that just “getting through” my time abroad wasn’t enough for me. I reset my outlook.

I learned to love Jordan. I came to appreciate the call to prayer that echoed from every hill five times a day. With hard work and classes at the University of Jordan, I became comfortable communicating in basic Arabic. I began to reference King Abdullah II in conversation about as often as President Obama. I looked forward to sleepovers at my friend Majd’s house where we would talk about God, politics, feminism, and Palestine. I began to find falafel and hummus a normal type of breakfast food. I drank my tea like an Arab, strong and with three extra scoops of sugar. I argued with taxi drivers, and bartered in the souqs. I embraced the flexibility of time. I learned how to dance the dabka, but never quite mastered the incredible grace of belly dancing. My host family actually provided me a real home. There were people I met that changed my life.

So, no, I didn’t want to leave Jordan, and I told Osama so.

He merely listened with a twinkle in his eye. After a moment he responded, “Inshallah, you will return”

“Inshallah,” I nodded, sighing, as more sand whipped against the window.

**”Inshallah” = God willing