isaiah
sometimes i forget that the rest of the country doesn’t struggle to communicate as i do. at church today one of the pastors got up to give the announcements for the week, and the entire time he was speaking all i could think about was how well he conjugated verbs and how he could toss around direct object pronouns like nobody’s business. and then i remembered that choosing between preterite and imperfect is as natural as breathing for him. at which point i seriously began to covet my neighbor.
friday was mi mamá’s birthday. which means that from roughly noon until ten, our apartment was filled with people eating and drinking and rambling in speedy spanish. i really detest large groups of people speaking spanish. one of my friends kindly pointed out that maybe studying abroad in chile wasn’t the most logical choice. obviously the entire population of the country is speaking spanish. but that’s not the problem. i’m referring to the specific situations in which old friends are sitting around a table gossiping and joking and interrupting each other and the english speaking american student is sitting in the middle trying to follow the conversation as it bounces around the table at dizzying speeds. the effort actually makes me sleepy. it’s like watching a tennis match on fast forward. the other part of the problem is that there are times when i’m not the least bit interested in the conversation. in america, i would just tune out for a few minutes and rejoin the conversation once the subject changed. in chile, i tune out and then don’t realize that we’ve switched topics. so then it takes a solid five minutes of trying to piece together the few recognizable vocabulary words until i can figure out that we’re no longer speaking about chilean property rights but graciela’s ex-husband’s sister’s dog’s stomach cancer. only i’m still not interested. so i let my mind wander for a few more minutes and then start the process again. seven hours, three courses of food, and a pot of tea later, my rear end has fallen asleep and my brain has gone numb. and that is why i’m not a huge fan of lunch-dinner-dessert parties.
melodramatics aside, my spanish is improving. i certainly can’t see a difference from one day to the next, but even over the short span of time spent in pure spanish while in rancagua with the fam, i could see an improvement in my fluidity and ability to think on my feet. last night i had a full dream in spanish, which i see as a huge leap. it’s definitely a lot easier to speak and improve if i’m not continuously switching between english and spanish. and gasp! i haven’t exactly been speaking constantly in spanish when with my american friends. however, a couple friends and i have devised a way to keep ourselves accountable. putting our stinginess to good use, whenever we speak to each other in english, it’s one hundred pesos into the jar. i’m cheap almost to a fault, so this should work out well.
i have midterms this week. i was under the delusion that studying abroad would be easier than my studies at du. and while we certainly don’t have profoundly deep discussions and lectures, because frankly our spanish can’t support it, the work level here is equal to that in the states. not to mention that i’m used to a ten week quarter system, not the monster of an eighteen week semester i’m currently plodding through. anyhoo, to the dismay of my host mother, who is continuously appalled at my shameful study habits, i’m procrastinating. tonight it’s taking the form of skyping my family and perusing the mountain of pictures i took in cusco and machu picchu.
looking through the photos, i’m once again struck by how smoothly our trip went. it was something we commented on once or twice during the week, but were afraid to jinx. aside from the food poisoning of two of our fearless adventurers, there was not a single bump in the road. i actually can’t imagine the trip going any better. and going into the journey, i had my doubts. i feel the need to plan and research for big trips. well, if we’re going to totally honest here, i plan out a day to disneyland. i mean, you wouldn’t want to miss a ride or wait in line for indian jones any longer than necessary, would you? but for long expeditions involving planes and trains and entrance tickets with fixed dates and times that can’t be missed or changed because we were too cheap to buy the insurance…i especially feel the need to plan for all-case scenarios.
but going into this trip, there were many unknowns. and hopping on to the bus at the viña del mar terminal i felt anything but at peace. so me and jesus had a heart to heart. there in the santiago airport at three in the morning. and this is what we decided. that he had a lot more power over my life and our trip than i did. that i was not able to control the availability of bus tickets nor the length of the lines at the border nor that the border would even be open when it was supposed to be. i had no ability to predict whether we would make our train in cusco or if we had actually bought the right ticket to machu picchu on that very confusing website. or if we would get food poisoning or altitude sickness or have our passports stolen, all things my chilean family adamantly warned me about. (apparently chileans are still a little sore with peru over a war fought a coupe hundred years ago.) however, the one thing i did have the ability to control how much control i was willing to hand over to him. yes, that again. seems i haven’t quite been getting the message, so jesus is beating it over my head until it gets through my remarkably thick skull. so shivering in that arctic of an airport i decided to let go. hand over the reins, the steering wheel, the handle bars, the guide book to jesus and let him lead the way. confident that he went before us. and that wherever, whenever, however we ended up in peru, it would be exactly how he planned it. and all the researching in the world wouldn’t alter the route he already had for us.
and oh how he blessed us. he took that tiny miniscule step of faith and cleared the way for us. everything fell exactly into place, better than i could have ever planned. there were many a moment that i was stunned by his mercy and grace. one such time was, ironically, standing under the statue of jesus that looks over the city of cusco. as we reached the top of the hill, the dark clouds that had been rolling in broke and the sun shone through, and we watched as a rainbow slowly formed across the south end of the valley. i saw jesus in the kindness of hostel owners. in aguas calientes, we were greeted with a smile, fresh pancakes, and coffee from a pot, not from canned powder. all at four am. and even though we weren’t staying another night, they let us store our bags and use the showers later that evening before our train. in these, and thousands of other small moments, i saw the hand of the father. and the wonder of machu picchu doesn’t hold a candle to the mercy of our god.
that week i was reading through isaiah. which is exactly where i needed to be.
for i am the Lord, your God, who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, do not fear; i will help you. Isaiah 41:13
concerning things to come, do you question me about my children, or give me orders about the work of my hands? it is i who made the earth and created mankind upon it. my own hands stretched out the heavens; i marshaled their starry hosts. Isaiah 45:11-12
what i have said, that will i bring about; what i have planned that will i do. isaiah 46:11
i am the Lord your God, who teaches you what is best for you, who directs you in the way you should go. Isaiah 48:17
