Hit the ground Running

The school year is back in full swing, my GLT papers are done, and I have to focus on my new classes. After being my own teacher all summer, and learning and researching on my own, I would say going to class is one of the hardest aspects to coming back. All of my classes within my major are conversational classes where we all pretty much just sit and talk. However, I am taking geography this semester, and last week the teacher actually yelled at me for speaking without being called on. Its not like I interrupted anyone, I just contributed to the conversation. I was embaressed and confused...I dont think I have gotten yelled at in a classroom since jr high! Needless to say, it hasnt been the smoothest transition. Another difficult part is having every minute of my day planned out. And not getting naps! I dont know if I am busier than I was last semester, but i now do not consider it healthy. This American busyness is exhausting, and I am consistently not living up to others' expectations, simply because my body shuts down. I am not able to finish a day without 2 cups of coffee-one in the morning, and one in the afternoon. My body doesnt even have sufficient energy to finish the day! This is not ok, in my opinion.

This semester has also been very difficult because it already has a theme-loss. Just in the last week two of my friends have lost family members, one their mom, the other a cousin. A girl younger than me here at APU also died this summer from a brain anyurism, and my roommate almost lost her brother to drugs and alcohol. The rest of the people in my program and I feel like we have lost a part of ourselves in the countries that we left. This is topped with about half of my closest friends studied abroad this semester, and i am feeling their absence. Also, for ASB, two of the top people in admin that I would be working with are gone, one for sabbatical, the other because of heart surgery.

Well if that didnt get you down, what will? Know that i am not completely depressed, and that I have people to lean on, but any encouragement is welcome. Senior year is just turning out to be a lot harder than I expected, especially with the lingering idea than in a few short months I am going to lose what has been my home for the last 4 years.

I appreciate all of you, and am sorry if I am being a downer. A lot of exciting things have happened this year, and when things lighten up I will be sure to tell you all about them.

Love,
Kelly

Readjusting...

So the last couple of weeks have been really crazy...when I got back home I got to spend a little time with my family, and then I was off to LA, where I had one day to get everything out of my storage unit and get my apartment ready because as an ASB we went the next day up to San Francisco with other student leaders. 

It was quite a week up there! They wouldnt tell us when we were getting up or what we would be doing, so every morning I was awoken by loud screaming and the lights being turned on somewhere between 6 and 8 am. By the 2nd day I broke down because it was so hard... I went from being alone for 3.5 months to sharing a basement room with 100 girls! I was pretty much over it. The only thing that got me through the week was the service projects that we were assigned to. The first day we went to a AIDS hospice where we helped paint the entire inside and gardened outside. It was really great, because this specific house only accepts people who are HIV positive and are also homeless. There is no time limit for their stay, and they are able to get all of the resources and medical stuff that they need. I talked to a guy that did drugs for 40 years, and in the last 3 years has been completely clean. He told me that he did it all by himself because his family gave up on him and wont talk to him anymore. He also told me that his brother is rich enough to Air Condition hell, which I thought was incredibly hilarious. 

Basically, I fell in love with San Francisco. I need to stop going places, because I think that I love seeing and being a part of new cultures and places...and the more places I go the harder it is to not go back! 

Although I think that I am readjusting back well, it still is difficult. I find myself missing parts of Spanish culture, and speaking spanish in general. I am blessed with about 4 people on my ASB staff that enjoy speaking spanish, so we will just sit and chat in spanish...which has been amazing for me. 

I definitely feel like I left a part of my heart over in Madrid... I miss my friends and my life. I feel so incredibly blessed to have been able to have this experience and know that i learned so much. I am super excited about my ASB position, for those of you who dont know...it is called the multi-cultural senator and bascially I am the link between ASB/the student body and the Multi Ethnic Programs Office, which is where my scholarship group is out of. My big project for the year will be trying to get a Diversity class general studies requirement for all students. Basically it means that there would be another requirement for students, that they would all have to take a Chicano Studies Class, or a basic diversity class, or something like that. I am really excited to begin meeting with faculty and staff about it for Fall '09! 

I will keep writing on here to let you all know what Im doing during my last year... it has been so crazy to introduce myself as a senior! 

Kelly

Last weekend in Madrid

My last weekend here was fabulous. On Friday my friend Medha and I went out for some tapas, and then stumbled across this irish bar and decided to go in. We were one of 3 groups that were in there, cause it was kinda off the beaten path. However, we made friends with everyone inside, and the 3 groups turned into one! It was really fun because the other group had an Italian guy, 2 Irish guys, a guy from Poland, and 2 guys from Bulgaria. One of the other girls was Canadian, and then there was me and Medha, the Americans! 

We ended up hanging out with them the following night, because Gio, the Italian, works at one of the biggest discos in Madrid, and could get us in for free! This place was incredible! It has 7 different stories, and the top one doesnt have a roof! So you can walk around and sit in these elegant leather chairs underneath the beautiful night sky. It was phenomonal. The other floors had different kinds of music, one with kareoke! We did not spend any time on that floor, thank goodness! The very bottom floor was the biggest, and every once in awhile they would blow a huge amount of cold fog stuff from the ceiling. I dont know if you can imagine it, but it was awesome! Sunday I ran around and did errands after going to the pool for awhile. While I am going to miss this city so much, Im ready to go home and start the next stage...

I want to thank all of you who went along with me on this journey...it was amazing and I feel so lucky and privileged to be able to have been able to have this experience. You all are in my thoughts, thank you so much for all the love and support you have shown me. Let me know if any of you want to read my 3 twenty-page papers! (ha, once they are finished!)

Paz y Amor, 

Kelly

So reality is really starting to hit me. I feel like all of my blogs are getting to be about the same thing, so ill tell you guys a story instead. 

My host dad has been a little difficult to live with, simply because he thinks that everything he does is right and everything anyone else does is weird. You would think, since he has traveled the world and is married to an American, that he would have a broader perspective, but apparently not. He is always telling me that I am weird, or I am doing something not normal.  So the other day he brought out this squash-looking melon thing for after lunch. He asked me if I would rather have an orange or melon, and of course, I said orange cause I dont like melons. And this melon did not look like any melon I had ever seen.  He looked at me like i was the craziest person in the world and was like, "you dont like melon? But melon is normal!" And I kinda lost it. He is the only person in Spain who has gone out of their way to make me feel different, which is infuriating because everyone else says I am "casi Espanola" which means almost Spanish. So I just looked at him and said, "What is normal? Normal doesnt mean anything. There are people who dont eat meat, or pasta, or anything else you can mention. There is no such thing as normal. There is only normal for you." And he was kinda taken aback, cause usually I just either ignore his comments or treat them like a joke, but I just couldnt take it anymore. And you know what he said in response? "Well, melon is normal." I wanted to throw the melon at him! By that time i just let it go, because there was no use in continuing it, but seriously. I couldnt believe it. 

Other than that, I am slowly melting away in the heat, its been over 100 these past few days...and what is worse, is that when the sun goes down the temperature does not drop. So basically im in a state of constantly sweating! 

This has definitely been a summer of learning and growing...I feel like i might have to reintroduce myself to you all! In many ways I am a completely different person, but also I am still Kelly. It will take some time for me to figure out how my new thoughts and ways of thinking fit into my life back at home. Right now i would say that i just feel unsettled. I cant feel comfortable here because I leave so soon, but I am not comfortable with the idea of leaving.  I am getting excited to see my friends and family, and go back to some old routines. But its hard to think about leaving all of this behind. Everything here will just go on as normal... except I wont be here. 

I am just going to try and enjoy every minute I have left here, and think about all of the wonderful people that are waiting for me back home. 

Love to you all, 

Kelly

The Beginning of the End

So yesterday was my last day for my internship. When I was leaving I was pretty upset, mostly because it just felt so weird. Being a global studies major, since freshman year my friends and I have been talking about where we would go and what we would do. It was so great because we knew we had the world on our fingertips. So then when it actually came time to start planning things, I started to freak out, cause it was so weird to actually see the GLT in the near future. Then all of a sudden i was on my GLT, which was mind boggling as well. But now I just sit back and wonder where all the time has gone! I finished my GLT internship. It literally is crazy for me to think about. Yesterday my friend Medha told me, well, now you just have to start looking at the next thing...and decided to start talking about jobs and grad school. I looked at her and was like, ok. That is a little more overwhelming...and I dont need that right now! 

(But, I will let you all in on a little secret, that I did start looking at grad schools the other day, and that UCLA is one of the top 10 Urban Planning Schools in the nation...so as of right now im thinking ill live down in LA after APU for a couple years and then go. They like people with work experience!) 

I started writing my research paper... which in many ways felt awesome cause I have everything I need and its something that I love writing about, but it also means that my time here is really starting to wrap up, which is sad. If you dont know, I am writing about how one's social network is the primary reason that people become homeless...and that other factors like alcoholism, depression, mental instability, etc just make the situation circular and almost impossible to get out of. I am really excited about it because I have a lot of academic material to back it up, along with great personal stories. 

So I was living with a mom and her daughter, and we had a blast just hanging out together. But then they went to vacations in New York, and the dad got back from Japan...so now its just me and him. I have to admit, sometimes it is a little awkward...especially when he took my dirty clothes from my room and washed them...and hung them all out on the line! I was pretty embarrassed cause there was a ton of underware in there. I mean, he is married and has a 15 year old daughter, but still. And its so weird cause obviously he cooks for me and does my dishes, which is just weird for me. And he is REALLY loud, and the last few days he has started blasting opera music at 8am. When i dont get home till close to 2am because of my route, at 8am that is the LAST thing that I want to hear. So, needless to say, things have changed a lot since he got here. 

So now I am just trying to balance enjoying my last weeks here in Spain and getting my homework done... I have so much to do its not even funny. So if you think of it you could pray that i be really organized and get everything done that I need to. Oh and I am getting bloody noses every morning and sometimes during the day too...so it would be great if that could stop too. 

I love you all! Thanks for being on this journey with me! 

Kelly

A broken heart is a curious thing...

These past two weeks I have been a lot more intentional about asking the people on my routes about their stories: why they sleeping on the street, what happened, and what it would take for them to get back on their feet. What I have found is the most curious thing... they all have broken hearts. Bad things happen in everyone's lives, but with these people their stories are insane... instead of one, two, or three bad things happening, around 8 happen, usually including the loss of their social network: either their significant other, or their family. I feel like in the states we are a lot more individualistic, so if something bad happens, we figure it out, and are taught to pull ourselves up. Here, the individual has no significance--only the group. So when the group falls apart, they literally lose all motivation to live. They usually start to drink to cover up the pain, cant maintain their house or their job, and within a short period of time, are on the street. I have heard numerous people tell me that this is their situation now, and they have no intention of changing. Its like life on the street becomes their distraction for their past life, and they usually find a group to be apart of, and because that is what matters, to be apart of the group, they would rather live on the street and feel like they are apart of something than live a meaningless life alone. I have even talked with people who are working and have money, but they dont desire to live in an apartment. 

are Today I went to a comedor with one of the guys on my route...a comedor is where the homeless go and eat for free. Since I went with him, it was like I was like everyone else, which turned out to be difficult for me. It hit me when the person handed me the little token, much like the token I used to give people when I worked in the food pantry during LA term. But this time I had the token, this time I handed it in for food. My entire body started to resist this! I could feel the tension swelling up inside of me. A huge part of me wanted to scream at the top of my lungs, Im not homeless! Im studying, I promise! But then i realized it didnt matter. People were in the room eating for a million different reasons, and I wasnt better than any of them. But it was definitely hard. I am going to another one tomorrow, to see the difference in people in the different zones, so that should be really educational for me. 

I have learned a lot just living in the city as well. I love it... I love being able to walk everywhere, being able to walk across the street and buy a loaf of bread...and seeing people everywhere I go. It is different though...there isnt a quite moment ever. Even last night, I got home from my route and went to bed around 2 and someone was blasting their TV. This morning I woke up (like every morning) to a baby screaming its head off. If its not that, then its the insanely loud garbage trucks, or the smell of the fish store a couple doors down. But it honestly doesnt make me mad! I love that everyone elses lives affect mine. There are always people outside...sitting on benches, talking, taking a walk, or visiting a friend.  But the thing I love about here that is very different from LA is that there is still a ton of open space! there are parks everywhere, with greenery that makes me feel alive. 

I have had a couple moments where I felt like I could almost be ready/ok with coming home, but it is always countered with a deep, deep sadness. I had to tell all the people on my route that next week is my last week, and everyone asked me when are you coming back?! Not are you coming back, but when? And when I told them that its really hard for me to think about leaving, they were like, well just stay here! It sucks, and it hurts, but I have never felt so affirmed in my life. The people want me here, they like me here, and are sad to see me go. I know next week will be really hard, but I am also confident that one day I will see them again. 

catching you all up...

Sorry I haven’t written in awhile, life has been a little crazy! I went to Barcelona, Sitges, and Lisbon with my parents, and my brother and his girlfriend. It was great! I absolutely loved 

Lisbon, I cannot wait to go back and see other parts of Portugal. I also have decided that I want to learn Portuguese next! I also now have very limited internet access, so all of you who have written me I really appreciate it, and I am sorry if I haven’t written back. The internet in the apartment is completely broken, and they cant figure out how to fix it. The company was at our house for 3 hours on Sunday, and they still couldn’t figure it out. Go figure.

So I have moved in with my new host family, and it is the best situation ever! The mom is American, but she only speaks Spanish to me, and there is a daughter, Andrea, who is 15. They are incredibly nice, and their house is full of pictures and artifacts from their travels all over the world. I live only 10 minutes from my internship, in the center of the bustling city. Its great cause I live in the part where everyone works, not in the touristy part of the city. I made a great friend with this girl from the states, named Medha, and she only lives about 10 minutes from me walking. It is really fun to be living so close, and I find myself a lot less tired because I am not commuting anymore.

My internship is going great, Im sad that I only have a couple more weeks to go. I am getting a lot of information for my research paper, and am excited to start writing it! Basically I will be writing about the difference between homelessness in LA and Madrid, and how the presence of social programs helps alleviate homelessness. Now, you all may have very different opinions about how much the government should spend on services for people, but the stark differences in numbers makes me certain that with the implementation of services, homelessness could disappear in LA. In the city alone, there are about 700 homeless people here in Madrid. In LA, the number is around 50,000. In Madrid County there are about 5,000 and in LA County about 70,000. Its incredible, right? One of the main reasons there are so many less is because Spain offers something called the Renta Minima, which is a service that gives a stipend for a apartment. Through this many people have a place to live, even if they are having trouble finding a job.

So last weekend I went to Pamplona to see the bulls in the streets. What a weekend I had. I couldn’t begin to write all of the crazy things that happened, but ill give you a little glimpse of the weekend. We arrived on Friday night, 3 hours late because of traffic in Madrid. That made our 5 hour bus ride 8 hours. Medha and I had reserved a hotel room 3 days before, in a 4 star Golf and Spa resort. From the street it looked like a castle! We were a little nervous because the room was 150 Euro a night, so we got 4 other friends to go with us. But of course, hotels don’t allow this, so we found a back door and snuck the rest in. It was incredible! The room was HUGE, and 4 of us slept on the ginormous bed while the other 2 slept on the floor. We got to bed around 130 and slept till 430, left at 5am to go into town and get a spot on the street to see the torros. As many of you can imagine, I was not the happiest camper, but was ok because they run at 8am, and afterwards we could go back to the hotel and sleep till our check out at 1. To make a long story short, Medha and I got to take advantage of their exquisite spa, which included 6 different kinds of showers, one with the aroma of tropical flowers. There was a pool, spa, sauna, and steam room, and yes, these chairs you lay on and they get warm and relax your muscles. I was in heaven. But, we had to leave there around 430pm to meet the other girls in the city. This is where the fun began, because at 5 we were in the city, and didn’t have any place to stay, and basically just hung out until the next morning. The crazy thing is everyone does this. For 24 hours the streets are full of people drinking, bars are open, it is completely nuts!!! At about 2 am I was pretty tired of it all, and really annoyed with drunk people, and it was really really cold and rainy, so we decided to try and find a place to catch some sleep. Almost as soon as we found a place in the train station to close our eyes, (this is after walking around for about 9 hours) the police came and said they were closing the station. So, after thinking for a bit, I remembered that on my route there are a lot of people who sleep in the little rooms that have the ATM’s, cause they are open all night, and are warm. We found one (called a cajero) and seriously, I think I got the best 2 hours of sleep that I have ever gotten in my life. It was nice and warm, and we litteraly just lied down on the floor and closed our eyes. Probably one of the craziest things I have ever done, and will ever do in my life. Around 530 we got up, and decided that we would try and catch the 7am bus. Our tickets were for 10 am, but we were hoping that people would forget and seats would be open. That didn’t end up working out, so Medha and I went to the plaza and watched from the seats there. It was pretty amazing. The best thing about it was being able to see Spaniards in their element. It was just like one of our baseball games….everyone knew what to chant or yell at every point in time. They knew when to stand up, what songs to scream, it was amazing. I really thought it was beautiful. That is, until at the end they let a baby torro out and all the people were playing with it and abusing it… that I didn’t like, and actually ended up leaving the plaza early cause they were mistreating it so much.

As for now, I am back to my studies, and will remain in Madrid for the rest of my time here. My host mom is a great cook, she even got me to eat mushrooms! Well, I did shove a piece of bread in my mouth after every bite, but still, I ate them. Yes mom, I know you’re proud of me.

I love you all a lot! Tell me how you are…I am going to start going to my internship every day because I can use the internet there, so I should be a lot more connected. Hope you are well!

Besos, Kelly