Well, it’s Sunday. The start of another week. Last week was a good week overall. I’m starting to make Spanish friends, which is very exciting! Tuesday night I started working with my service project, called Solidarios. They are an NGO that, among many other things, serves homeless people here in Sevilla. We go out onto the streets at night with coffee and cookies and look for the homeless, and our mission is to give them acknowledgement and company in a city where society scorns them, ignores them, and treats them as if they didn’t exist. This week it rained, so there weren’t many homeless actually out on the streets, but we did find a few. One of the men was drunk, and he talked to us for an hour and a half straight about Jesus. I was really excited when he started talking because for once, someone was talking about something I’m familiar with. haha But he spoke the language of the streets and was so drunk that I really couldn’t understand him. It’s also interesting serving with an organizationthat has no ties to the church and, more accurately, scorns the church. I did meet some new friends this week, and I am excited to get to know them better as the semester goes on. You can pray for them. Their names are Javi, Marta, Chano, Maria, Cora, Clara, and Andres.
Thursday I painted a fan for charity at my school. :-) It took me 5 hours, but it was so worth it. I bought two more fans, but haven’t had time to paint those yet.
Friday I got to meet and hang out with my intercambio (kind of like an “assigned friend” who helps you with your Spanish and you help them with English) Fernando for the first time. He’s so nice! We went to lunch and took a couple nice walks, and we got BEN AND JERRY’S!!!!!!!! I needed that. haha Fernando had never had peanut butter before, so we stopped at Corte Ingles so I could buy a jar and he could try some. He said he liked it, but it was very strong. I think I probably should have given him some bread to have it on. haha Oh, well. We spent the afternoon switching back and forth between English and Spanish, helping each other figure out how to say certain things. We had a really good discussion on faith on our way to his bus stop, and I hope we are able to keep talking about it sometime before I leave. Prayers for Fernando and I are appreciated as well.
Saturday I decided not to go to Huelva with the school trip because I was so tired when I woke up. I went to the park to read my Bible and my devotional book for siesta, but left when this creepy Spanish guy wanted to take pictures of my feet. Ew. So I went as far away from the park as I knew how to get, which is the mall on the other side of the city. I got there and thought I’d walk around a little. And then I decided to go see a movie, so I went upstairs to the cinema and saw Disney’s Up in Spanish. It was so funny, and also reassuring that I could purchase movie tickets without help and understand an entire movie without much difficulty. :-) Did you know that movie theaters here have assigned seats?
Lisa ran in a 5k race this morning, and I intended to go to church alone, but I slept in too long. Today has been a lazy day, just sitting around doing homework, watching a Spanish version of “America’s Got Talent” whose title translates to “Yes, You’re Worth It,” and napping. Now I think Lisa and I are going to go get ice cream. Yum!
Blessings!
