Reflections from Feb. 26

Reflections 2-26
The hardest part about being in Guatemala has been, without a question, dealing with missing what I left behind. I am happy to say that for the most part I haven´t let the conspicuous absence of all the people I ever cared about during the first 22 years of my life ever, really, bring me down. I am basically writing this because of some recent conversations by email or chat (for once I let myself use internet without rushing myself to finish everything in 30 minutes) with college friends about dealing with not being so physically close to so many of our friends. It seems to be something that all of us have trouble with upon graduating and going on to something else.

I deal with that too, but fortunately going to Guatemala has distracted me quite enough to not to feel too nostalgic about all that stuff. I defiantly do spend some time just being nostalgic, or thinking about seeing people when I get home, but I think for the most part that this has been healthy. As planned, being in such a different place has given me a lot of other things to think about besides what I am missing back home. I am generally content, usually happy… and every now and then, things are something approaching glorious- lets say I am walking the 6k home, there is a beautiful yellow glow on endless green hills, there is a only distant human made noise, and one can hear different bugs and birds calling, and a good song stuck in my head… !calidad! (quality).

I miss the people and the easy social life that I lived back home. The comfort of knowing exactly what my role was. Being confident that I said the right thing. All those things are just harder living in a different culture.

On the other hand, in the absence of these things I have been able to accept the biggest gift that I think Guatemala will give me. That is the gift of showing me a new ways to live. I have found that I can be pretty flexible. From new things to eat, to new ways to bathe, to new ways of greeting people, I have become accustomed to a new kind of lifestyle, and I hope that I will be able to apply some of these things to my life back home. I think of the song A New Way to be Human, by Switchfoot, though song is talking about less material ways of changing and deeper, more profound ways we can change. It is possible I have changed in more profound ways too, but I doubt I would have realized that yet.

Sometimes having as much free time without much to do as I do in the evenings is a little bit frustrating, but mostly I have been very happy to read a lot, get plenty of sleep, listen to whole albums straight without interruption, or just lie down and think. While the work I do is focused on helping others, I also have plenty of time to just be quiet, to listen… I think of how somewhere the Bible says ¨be still and know that I am Lord.¨ These are all luxuries that I did not really have in the hectic college life, and I am making sure to enjoy it. I think my life hear has been very healthy. Very healthy in some ways that college is, perhaps, a little unhealthy.

Jordan