6 months!!

I wrote this post about a month ago. I'm finally getting around to posting it. Even though we have now been here for 7 months. 7 months! Wow...... Well here's to 6 months! I wanted to share a quick overview on our time here so far. With out further ado, let's get started. 

Sept: 

Was full of excitement and fear. John was in Madrid for two weeks while I was looking for an apartment. John and I were both just getting to know our team mates and trying our best to get settled. We lived with our teammate Amy for the 1st five weeks of us being here. Besides trying to figure out logistical things, we were spending the other bit of our time getting to know our city, playing tourist. 

Oct: By the end of Sept I made a friend called Marian she owns a coffee shop here in our neighborhood. We quickly became friends and she invited me to host a Halloween party for kids. John was now working part-time as an English teacher and we both barely started learning Spanish. I was still nervous to do anything on my own at this time. Besides the kids Halloween party we were both still trying to figure out logistical things and learn our new language as well as still playing tourist. 

November: Our team threw a Thanksgiving party with 28 Spanish Speakers! While writing this I can’t help but smile at the hand of God. Remembering that only 3.5 months after we arrived in Spain our team was able to invite 30 people to a Thanksgiving celebration. How awesome is that? At this point we as a team were also working on team story telling and conflict resolution. Working on foundational stuff so that in the future we won’t fall apart. 

Dec: December was very busy, we celebrated advent together and met together for a “service” on sundays. Although we invited some people to join only our team participated. Besides working together to celebrate advent December passed quickly once the holidays came. John and I spent our Christmas Holiday in Northern Ireland with our family. My brother got to visit too which was so great for me to show him a part of my life that he had'nt experienced before. 

Jan: A new year! We arrived back from Northern Ireland on the 8th. This is where living here started to become more challenging for me. I entered the stage in culture shock called "Hostility". I felt depressed and anxious about small things like going to the store. I missed home terribly (both Memphis and Cali.) and learning Spanish was becoming very frustrating. Thoughts like “what’s the point?” often fled my thoughts. 

Feb: Was also hard. Still struggling with most of the same struggles as I did in January but towards the end of Feb I started to take action. I sought out some professional help on transition and we also had a lovely woman called Karen come and stay with us. Karen lives in Poland and works with CA. She walked us through some culture shock and transitional things that were really helpful. Her stay helped me shift some of my attitude in a new direction. 

March: And here we are today. Life is still hard here but I’m ok with that. I am learning to be more vulnerable with my team mates and with John. I am also starting to see more vision arising and that gives me hope. We just came back from a work retreat with our teammates. We worked on things like sharing research we had done on our neighborhood, finalized our team values and signed a covenant and started the process of mapping out our neighborhood. All of this stuff brings me so much excitement for what the next 6 months have to offer. 

Sometimes I wake up and still can’t believe that I get to live in Spain and other times I wake up and I think "I’m still in Spain?" Ha. This is such a roller coaster, this is beautiful, messy and everything in between. I look forward to sharing more with you in the months to come! 

Love, 

Kels Bels