Hola de nuevo,
Today is Sunday, January 29th. This week was my first full week in Spain, although, spoiler alert, perhaps I should say “in Europe” because I didn’t spend the whole week in Spain. I had academic orientation this week on Monday, where I learned all about the university I will be attending: Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Then on Wednesday morning I registered for my classes. Thankfully I was able to secure a spot in all of the classes that I was hoping to take. I will be taking the following classes:
- Mechanical Technology (an engineering class primarily about manufacturing)
- Microeconomics
- Spanish Language (Advanced Level)
- Spanish Art Masters in Madrid Museums (An art history class in which we will actually visit museums in Madrid to see works of famous Spanish artists)
All of my classes will be in English except my Spanish language class. I am also taking a “bonus class,” a not-for-credit latin dance class offered through the university, but that won’t start until late February. The academic classes begin Monday, January 30th (tomorrow).
Once my classes were picked, there was nothing on my agenda until the start of classes the following Monday. With the exception of one, my roommates were all similarly free, so we started thinking about what we could do. Dan found a $90 round trip flight to Porto, Portugal and a plan began to form. On Tuesday evening 8 of us booked flights and reserved two nights in a hostel. Thursday at 7:30 am we were on a Plane to Portugal. We spent the next 72 hours exploring and enjoying the city, and arrived back in Madrid at 9:00 am Sunday morning. Porto was one of my absolute favorite places I have ever visited! I have so much to share about it, that I have decided to save it and make it into its own bonus blog post in the near future. As a sneak peek, the adventures involved walking over 1000 steps per hour in Porto, 3 elevated panoramic views of the city (one included below), and exotic seafood.
If you noticed my mention of a blog in the last paragraph, it was intentional. The weekly update is soon to be converted to a blog. No more email every week, instead you can use one link to follow every step of my journey, including bonus updates (such as my porto trip), a photo gallery, and commenting capability. A big thanks to my wonderful mother for helping me to get the blog page set up with her website expertise (if you’ve never seen her cooking website, check it out here).
Unfortunately, I arrived back home too late today to return to la Iglesia en Suanzes (the church I went to last week). However, this evening I had the opportunity to join a church plant here for their worship. They are a small house church of about 20 people meeting at the pastor’s home for the moment, but currently looking into expanding further. They were very welcoming, and I think my Spanish is improving because I understood about 80% of the discussion, even managing to participate a little. After worship and a Bible study, everyone sat around and ate some soup and I found that almost everyone else speaks English better than I speak Spanish, which was a bit of a relief. I have really enjoyed both places that I’ve worshiped in Spain. Now it’s just a matter of prayer and seeing where the Lord will call me to spend my time and energy here.
It’s time for me to wrap up now and get off to bed so I can be prepared for the first day of classes. I will end with a few prayer request and pictures for this week.
Prayers
- Praise God that my class selection process went incredibly well, and I got all the classes I needed to take (some students did not).
- Praise God for beginning to open up doors with my roommates. Henry and I have touched on faith and Christianity in a couple of our conversations and He expressed interest in attending a church service with me.
- Pray for continued favor and boldness in sharing about the Lord with Henry, and for the ability to open up conversations with my other roommates.
- Pray for my first week of classes, it will be a totally new place with new expectations and challenges.
- Pray for my heart to stay focussed on the Lord and on seeking first His Kingdom as I get busier with classes and various activities beginning.