The one where I got a job

Over the last year, I started to form an idea in my head of the type of job I wanted. I never thought I would actually find that job. But I did! Last week I started my job at UNT. I am the counselor for international students going through the Intensive English Language Institute. That means that I get to help students from all over the world settle into life in the US and adjust to their new environment as they take English classes in order to be able to apply for admission to an American university.

I can't even begin to describe the special place my students have taken up in my heart, and it's only been a week. I have so much empathy and admiration for them and what they are attempting to do. The students are so receptive to my friendship and eager to practice their English skills, which are not very strong yet. Besides counseling, I also get to plan activities for the students to introduce them to American culture. Last week, I took 80 new students to Target to help them get all the supplies they needed to get settled. That was an adventure to say the least. I stood up at the front of the store to help students check out since for most it was their first time in an American store. I noticed that one of the Chinese girls was buying Poise pads, and I had an awkward moment of wondering whether I should tell her that she was buying adult diapers rather than feminine products, or whether I should just let her learn from the experience and not embarrass her in front of the other students. I ended up not saying anything. But she, along with all the other students coming to me with problems last week, reminded me what a difficult thing it is to go to another country and not speak the language. I remember having a hard time at grocery stores when I lived in Maastricht because I couldn't read labels on products. Once I ended up buying fabric softener instead of detergent because the pictures on the labels weren't enough to help be distinguish the product.

Anyways, I feel like God has used my experiences and my desires and interests to uniquely place me in a situation where I can minister to international students. They are desperately in need of friendship and kindness. At the beginning of the summer, I applied for some jobs that I knew I could get, but was never really excited about any of them. Now I see that, while it's difficult, waiting on God and his perfect timing is always worth it. He's had a plan all along. I'm so excited about the adventure he is taking me on. I can already tell that my job will never be boring.

Ecclesiastes 3:1

Life has been full since I arrived home. I've been dealing with a lot of emotions as I adjust to life in Texas and the realities of having to face life now as a financially independent adult. The day after I got home, my parents dropped my car insurance and cell phone bill in my lap and were like, "Here you go". My dad also announced I would have to start paying rent to live at home if I took too long to find a job. I understand, but it was a little much to dump all that on me before I had even been home for 48 hours.

Beyond that, our house was being renovated when I came home. This included turning my room into a guest room. I'm sad all my lime green, blue and purple is gone. I don't have a teenage room anymore. While this was being done, I was living in my brother's room, and my stuff is scattered throughout the house, garage and attic. It's been hard because even though I'm at home, I still feel live my existence is very temporary and unknown. I don't know how long I am going to be living at home, and it's going to be a pain to repack everything up after I just unpacked it when I do move out.

Nevertheless, I love being home and have had fun being with my family again. I've also been slowly but surely catching up with all my friends in the DFW area. Another new adjustment for me is having to transition to having friends scattered across the metroplex, state and country. There are so many people who live far away now that I miss. Is this the point in life when you transition to "adult friendships"? Where you see people every couple of years and just understand that you will always be friends, even when you don't see or talk to them regularly?

I've been using this time of transition to seek God and renew my relationship with him. I have to say, this could have been a difficult or stressful time for me, but I have had complete peace as I wait to see what direction He takes me.

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven.

I think I'm in a season of growth.

Home sweet home

I made it back safe and sound! I've been home for a week now and have been thinking about updating for a while, but I'm lazy, and I can't really blame that on jetlag. My flight to Dallas left from London, so I decided to go to London a day early and spend some time there. However, when I made that plan, I forgot about the fact that I had 100 pounds of luggage to carry around. That's not an exaggeration, it was actually probably more than that. Traveling was a nightmare. I could barely pull/carry all my luggage, and I had to stop every 10 minutes to catch my breath. It was only by the grace of God and kind strangers that I made it through the train station, the streets of London, and the tube to the airport. Let's just say I've got the girl in distress act down pat, although no dramatization was really necessary - I was in distress.

I ended up being disappointed because my pre-planned day in London was ruined by torrential rain. I guess God wanted me to leave England with a reminder of what I was really leaving behind. Today I saw pictures from the British Open going on in Scotland right now. Everybody was huddled up in blankets under umbrellas. Now that I've been back in 100 degree heat and have gotten back into my life, those pictures seem very bizarre. I feel like England is already a faint memory, when I only left it a week ago. I can't believe I too was in Scotland wearing a jacket not long ago.

Oh, a couple days before I came back to the US, I went up to Edinburgh, Scotland and had a great time. I think the only real regret travelwise from this last year was that I didn't get to do any traveling up in Scotland. I wanted to see the highlands and do some hiking, but I just didn't plan my time well enough.

I can't believe my time in England is over. It's good to be home, but it's always sad when something you looked forward to for so long comes to an end. Now I have to find something new to anticipate. That shouldn't be hard seeing as how my life is basically a blank canvas right now. I've applied for four jobs so far and had one interview already on Friday. I'll let you know more when one of my plans comes to fruition. In the meantime, I get to hang out and spend time with my family and friends. I also have some work to do on my dissertation still. My supervisor came up with a few things for me to work on, and I didn't get them finished before I left. I am trying to get it all finished this week so I don't have to think about it any longer.

I think that's about it for now. Love to you all! Please let me know if you're in the Dallas area, I'd love to see you!

So close and yet so far away

I finished writing my dissertation this weekend. I thought I would be more excited, but I am still a wreck. I turned it in to my supervisor today, who is known to be a critical marker, and am so afraid that he's going to return it to me with comments like "Ideas are incoherent. Lit review needs a serious rewrite. Your content analysis is a joke." See why I can't be excited? This is my last week left in Leeds to do work, but I am pretty much at his mercy in terms of how long it takes for him to read and mark it. Unless he returns it tomorrow, I will probably have to finish it at home, and I don't want to do that. I want to get on the plane and go home knowing that I am done with grad school. So until then, I just keep refreshing my e-mail, waiting for the note that could free me or have me chained to a computer for another month. I have never wanted to be done with something so much in my entire life.

A little insight into my life

Since arriving in England, I've been engaging in a little game. I like to play chicken with all the people that walk towards me on the sidewalk. Think about it. What side of the sidewalk do you walk on? I always walk on the right because that's the side of the road we drive on, so that's the way traffic flows. So in England, people should walk on the left side of the path, right? Well, they don't. According to my very scientific experiment, people haven't got a clue in hell what side they are supposed to walk on. Pure pedestrian chaos. Most go to the right, but some go to the left. It could be that there are so many foreigners in big cities like Leeds and London who are used to walking on the right that they are skewing my experiment. I will never know, and it's driving me crazy.

Yotel-ing it

So check it out. My flight home leaves in the morning from London, so I have to go down the day before and spend the night in London. I read an article about a new hotel that opened up in Heathrow airport called Yotel. It's modeled after those Japanese business hotels that are basically just cupboards that people sleep in. Now I could have stayed in a hostel in London, but I decided why not take advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to stay in a 7 square-meter cupboard at the airport. I get a double bed, bathroom, flatscreen tv and Internet in my tiny compartment, plus I get the ability to sleep in since I'm already at the airport and can avoid having some drunk guy wake me up in the middle of the night in a 12-bed hostel room. A win all the way around.

Is it crazy that I'm excited about this?

I drove on the left side of the road and lived to tell about it

Hello blog world. I'm back.

I had a great time with my parents. I met them at the hotel in London, we hugged, and it was as if I had never been gone. The only thing that was weird was that this place where I've been living was totally foreign to them. I forget I'm in a different country sometimes, everything just seems normal to me now. It took my mom the whole trip to figure out the money, which I don't even think about now. After spending a few days in London, we rented a car and drove south to Portsmouth so my dad could see the HMS Victory - the oldest floating naval ship in the world. It was something I could have cared less about, except that I like to think that my lifetime of my dad dragging me around to various historical and scientific sites, as well as every national park and wildlife preserve we pass on the highway, has in some way made me a more interesting person. I intend to do the exact same thing to my kids. If I ever meet a guy interested in naval history we'll have something to talk about for about five minutes. My favorite places we visited were the Cotswalds, which is where you will find all the cute cottages and thatch roof houses all situated in villages that are so cute and perfect you'll feel like you stepped onto a movie set. We also took a personal C.S. Lewis tour in Oxford with a guide that was a real character. It was so neat to learn more about Lewis, see his house, eat in the pub where the Inklings met, and sit in the pew he sat in for church every Sunday. I am determined to read more of his stuff this summer, and I want to see the movie The Shadowlands. Finally, we made our way up to the Lake District. I had been there before with Ashley back in the fall, but since we had a car and could go up all the deserted mountain roads, I feel like I experienced it all in a new way. It's absolutely one of the prettiest places I've ever been. My parents and I hiked up some peaks outside of Keswick. The climb was a killer, but there is nothing like sitting on the top of a mountain looking out at peaks and down at valleys and lakes and small little villages. On one of the peaks, we were above the clouds, and it was just such an incredible thing to experience the beauty of creation in a new way.

I didn't really take many pictures this trip, but here's a few.

Dad in front of The Kilns (C.S. Lewis's house)

Thatched roof cottages in the Cotswalds:

The beautiful Lake District: