Gratitude

I keep coming back here to write a post about the end and the transition back. And for some reason the words just aren't coming.

I cant belive a week ago I was spending my last day in Oviedo. The end was perfect. Somehow it seems like the end is always perfect. We spent three days at the girls school in the jungle in Embaracayu. Our mornings were spent in the campo with the girls and our afternoons relaxing and enjoying the scenery. It was so so wonderful. Wonderful to really get to interact with the girls- we worked in the garden with them, chatted while we de-kerneled corn, laughed so hard canoing and swimming in the river, played soccer and learned some new dance moves from them. They were wonderful and part of me wished I could have spent my whole summer there. Being with them was just so much more natural and inspiring to me than sitting in the office, but I also know that being in the office and working with the microfinance was a new challenge that I so needed. I ran along the silent dirt roads and found little colonies of butterflies, danced to my music cause there was no one for miles, soaked in the stars and laid in the hammock and read. It was wonderful.

Then I came back to Oviedo and had three perfect last days with my family. I felt so so comfortable with them by the end and we all shed some tears when we had to say goodbye. We had a race doing laundry, made two more batches of coffee cakes (they loved those things) and had a special last dinner. I went to the pelequiera with the girls and we just really enjoyed our time together. I went for one last run and as I stopped to take in the beauty of the wide open spaces tears fell from my eyes, tears like the ones that fell the first weekend there but this time out of gratitude and love for this family and country instead of loneliness and fear. It felt like home after 5 short weeks and although I was excited to get back here, it was hard to say goodbye.  I couldn't have asked for a better last week... and as soon as I sit still and think about the funny little life I created there I miss it a whole lot. I still have some processing to do, my time in Paraguay was something so different than I expected it to be. The internship was not what I had hoped for but the growth that happened trying to make sense of it all is something I am incredibly grateful for and that family who loved me like their own was the biggest gift of all.

I came back to a lot of love and life. To a new house. Hot weather. Some things changing and some just how I left them. Our new house is wonderful, spacious and full of light. And summertime here is a fun thing to be a part of. Everyone keeps asking how the transition has been, and honestly part of me feels like I never left. This time was so so different than my time in El Salvador and the reverse culture shock just hasn't really hit me. I keep wondering if its going to sneak up on me out of no where or if I really am gonna get by without it. Its been interesting to find my place back here again. The last year at Santa Clara was such a bizarre year and so very challenging. I'm excited to have the whole year here to really settle in. I feel like I only had three months here last year because the first three back were spent just trying to keep my head above water. I know my soul better than I did when I left for Paraguay and when I feel any sort of funk from things changing and being out of a familiar routine I think back to those first couple nights in Paraguay when I really had to learn to comfort myself. I know what my soul needs. I know that getting up and going for a run and soaking up the rose gardens, swimming, journaling, calling the people I love really help me to feel like all is right in the world. And I am so thankful that I have slowly gotten to know those parts of myself and that even when things don't feel quite right, or quite like home I have some tricks up my sleeve to feed my spirit. Maybe thats why the transition is easier.

I have the most amazing friends in the world and am so thankful to come home to Hayley in my room for pillow talk about everything under the sun from relationships to friends to life after college to work in developing countries. And Cara to lay in bed with and feel all my emotions. I am going to see Margot in two days and I could not be more excited. It has been so long since we have been together and some big changes have happened in our hearts since then. I get home in two weeks and then go to Michigan with my daddio for four days. My life is really good. I am surrounded by so many people that I love and just have so much to look forward to. I cant believe I was in Paraguay for 6 weeks and am back already. Life just keeps moving with all the ebb and flow and up and down. 6 weeks ago Keith told me my sea legs were well developed... and today I feel like that is the most true its ever been. In the midst of all the waves I feel grounded in me and I am just so grateful for that. More processing to come about my time in that funny little office. But for now.. I am just relishing in the gratitude. <3 br="br">