"do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its on worries. today's trouble is enough for today."
-matthew 6:34
take that in two possible manners - one is that today is always going to be too heavy to handle. try and handle that with tomorrow... yah right. controversely, this verse helped me in its simplest form, just to relax. i'm not the most religious person on the world and i don't try to be. there are times i wish that it just came a little more naturally, because i do believe in heaven. but call me fair weathered, i usually only pray or read the bible when i'm struggling. i try to be a regular at FCA, but as someone explained it to me, better to go to church and read the bible when i want to rather than to force myself to do it otherwise and ergo hate it. anyway, this passage first helped me in 10th grade. and it helps me now to remember to focus (cornily) on the present and not april 8 when i get my phone bill.
my international calls were shut off during semana santa which kinda freaked me out. the announcement i got was "su caldo no es suficiente" meaning i went over my balance. 1) didn't know i had a balance. 2) found out from friends it's 120 euros. impossible. i've done the math as many ways as i can think of (okay it's only two but whatever) and it's not physically possible, unless the canaries magically seceded from spain in the 3 hour flight there. oh yah, and rejoined again while i was in transit. cool. but, there's nothing i can do about it at this point. there's no way to check my call traffic, and if i went to the office they'd tell me i had to wait until the end of the month to make international calls again (which i'm never doing anyway) plus another week when they actually put the past months calls online. sooo... all i can do is wait. but you'd better believe i have a good speech prepared to throw at apelcom cell should my balance be anything over 40 euros. well it's in english but i'm workin on it...
so culture shock. i knew the steps, i knew the symptoms, i knew the causes, i however didn't know that it would be so hard to recognize. it may or may not be culture shock in its purest form but i'm not a deperessed person by any means. i figured that after my first two days here of being luggageless, familyless, communicationless, boyfriendless, best friendless, noseringless, and clueless that i'd hit the bottom. as perfectly dictated by dr. seusses grinch, portrayed of course by jim carey, wrong-o. last night was a low. worrying about my phone bill set it off. and after accosting my boyfriend i was retardedly unhappy with him when he said he didn't have any major problems with me (hey, i already said retarded). he felt badly about me being so upset and ended up missing his soccer game (i'm still really sorry...) to stay and help cheer me up. it surprised me a lot actually - i was yelling at him to leave and even ended the skype call for him so he wouldn't have to debate over pressing the red face-down-phone symbol. but he stuck, and walked me through it, and as concerned as i was with him not having major issues wiht me, i realized i don't either. i got a little strung up on the times where i find nit-picky things that make me upset at the wrong times, but they're not problems. we don't fight. we barely argue. what more could i ask for? as they say in spain, estamos hecho el uno para el otro (look it up). makes it hard that a simple hug from him last night would have made my world continue spinning from it's standstill, but i understand why it can't happen and am almost happy for those reasons (i've mentioned them before, job, house, etc, it's good for him). but aside from that, once i figured myself out, i kinda put two and two together. culture shock isn't just being surprised or terrified by a different country, but more, as i've derrived, how easy it is to get upset when you're being pinned with different languages, new situations, awkward customs, strange families, stupid school (but that's nothing new) in spanish (crap), and the like. i'd been on the lookout for it and i was even told that it could take a couple months to hit, but nonetheless it's reliable and unfortunately normal. i just wish i hadn't been so cocky about "overcoming all spain could throw at me," and therefore not quite so surprised when i cried for an hour last night... k don't laugh.
well today's a little better. i didn't sleep much last night. ripped my freakin nose ring out again in my sleep - that hurt. but my keys are back! antonio retrieved mis llaves. also, my mom and i last night agreed that i'm gonna take on a second minor. might make my spring senior semester a little rough, but nothing i can't handle and well worth it if otherwise i'd be taking one required class and some crap electives. so i have to decide between management information systems and marketing... oh well. until then, in the unknown words of switchfoot:
the world keeps spinning on, you're going, going, gone.
