cada día me atraias hacia tí

mi hermano seba and i discovered this mexican singer named marcela gandara who i've pretty much fell in love with. she is a christian singer who sings in spanish (and i can actually understand almost all of what her lyrics say!), and i've been listening to her almost constantly for the last couple weeks. this song especially seems to be relevant of late:

Desde el principio cuando te necesité,
from the beginning when i needed you
desde el momento cuando la mirada alzé,
from the moment when i looked alway
desde ese día, cuando sola me encontraba,
from that day, when i found myself alone
cuando tu mirada en mi se fue a poner.
even then you turned and looked at me

Supe que me amabas lo entendi,
i then understood that you've always loved me
y supe que buscabas, mas de mi,
and that you looked for more of me
que mucho tiempo me esperaste y no llegue,
that you waited for me for a long time, but i never came
supe que me amabas, aunque huí,
i know that you love me, although i ran away
lejos de tu casa, yo me fui,
far from your home, i went
y con un beso y con amor,
but with a kiss and with love
me regalaste tu perdon, estoy aqui.
you gave me the gift of your forgiveness, and now i'm here

Y cuando lejos me encontraba te senti,
and when i was far away i felt you
sabia que entonces me cuidabas y te oí,
and so i knew that you you cared for me and i heard you
como un susurro fue tu voz en el silencio,
like a whisper was your voice in the silence
cada dia me atraias hacia tí
every day you pulled me toward you

and then it repeats the chorus.

so that's a pretty rough translation, but the song's about the prodigal son and it's really quite a beautiful song, for a beautiful story. how great is the love of the Father that even when we run away from Him and squander all the blessings that He's given us, when we finally come home to Him, expecting to work as a slave, He welcomes us back into Him arms with rejoicing and throws us the biggest party imaginable! who great is His grace! i have found myself very thankful for His grace this week and for His never ending, never wavering love and provision. how great is it to live in the grace of our Father!?!?

in other news... i slept through an earthquake that was a grade 5 on the richter scale. i woke up this morning and my family asked me if i felt the super strong earthquake and i had no idea what they were talking about. i guess it happened a little after 6 this morning and was really strong. down south, it was quite catistrophic with a number of people dieing from huge waves caused by an earthquake saturday afternoon. i'm really not afraid of them at all, but i guess there's been quite a bit of seismic activity in the last month. they're still almost fun for me, which probably is a sign of my naivety of how terrible and destructive they can be, but i kinda hope i don't learn to be scared of them...

below are some pictures i took yesterday. ISA went on an excursion to some towns a little north of here called hurcón y zapallar. zapallar especially was quite beautiful. enjoy the photos!

me eating a camaron y queso (shrimp and cheese) empanada! yummy!!

pretty shot of some boats just off the beach in zapallar as the sun just starts to peak out of the clouds.

i feel like every picture with a random dog in it is a classic chile picture. i especially like this one!me by the beach!on top of a super cool rock by the beach. i wish we could have stayed to watch the sunset because it was BEAUTIFUL last night and this would have been the perfect place to watch it. but i got to see it, and that's all that really matters!!

pack your bags and go!

well, i officially feel like a world traveler. i survived my first completely independent, self planned, self managed, no-one-helping-me traveling experience to distant parts of the world, without bodily harm, emotional scaring, or anything of the sort. the freedom to go where we pleased, do what we wanted, without having a schedule of events to tie us down was really awesome. if you ever want to travel just to get to know a place, buy a plain ticket and a guide book, pack your bags and go (and of course call someone every night to tell them where you are in case something goes wrong, like i did, but that's beside the point)!

the trip consisted of a week down in southern chile, just north of patagonia in the southern part of the lake district and the island of chiloe. we (being myself and my friends katie and mia) flew into puerto montt monday afternoon and then started our traveling in the island of chiloe. we stayed in hostels (or hospedajes), traveled by bus, and met alot of really cool people. i think that meeting the people from all over the world was my favorite part. at one of the hospedajes we stayed at we met people from australia, holand, england, and lithuania. some of them were literally traveling the world, and it was really cool to hear some of their stories. a couple of them had what's called "round the world" plain tickets, something i didn't even know existed, but apparently includes a ton of different flights, literally all around the world. it was also really nice to be in a place with a much slower pace, much fewer people, and wide open spaces just a short walk away. one of my favorite parts of the trip was when we went on a tour that was guided by the owner of the hostal where we were staying. we went with 4 english boys and the guy from lithuania to parque nacional chiloe where there is one of the two temperate rain forests in the world. we also went to the beach on the west coast of chiloe which was really beautiful (really windy, but i really enjoyed it).

below are some of my favorite pictures from the trip. i have more, but these are my favorites. i figured out how to use the manual function on my camera, so i think the quality of my pictures is improving.

haha, this is my starbucks cup from the airport. i took a picture of it for two reasons, 1-note the way my name is spelled, and 2- to show how desperate i am for coffee that i even resorted to drinking starbucks (i figure it's not that bad here, b/c you just can't get good coffee... you know it's bad when starbucks is the best coffee around. chile needs a kennedy's...)

this is a picture of the church in chonchi, chiloe where we stayed for two nights. chiloe is full of these super cool old churches. each is considered a national heritage sight so something like that.this is also in chonchi. these little boats are all over the island of chiloe and make for some really cool pictures.

this are the swans off the coast of an even smaller island to the east of chiloe called lemuy. we went on a wild goose chase one day (get it!) to see these swans and took some wrong roads and didn't exactly know where we were, but we ended up finding them and finding where we were supposed to be so it was all good. just alot of walking (about 7 hours!) and we didn't exactly bring lunch, so we were starving by the time we got back to the hospedaje.this is in the rain forest walk in parque nacional chiloe. it was really different than anything i'd ever been in before. from what i hear, if you get really deep into the forest it's really quite incredible, but we were only on the edge.looking up through the trees in the rain forest. i like this pic!

this is on the beach on the west coast of chiloe. it's more exposed than the beaches here in viña and valpo with alot more wind and much stronger waves. we hiked along two different beaches. i really enjoyed it!katie and mia on the beach.

all three of us girls. i really like this picture too!katie and i took a boat ride on this big lake in mainland chile. the lake was near a town called petrohoe. we went there for a little while one day. the lake is surrounded by mountains and volcan osurno, but we couldn't see all the volcano b/c there were alot of clouds, but it was still quite beautiful.

katie on the boat with the volcano behind her.

the volcano with clouds wrapped around the top. we finally did get to see the top when we flew out in the airliner!this is the church in puerto varas where we stayed for two nights before we flew out.

so that was my trip in a nutshell. i really enjoyed it but i'm also glad to be home. it was weird being gone for a whole week. i have so little time here that i felt like i was wasting the precious time i have to build relationships. i think i'd definitely go again if i was given the chance, i really did enjoy the trip, but i realized that i don't want to spend all my time here traveling, even though there are a million cool places i'd like to go. but really, not traveling now will just give me a good reason to come back!

so for now i'm back home, needing to hit the books again. it's getting harder to motivate myself to study, but i need to more than ever. i also know that, while reading in spanish is super frustrating at times, everything i read will help me learn the language that much better, so i push on! i feel like i have so much to learn here, about the language, the culture, life in general, and the promises and the love the Lord has for me, but processing it all is at times really difficult. well, i'll update again soon, but for tonight, i'm out. i love you all!

anduvimos por valparaíso

what a week! today i finished what has probably been the most difficult week i've had so far. not so much in an emotional sense, but just in that fact that i had a ton of school work hanging over my head for the last week, really really weighing on me. i had a project due monday, a presentation in one of my classes wednesday that's the most important grade for the whole semester, and an exam in my literature class today. i definitely read 100 pages in spanish (it was a play so there weren't quite as many words on one page...) yesterday, yes, all in one day... i really haven't hardly stopped studying since saturday (that's 5 days solid...) but today it all ended and i'm free for a week and a half!! that's right. next week's what they call "semana novata." i'm still a little confused of all the details of what this week entails, but it has something to do with the first year students and all the classes after about noon are canceled, and since i only have one class that only meets twice a week before noon, i'm going to travel to southern chile with my friend katie for the week to chiloé (a big island right off the coast) and the area surrounding a town called puerto monte.

seba and i wandered through the streets of valparaíso thursday taking pictures. while we really didn't take that many, we got some good ones. these are my favorites:

me, looking down from a hill in valparaíso and out to the ocean

looking up one of the steep streets

window of a housea latch on a doorperfect example of the dogs in valparaíso, they're everywherethis picture is the jem of the photo shoot, this is probably the coolest cat i've ever seenseba outside an old jail in valparaíso
seba making some sort of pensive face that turned kinda goofywe played the act out emotions game (which i'm terrible at...) i believe this was... crazy? no sé...muy triste... (very sad)

i kinda got out of the habit of giving prayer requests, but i think that should change, so here we go...

• pray for a safe, fun, but also God glorifying trip south
• pray that i'll be able to truly enjoy and make the most of every moment here, because sometime i stuggle a little bit with missing home, not that i want to leave, but sometimes thinking about home so much makes it hard to appreciate all that's going on here
• pray for the relationships that are developing with my family and my friends (chilean & american)
• pray that the Lord would teach me to worship and learn of Him in another language, b/c i feel like things are getting lost in translation sometimes right now

so that's yet another glimpse into my life at the moment. all i can say is i'm blessed, here and at home :)

¡bienvenidos a mi vida!

well, life just keeps on flying by down here in chile. i've been here almost a month and a half. crazy! i'm beginning to think that five months is not nearly as long as i originally thought. i miss home like crazy sometimes, but i have a feeling it's going to be hard to leave here too. but i have plenty of time before i have to worry about that, so for now i'm just trying to soak everything in, experience all i can, and really rejoice in the time i have here.

i don't have anything terribly profound or interesting to share, so i thought i'd post some pictures instead or long ramblings like usual. enjoy!

seba and i drove out to reñaca and con con (smaller towns to the north) sometime last week or so and took these pictures at this really pretty look out spot. i played with the color on the bottom one a little, that's the chilean flag, in case you were wondering.

¡mi primer pie de manzana en chile! i made an apple pie yesterday, and i had definitely forgotten how much work it was to make, but it was fun. it turned out beautiful except i guess i didn't put in enough corn starch because it was SUPER runny, i was really disappointed. but it tasted really good, the crust turned out great, and the fact that it was runny gives me an excuse to make another one later and show my family how good apple pie can really be!
me cutting the pie... not that exciting, but whatev...
me and mi hermano seba
me and my other hermano felipe (he was a little sick when this picture was taken...)
me and mi mama chilena
this picture's a little bit blurry, but i still kinda like it. we had a mini salsa dance party in our living room tonight. this is my brother seba and my mama.
maría jesús, mi hermanita (little sister)

well, that's all for now folks. i love you, miss you, and as always would love to hear about your life! p.s. i could use your prayers especially this week. i have a project, an oral presentation (all in spanish of course), and a lit test this week, not to mention some papers do coming up, so prayers for strength and wisdom would be greatly appreciated!