communitas et caritas

This is the beginning of my second week in Almeria--which means that I'm doing things for the second time around rather than the first! It strikes me that there's a lot of anxiety in experiencing the new, at least when absolutely everything is new. The second week is therefore much easier!  Though maybe I should wait until Friday to say that for sure. My schedule is still in process, but certain things are certain. Until the end of January, I will teach Spanish classes (basic vocabulary) on Mondays and Wednesdays from 6-7:30 pm. We're working on the rooms of a house and the types of furniture in each room. Spanish seems to have a richer vocabulary than English. I keep finding things that have multiple words in Spanish and only one in English.. For example, a "sink" can mean basically any basin with running water. In Spanish, there's a word for the sink in the bathroom (lavabo) that's different from the one in the kitchen (fregadero), which is

  Hello, Friends and Family! I have finally arrived in my home for the next several months, in a town called Las Norias de Daza, which is in the greater area called El Ejido, which itself belongs to Almeria. I haven't yet figured out what the divisions are called, but they roughly work out to municipality, county, and province/state for English speakers. The picture above is from my trip here, on the bus. I could see that from my window, and in the opposite direction the Mediterranean Sea. Thanks to Google Maps, we can see where I am in Spain: I’m living with one other sister, near to the center, called Bantaba, where we have classes for migrants. We have a larger community of five, but we don’t all fit in the same house! So we share meals and prayer, along with daily mass and ministry, but we sleep in two different houses. I wouldn’t say it’s ideal, but it’s working so far (it hasn’t even been a week! But I trust it will keep working!). I have been as

Hello from Granada! I got here late last week, with a cold.. so I had a few quiet restful days, and just a couple of adventures. First up: the Alhambra!  My visit was scheduled for 4 pm, so I got to see the light changing as the sun went down (sundown was just after 6). This is a view from the Generalife, which is at the top part of the hill on which the Alhambra sits. You can see the Alhambra over below the sun, and part of Granada down below. The gardens surrounding the Generalife are gorgeous (even though it's winter). Many of the gardens were shaped in ways like this, and all of them had signs saying not to touch the plants.     The arches of this style (I'm not sure what to call it--Mozarabic?) are all over Granada, and in some cases you can see them behind later modifications that were made when Christians returned to control. There is a great mix of architecture and art here in Granada, and not just at the Alhambra. My weird little medieval heart

I spent the last day of 2018 in Toledo, Spain (where nearly everything was closed because it was a Monday) and the first day of 2019 in Segovia! ADIOS, 2018! Toledo is an ancient city, known for having three cultures living side-by-side for centuries. There is a fast train from Madrid that takes about 30 minutes, and I was there for most of the day. I took a bus to the top of the hill, to the Plaza Zocodover, and from there I walked. And walked and walked. I loved it, and took a ton of photos because the city is so beautiful. Enjoy! These guys were in front of every other souvenir shop. Toledo is well fortified, sitting on top of a high hill, surrounded by walls (at least it was once), with a river to add another barrier to invasion. I read somewhere that the chains hung from the side of this church were the chains of Christians who had been rescued from Muslims in the Middle Ages....  there must be more to that story, though, because for muc