There’s no place like home, unless you’re in Europe

My computer screen jumped to life and the familiar hum of the fan kicked in. I checked the small toolbar with anticipation hoping against hope that maybe I was connected. No. The two small computer icons showed no life and I was mocked by the small red “x” that covered them. Our internet connection has not been the greatest but as least we had some connection. But not now, in fact we hadn’t had any connection all day. Oh well. How could I be upset about a stupid internet connection when right now, right outside our kitchen window was an amazing view of snow-capped mountains. We’ve been nestled away at the foot of these beautiful mountains in an amazing yet very cold European apartment for a week now. Today was great; we explored an amazingly beautiful fresh water mountain spring that supplies our town with water. We even got a little brave and drank some water straight from the spring. It was incredible. It was fresh, crisp, and ice cold. I knew right then and there that I would diffidently be coming back to this spot. I had my moment of feeling like a tourist while I and Vanessa took lots of pictures of us at the spring. There was nobody around to gawk and so we had our fun. With an amazing view of the town, it was almost breath-taking. It was overwhelmingly gorgeous but we tried our best to just soak it in. As we walked down the mountain we came across a group of Spanish military peace-keeping troops, after getting our picture with them we laughed our way down the mountain only to be met again by our Spanish friends, they politely waved and we eagerly waved back as they drove away in their tank. A few minutes later we saw or friends again, this time they honked the tank’s horn at us. We laughed with delight at our new-found friends and waved back again. Later, after our walk back to town, we enjoyed some great food in a local café while sipping a coke and laughing about the day. Luckily we had constant power while sitting in the café, around here; one can never know when one will have electricity. With constant black-outs it’s hard to tell when one might hit as they are almost never at the same time every day. Tuesday night, only our second night here, we lost all electricity at approximately twelve o’clock midnight and did not regain our electric until 4:30 the next evening. Fourteen and a half hours of no electric. Our only source of heat came from our small woodstove in the corner of our kitchen. After a restless night of adjusting to the time change and slightly strained nerves, we awoke for our first meeting with Matt Krebs, one of our outreach coordinators. We were given a run-down of things that we will be doing here over the next five months most of which is community development and building relationships. Over the course of the next few days, we managed to settle into our homestead and make it feel like our own. With the anticipation of Christmas a small plastic Christmas tree with some very odd ornaments made its way into our dining room. With its red glowing lights, no matter how strange they were, it manages to remind us of home and the Christmas season. Being in a Muslim country, where they don’t celebrate Christmas, is slightly difficult to comprehend at some times, but it also serves as a reminder to us to slow down and take it easy. It also reminds us to not get so caught up in the hustle and bustle and to just enjoy the crisp days filled with snow and laughter. It’s not going to be easy to be away from our families on Christmas day but we have to make the best of it, no matter how hard it may be. We are anxious for the next five months and eager to learn all that we can. As we help develop this small community we hope to also develop ourselves into better, more efficient people and to come home, a brand new person. As for now, we face a bright new future.
lakyn