Reverse Culture Shock

In our modern age, it is absolutely bizarre how quickly you can get from one side of the world to the other. After a relatively short flight, you're in a completely different culture with not much time to transition, process, or prepare. So when Micah and I landed in the USA, there were some immediate reverse culture shocks that we experienced. The following are a few small and big differences we've noticed: 

• Saying hi to people. Europeans don't say hi to strangers on the street. Americans do. This was a surprise!
• Talking to each other on the street. In Spain, Micah and I could talk pretty openly on the street. We'd say things to each other that we normally wouldn't say in America like "that girl's shoes are super cute" or "is this woman doing okay? She looks lost" or other more personal things. In Spain, we knew people don't usually have a high enough level of English to understand us speaking rapidly to each other. Here in Minnesota, I've already caught myself many times saying things I probably shouldn't say when the whole world can understand me. 
• Toilets. The water level is insanely high in the US. Also, every time I flush here, I reach for the top of the toilet because that's where the flusher is in Spain.
• The insane variety of food!! I thought I'd be overwhelmed, stressed, and crying during my first grocery store visit in America. Although I was thoroughly overwhelmed, it was a delighted overwhelmed feeling. I wanted to buy everything! 
• Taxes and money. I've been shocked when prices are way higher than the price tag says. I totally forgot about taxes!! Seeing green bills is also baffling to me. 
• Food. I love American food. The end.
• Communicating to strangers in English. I haven't interacted with a stranger in English in 9 months. I forgot how to do it. 
• Saying gracias, perdon, ni idea, no pasa nada, and qué guay all the time. These expressions come to my mind and my mouth before their English equivalents. 
• The climate. My skin was dry and scaly in Spain due to the dry heat. Here, it's smooth and soft. Thank you Minnesota humidity!
• Masks. No one wears masks in the US anymore! Coming from Spain where we put on a mask the second we left our apartment, we were shocked by this.  

These are things we've personally noticed so far; I'm sure there will be more. Stay tuned!! 

Goodbye Granada

Granada has blessed us these past 9 months. Even at its worst, with earthquakes, coronavirus, and extreme cold and heat, Granada has been a beautiful home to us. With fewer than 3 weeks left, Micah and I are starting to say goodbye, and savoring the beauty of this city while doing so. We are saying goodbye to the following:

• The heavenly temperature difference of moving from sun to shade
• Ordering a drink and getting a free tapa (or a sufficient meal)
• Kicking around oranges that lie on the street
• Eating cookies for breakfast
• Being able to get toast in the middle of the morning workday
• Getting lost in the twists of the Albaícin
• Different colored buildings announcing their presence on the streets
• Finding ourselves in the relaxed, patient pace of the Granadinas
• Walking at dusk and catching the marvelous view of purple mountains when you don't expect it
• Three hours in the middle of the day that are completely ours
• Palm trees, pine trees, and color-changing trees all united together
• Accessibility of mountain, beach, and lake
• All the chewy candies you could ever want
• Seeing random, awe-inspiring glimpses of the Alhambra in different places in the city 
• The absence of snow (besides in the mountains)

Granada, you are beautiful, and we love you. Goodbye soon. 

PS Bonus points if you can correctly guess which bullet points Micah wrote and which ones I wrote. 

I don't want to leave, but I want to go home.

 I want to go home. 9 months is the longest I've been away from home, and frankly, I want to be frolicking in a green, humid Minnesotan summer with my friends and family. I want to eat mac & cheese, hot dogs, potato salad, baked beans, hashbrowns, corndogs, cheese curds, peanut butter, ranch, and BBQ.... but not all at once of course. 

I want to be able to get into a car and drive. I want to eat lunch at noon and dinner at 6. I want to be around other Americans. I really do want to go home. 

But I really don't want to leave. I want to continue seeing snowy mountains every day. I want croquetas, jamón, churros, and tostada con tomate to be easily accessible and always available. I want to get free tapas whenever I want. 

I want to see color. I want to see palm trees. I don't want to be thousands of miles away and 3 time zones apart from my friends in this country. I do not want to leave. 

Thus the problem. 

Right now, our departure looms over me, but I'm definitely not home in Minnesota either. This is the conflict I wake up to every day. When I think of ascending over Minnesota and seeing the miles of lakes from the sky, I smile to myself. When I think of emptying our drawers of our clothes in our Spanish apartment, my heart breaks a little. If only I could live on both sides of the world simultaneously. 

Leaving Spain will not be like simply leaving a job; I won't be able to see my friends anymore, and the Granada mountains will disappear permanently from my life. Thankfully, many of my friends are leaving Granada around the same time Micah and I are leaving. Most of my friends are from different cities around Spain or Europe, so they will also be returning home in June when the school year ends. But if I stayed in Granada, they would at least be within reach. Minnesota is nowhere near Europe. 

On the other hand, many of my friends in Minnesota will not be there when I return either. Many things have changed in 9 months, and Micah and I will be walking into a completely different life at home where people have literally moved or moved on from the life they were living when I was there. 

So here we stand with a month and a half left in Granada, Spain. I love this beautiful city, and the closer we get to leaving it, the more precious each day becomes. In reality, we have an opportunity to truly, deeply appreciate the next few months of our life on both sides of the world. This next month and a half, we can appreciate everything Spanish and the next month and a half after that, we can celebrate and savor everything American. We can open our eyes wider to see the beauty around us that we usually take for granted in both worlds and in both cultures. 

And that new feat of genuinely enjoying the present can start today. 

The Only American in the Room

Outside of our small church planting team, I have only seen one other American in my time here. She was a New Yorker that I ran into on the street, and I think I scared her away with how excited I was to meet her. 

Because of the European travel ban for Americans, it sincerely feels like we're the only Americans in this country and even continent. This is usually the ideal situation I dream about when I'm in the states. I love being the only American in the room because it's that richer of an opportunity to learn about other cultures. I love hanging out with international students, trying new foods, and listening to music in other languages. It's literally my hobby. 

But I have to admit that I now crave the presence and companionship of people from my home country. I never understood this before coming here. I was always a proponent of diversity and having all people groups, nationalities, and ethnicities together in the same place. While I most definitely still am for this, I now understand the other side: being surrounding by people that are from your home country. It's a comfort. It's a matter of being understood on a level that others can't. Most of my friends in this country haven't even set foot in the US, so when I meet someone who has even traveled to the states, that's even exciting to me. They understand my context. They know where I'm coming from, and therefore, they know me a little better. 

I've recently started my new Spanish class, and just like my last class, I'm the only American in the room. I have to represent my whole massive nation and carry it on my shoulders whenever America comes up in class. Whenever Donald Trump or anything even related to North and South America is mentioned in class, everyone looks to me. It's a lot of pressure, and I've started to like this privilege less and less as time goes on.

On the first day of class, I was hopeful when I saw a girl that looked and sounded American (when she spoke Spanish at least). I found myself analyzing everything this girl did, so excited at having a possible American companion in my class. When she introduced herself, I was disappointed to find out she was British. This discovery was disappointing but not totally disheartening, and I found myself still wanting to talk to her more than anyone else in the class. Even the simple existence of our countries' connected history and language was enough of a common denominator for me to want to connect. 

This week, I intentionally dwindled after class with the goal of talking to her and another Irish girl. We ended up walking out together, and it wasn't long before this English friend exclaimed "I have been thinking 'I've got to talk to Hannah because she's an English speaker!'" in her heavy English accent.

I was ecstatic. We both felt the same way.

This simple reminder of "home" was a beautiful, beautiful thing to me. We literally have nothing in common except our heart languages, and honestly, that was enough for me. 

I've discovered in this year away from home that I do crave to be around people like me. And that's okay.

However, right now in the Protestant church in Spain, the opposite is happening: there are not enough Spaniards for them even to connect with each other. There are plenty of Americans, Latinos, and other internationals, but there are so few Spanish Protestants in Spanish churches that they literally can't even have that person to relate to within their own country. 

And that's not okay. 

A Friend of a Friend of a Friend

 The work isn't easy here in Spain. It's not a country where you can successfully do street evangelism. The Spanish are surrounded by wealth, convenience, and luxury brands, so it's not natural for them to acknowledge that they need help or that they're not in control of their own lives. The pandemic, earthquakes, and the general unpredictability of this year have caused people to feel more vulnerable, but the process is still very slow. 

I'm meeting regularly with around 12 women, 2 women almost every week, the other 10 at least once a month. Friendships have grown, and they're real. We have spiritual conversations here and there, and I ask good questions, but no one has accepted my invitation to church or given their lives to Christ. These beautiful, strong women act very self sufficient, and their need for Jesus just isn't clear. Of course, I've heard about the problems in their lives, from classes to men to family, but these women already have so much wisdom, and they're just not thinking daily about their need for Jesus.

Some of the difficulties of ministry here are very similar to the context of the US, but there are many striking differences that make the situation here so much more urgent. The US is inundated with Protestant churches; the average suburb in Minnesota has more churches than this whole province of Granada. American Christians often spend their 20s church hopping, and I don't think we realize how much of a privilege and luxury that really is. 

Here, the evangelical church basically doesn't exist. When it does exist, the church community is shockingly small. While around 25% of Americans call themselves evangelical Christians, only 2% of Spanish do, and half of this percentage are Latinos from Central and South America who are living in Spain. Only 1% of Spaniards say they have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. 

Pretty much every single American has a friend of a friend that is a Christian. Here, no one even has a friend of a friend of a friend that's a Protestant Christian. The situation is urgent. 

And that's exactly what keeps me hopeful and inspired in this difficult, often fruitless work. Now there are 12 Spanish women in Granada who directly have a Christian friend, and dozens more from their web of friendships that now have a Christian friend of a friend of a friend. 

And if that's the only thing that comes out of our 10 months here, that's still a cause for celebration. 

Earthquakes

Before coming to Granada 4 months ago, I had never experienced an earthquake. I've felt at least 5 now, and 3 were in the span of 10 minutes two nights ago. 

When earthquake #1 of 3 hit, my heart instinctively began to pound, but then I self soothed myself and relaxed. Then the 2nd one came, just as big. When the 3rd one shook our apartment more violently than the other two, I was under our kitchen table, trembling from head to two. 

It was unsettling and slightly terrifying. I was embarrassed at my own fear, and how I was literally and figuratively shaken so intensely by earthquakes that are identified as "light" or "small" on the earthquake scale.   

These earthquakes woke me up. As much as I believe that I have a faith that is "unshakeable," it clearly is a bit shakeable. As much as I silently imagine the peace I would have in emergency situations, that peace was not manifesting itself well. Where was my faith in the moments where the ground I was standing on was literally trembling? 

The encouraging news is that I wasn't alone in my fear. When I reached out to my intercambios the next day, every one of them admitted to being scared or freaked out by the earthquakes. My teammates in ministry also shared about our fears that the earthquakes exposed. It was an opportunity to come together in our humanity but also an opportunity to challenge each other to keep that belief and trust ever before our eyes. 

My Spanish friends also informed me that they had never experienced anything like the earthquakes before in their lifetimes. It was truly a historical event that Micah and I happened to pop in on.

Honestly, Micah and I popped into this country at a very weird time of historical earthquakes but also the obvious historical pandemic. We are not experiencing a normal season in Spain. On the contrary, it's probably one of the more difficult times this country has faced. While Micah and I have lamented that we haven't witnessed our cultural center thriving like it normally does or the night life of locals out late for tapas and drinks like they normally are, we're thankful we're here. In a sense, we're seeing the worst of Spain, and in reality, what better time to be immersed among the Spanish people? 

People are at their lowest lows, thousands are sick, and almost everyone is afraid. This is the time that God brought us here to enter into their suffering and say "we are here to suffer with you. We are here to experience these terrifying earthquakes, follow curfew, not leave the city limits, and do whatever we need to do with you in this crazy time." 

Fear is better when it's experienced in community. Grief is better when it's experienced in community. Sickness is better when experienced in community. 

We have a beautiful opportunity to be in Spain right now, to comfort the lonely, encourage the hopeless, share the good news with the seekers, and simply be with this community. And the unshakeable God is the one who brought us here. *written as the earth beneath me ONCE AGAIN begins to shake*

What It's like to Have a Spouse as a Co-worker

I've lived in Spain before, and the biggest difference between these two experiences is that this time, my husband is here with me. There are both advantages and disadvantages to his being here with me, but the most prominent phenomenon to adjust to is working together. My spouse is also my co-worker, which is something I have never experienced.

In the US, we worked different jobs and had the joy of reuniting at dinner to discuss our different days. Now, we walk to and from work together most days, and over lunch, all we can do is tell each other our similar days from different perspectives. 

The first instance where spouse and co-worker collided was when Micah was making a video for our center and asked for my opinion. My first thought of his video was that the branding of the center that I had been working on was not well represented in the video. I attempted to explain this to Micah as a co-worker, but Micah as a spouse took it personally and got upset. 

In the US, we'd probably both come to the dinner table that night, and Micah would frustratingly explain how his co-worker undermined his work, and I'd complain about how a co-worker got upset with me when I simply suggested a change. 

In Spain, we instead had to work out our difference and reconcile. 

Before we even arrived, I was already predicting these kinds of conflicts and getting worried about the amount of time we'd inevitably be spending together here. In general, I think couples do need sufficient time apart, and we have been lacking this. But I've been pleasantly surprised at how well it's gone.

Our team has been working on a huge project, and Micah and I were both overwhelmed with all the work we had to do. I was especially feeling stressed and decided to leave the center early one day to work at home alone. Then I got a text from him saying we were in it together and he would help me in any way I needed.

Working with your spouse means getting a text message saying he would do anything to take some of the work stress away. Working with your spouse means getting a simple touch on the leg the moment I get a tiny bit stressed in work meetings. Working with your spouse means randomly receiving a cup of warm tea and a snack in the middle of a workday. Working with your spouse means that there is always a co-worker who is 100% for you, on your side, and protective of your feelings, workload, and mental health. 

In our extra time together, Micah has gone above and beyond to prioritize my comfort and my happiness, and we've been walking through this culture shock and adjustment together. Without asking, he gets me food, games, and candy that will make me feel at home. The other day, I was feeling randomly sad when without me saying a word, Micah put on a song that I love and he hates. It was such a little thing that made the world of a difference, and I literally had watering eyes. 

These are all the advantages of having my best friend and love of my life as a co-worker. The disadvantages are part of the same coin. Having Micah here with me is almost too comfortable, almost too great. I'm not missing home as much as I did when I was here alone because home is with me. There's less of a desperation for Jesus because I'm not alone in a foreign country this time. There is less of a desire for me to get out in the community when I could stay home with Micah and watch Netflix. It's more of a challenge for me to embrace the difficulty of a year serving the Lord when my husband is taking so much of the difficulty off of me. 

Somehow, we both have to discover how to keep being desperate for Jesus above all else and embracing the difficulty of culture shock if it means getting closer to Him.