The End of the Semester

So here I have come, to the end of the semester and the times of goodbyes to the world that I have come to know so intimately.  It is crazy to think about how long and how short 4.5 months can seem at the same time.  Because of the countless farewell events, and thank you letters  to people who have made big impacts on  my time here, I have been doing some more reflection about my experience.  I feel like in a lot of ways Lima was everything I had hoped.  It was a chance to meet a new culture, be immersed in Spanish, travel, find amazing friends, and most importantly discover about myself.  The last one is the benefit that I have focused on the most, and I am really interested to see what happens as I return to the US and see face to face the changes that living abroad has made on me.  Coming to Lima, I got the chance to step out of my regular routine of life and see myself outside of the context of the "next thing" or the oh so come refrain that everything is "crazy busy."  Now I am looking to see the same thing happen, but instead of getting the chance to see myself in a context outside of my home, I am getting the chance to see how I have changed and grown through this experience.  Despite all of the successes I have seen in my time here, I also learned a lot from my expectations for myself that turned out as failures.  One of those to write for this blog every week, while I was here... which obviously did not happen. Or another more serious one was the way I saw myself getting involved in a church community and acting through faith.  This part especially was an interesting aspect for me, as I saw a lot of my expectations for how that would look fail in one way or another.  What I did find; however, was that God is always faithful and will use someone in ways that they least expect, if only they are willing.  He also taught me that my life isn´t about my plans, but ultimately His (something I feel like we all struggle with at some level).  And so while, I feel that Lima was different than my plans in some ways, I am definitely thankful for the opportunity to have gotten to live here.

On a different note:
There is a lot that I have neglected to tell you all over the past month in this blog and it would take too long to rehash a months worth of abroad life, so I won´t do that.   What I have decided; however, is that for this last week and half of this journal, I am going to try to be more faithful to document my post semester travels. Right now I am in Puno on Lake Titicaca.  I arrived today, and am travelling with Jason (you guys have heard of him in other, earlier posts).  Tomorrow we are going on the tour on the floating islands.  More info on that later so keep looking for the next post!  I promise it will be soon.