Faith, Life, and Lessons

Quite a bit has happened to me since the last time I've blogged. I've been lucky enough to visit home, get clear direction about my future (college choice anyway) through the Ingram Scholarship, go on "gap spring break" (basically I just add "gap" to everything to affectionally brand ourselves), and now experience a new culture/family in Jordan. Despite the overwhelming blessings God has showered  torrentially down-poured on me lately, I will unfortunately not be blogging about any of that at the moment. Instead, I would like to talk about the incredibly relevant and cross-cultural topic of self-consciousness, physical appearance, and vanity. For the next month in Amman, Jordan, the entire gap group will be interning in various departments of the Princess Taghrid Institute. Among many other wonderful things, the Institute will be hosting a women's empowerment conference called the East West and Africa Women's Initiatives Conference. Aside from talk...

Where the heck am I and oh my gosh it’s so dark and everyone is touching me and I barely have enough AirTime to call anyone and it’s better to stay on the moto then get off and be completely lost. This was the flowing thought process of my 2 minute panic attack as I realized how truly lost and alone I can be when I push myself beyond the margins of normalcy and familiarity (which I do quite often). Because my friend Courtney and I wanted to meet up, she had invited me to dinner with her host family at their house about 15 minutes from my own. Unfortunately, since my phone was stolen at a soccer game about two weeks ago, I’ve been living in an 1800s mindset by communicating solely on physical presence (or bumming other people’s phones in dire situations). Even after I was finally able to register a new SIM card (the hold-up on me getting a new phone in the first place; the network had been down the entire two weeks), I only had a few minutes AirTime total. I internally compared this to...