STS: On Service & Journals

Alternative Title: On Making Relationships Better

I wanted to originally title this/write about “On Diligence” but I don’t feel it’s fair to write about things in which you aren't qualified haha. So when you see a post called “On Being Perfect” watch yourself because I’ve either got somethin’ comin' or we all do haha… #secondcomingjokes

I’m also limiting myself to 30 minutes on this because it’s a spiritual thought, not a spiritual monologue. Also because of this, it means I’m mostly speaking from the heart. Gosh dang. So I’m going to need a little more love and a lot less judgment with this post.

I like to write. I don’t think I was always this way, but I like to tell stories. Or I like to hear myself talk. Actually, these are all possibilities.

Because of this, I have a lot of journals. In high school I kept sketchbooks/journals, they’re angsty little thangs, but they’re fun to look through and tell a bit a few stories going through high school dramas. I started really keeping a journal in college, because there was so much going on and I wanted to remember all of it. And it started off as just a weekly bullet point list of “thisiswhatIdidonthisdayandIdon’thaverealtimetowriteanythingbye” and occasionally I find this notebook from freshman year and it makes me laugh so hard.

But that’s beside the point.

Beyond that, I also kept a little spiritual notebook (yes: the free one from the devotional at orientation) and I think somewhere in between the two is the happiest medium. For me, you could basically title all my journals “Jessie Dean: Life As I See It; Trials, Triumphs, Awkward Moments and Spiritual Bits Volume __”. I think ideally I start every journal as yeah, this is gonna be the one… solely for scripture study. Or I’m only going to write about revelation I get from prayer or this book is going to document my spiritual journey to greatness.  Not to dig on myself but………those would be some pretty sparse journals.  I’m not saying empty. You just can’t expect to fill a book with “sacred grove” moments. Well unless you had a lifetime and a half and a very acute sense for the Spirit. But alas, I’m just an average thing myself and take every day as it comes.

But anyways, I take pride in these little books.

They’re little pieces of my life and probably one of the most cherished things I own.

If I had to choose to save my journal or my cell phone from a house fire there’s no contest.

One of the things I’ve been writing and thinking a lot about lately is service. Only because I’ve actually been able to really have a better understanding of it. To do the laziest Google search imaginable for “service define”, you get these results:

1.     the action of helping or doing work for someone

2.     a system supplying a public need such as transport communications or utilities such as electricity and water

and to impress your friends even more with your Googling abilities, you can also find the LDS definition of service somewhere online. Except I couldn’t because our Wi-Fi cuts out incredibly badly at night, so you would impress me if you found it. But I’m sure it’s really similar to the first definition.

I can’t give specific examples right now because I feel like it would bring attention to the wrong things- mainly me, as well as those involved in the story. But here are my condensed thoughts on it.

“If any man will come after me [He said], let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.

“For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it” (Matthew 16:24–25)

The scriptures tell us again and again and again. The thing we should all be doing? Serving one another. The people you love? Serve them. The people you hate? Especially serve them. The people who seem to have it all figured out and don’t need your meddling? They also could use service. On either end.

My thoughts on this aren’t exactly profound… why do we focus on service? President Monson says it best:

“We do not live alone—in our city, our nation, or our world,” President Monson says. “There is no dividing line between our prosperity and our neighbor’s wretchedness.  ‘Love thy neighbor’ is more than a divine truth. It is a pattern for perfection. This truth inspires the familiar charge, ‘Go forth to serve.’  Try as some of us may, we cannot escape the influence our lives have upon the lives of others. Ours is the opportunity to build, to lift, to inspire, and indeed to lead. The New Testament teaches that it is impossible to take a right attitude toward Christ without taking an unselfish attitude toward men.”

We serve others to lighten their load.

We serve others to break the prejudices we hold within our hearts.

We serve others to help them break their own preconceived ideas about us.

We serve others in the best we know how, and as Christ would have.

And we hope that some else will be willing to do the same for us.

Since moving out of my apartment in April/moving in up the canyon to work/moving out of the canyon/moving into our apartment in Spain, I’ve had five or six different roommates. All very very different. Some clicked immediately. Some… a little less than immediately. I’ve never had a bad roommate, (haha: Jackie Dean) and I’m grateful for it. But I have had roommates that stressed me out a little bit and that I think somehow I rubbed the wrong way.

But really.

As I have loved you,

love one another.

By this shall men know,

ye are my disciples.

If you show love,

one to another.

For me, little acts of service have gone such a long way. In receiving them, in preforming them… I try every day to be the best person I can be. And some days it works out almost flawlessly. Not always, but some days. Days where I feel like I’ve treated everyone fairly, respectfully, and we had a lot of laughs… while all these things are great, they keep you in neutral territory. In my mind this grazes the category of “nice” when we are all shooting for “great”. Not saying or doing anything bad does not make you good. We have to do good things and great things to find what it means to be a good or even great person.

When I am served by others, I feel good.

When I serve others, I feel great.

I know I’ve said the word “service” a half dozen times, but let me re-say it.

One of my favorite ways to find a connection or build a relationship with someone is trying to find something small I can do for them. Sometimes, this means leaving little notes. Buying them a treat. Picking up their side of the room when things are stressful. Sometimes it’s bigger. Surprising them with dinner on an impossible night of studying. Folding laundry (I hate laundry… this is “big”). Breaking out the winter gloves and shoveling a driveway or two.

I do it to build our relationship. I do it to see the light it their eyes or hear the relief in their voice. But sometimes it doesn’t happen and a thank you never comes. And in this, I place the most value: I do it because God wants me to. And if nothing else, He is happy that I did.

It’s not hard to serve others, but it takes a certain amount of attention to needs.  In the busy world of today, many won’t ask for help. Sometimes you have to be there to hear what isn’t said.

I feel like there should be a more official way to end this, but instead I just have a challenge. Pray for opportunities for service. And if you don’t feel like you’re getting anything, pray for help to recognize them, because they’re there. Seek these opportunities amongst those around you.  You don’t need to be creativity to help the needs of others :)

Anyhow, that’s all I have. Yes I went over 30 minutes.

Also consider keeping a journal haha!

I love y’all,

Peace, swag, y bizgocho all the days

Jessie

On Plays, El Prado, y el Torneo Medieval

What’s up todos!

So life here is odd. Mostly because despite having a schedule, sometimes it still feels pretty disorganized. We had a big stinking exam this week, and also some fiiiield triiiips. Jessie, you are already living a field trip. How could you have a field trip within a field trip. Great question peanut gallery, lemme tellya bout it.

As far as the school days are concerned, they pass pretty quick. One of my favorite thing we do outside of school is still our intercambios. We just get to have English hour with this adorable Columbian girl and it’s so funny. Although less funny when she asks us “what is the difference between ‘joker’ and ‘clown’?” and the best I can do is draw very sloppy cartoons for her haha. Also she showed us her English homework and HOLY COW I’m SO GRATEFUL I ALREADY SPEAK ENGLISH. She was analyzing sentence structure and it was pretty much the most boring thing on the earth.  

Wednesday was exam day…. I don’t want to talk about it haha. Let’s just say there have been better days. Memorizing things that don’t have a concrete timeline in your mind? Not my specialty. Especially history. Booooo. But life goes on.

On Thursday we had the COOLEST EXPERIENCE. We went to a playyyyy!! So after school we went home and had lunch with the fam, hung around and took a nap for a while, then went to the train station and headed out to Madrid. We went to see La Estrella de Sevilla (literal translation: The Star of Sevilla) and it was SO cool. Sadly, we couldn’t take pictures. But it was crazy, there were 7 actors and basically an empty stage-no real back drops or settings. The props they had were a super minimalist chair, a crown, two swords, and about 30-or-so poles. Oh yes… and the Spanish drama unfolds. It was based off of a real historical event (of course) and you can read about it here: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Estrella_de_Sevilla

This is hard to explain exactly, but I want to say real quick why I loved the play despite probably following a whopping 40% of the dialogue…the presentation.  Like I said, they had these pole-vaulting sized rods that they used to create scenery. It was such an interesting minimalist way of telling a story. In between monologues the characters would each pull a pole out of the floor (the stage was set up so they would stand on their own) and then  anchor them in somewhere else. They were walls, hallways,  trees,  entryways,  torture instruments … haha. It was a great play.

The day after, we went to the Prado again but this time with Rebeca who teaches our civilization class. This lady knows her stuff, it was cool to be lead around chronologically talking about different paintings with someone I actually knew (read: not a tour guide). But three hours standing kind of killed. So afterwards we walked Madrid and went home. Megan, Kristen, Alysa and I went to see El Mercado de San Miguel which is one of the sites to see in Madrid and we hadn’t been since our first day in Spain. It’s really cool to see actual fresh-markets with fish and fruit and tapas!!! Expensive little tapas haha. BUT it’s also cool because everyone who is there is not on their phones. It’s actually a social activity. I mean of course it helps that adults go to the market to have real adult  social time and not a bunch of teenagers who are their to have a social time and then publish it publicly. Haha...

So that’s that, really for what I did anyways. Oh shoot haha, I wanted to talk about the fair!!!! Aw yeahhhh

So last week for La Semana Cervantina Alcalá hosted one of Europe’s largest medieval festivals. Actually, I’m almost certain it is THE largest. And it was so great!!

The streets were covered in banners and little booths of artisans with wood crafts and necklaces and spices and ham and pastries and more jewelry and rugs and floral crowns and sweets and nuts and it was great. It made me think of the farmers market back home on Saturdays y me echaba de menos mis padres jaja.

There were a bunch of activities for the four days it was set up, but we were traveling (also: it was Sunday) so we could only go to do something on Monday. So after staying in to study all day, we went to a JOUST!!!!! I thought it was going to be a bust, but it turned out to be THE MOST FUN and I was laughing and smiling for basically two hours straight. The joust was this sweet production with real caballeros and shenanigans, it was great. We sat in the blue section so our caballero was azul but I actually think he was kind of evil haha… like a bit of a villain in their production. I took some videos so if you want to see some of it they are definitely in the process of being edited and shipped to Hollywood #jokes #amateurhourwiththesmartphoneinthefrontrow

Edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCSAz2rPrdM

And after that I rode a camel. It was glorious.

Also frick, you need a ton of calf muscles for those things.

like ya now, love ya always, don’t forget about me while I’m in Spain;)

peace, swag, n blessinz

Jessie

On Salamanca, Zamora, & Ávila

Hey! Sup y’all. I cannot get the font size to be consistent on this post and it is driving me crazy. It's beyond my abilities hahaha... Be forgiving. I went for the legible size.

So this week we are in and around the town of Salamanca, Zamora, and Ávila. Map below.  I’m grouping them together because it was more or less a two-day trip and they kind of blend together in my mind. I have to apologize in advance because there is no timeline to this post.

I guess to start the trip we have to acknowledge la semana cervantina; in Alcalá right now there’s a festival that I’ve heard (and cannot verify beyond a Google search which I have no internet to do right now) that it’s the largest medieval festival in Europe. Having been to none prior to Spain, I’d have to agree haha. But anyhow it’s so cool! There are banners hanging everywhere and little booths for the artisans to sell things, we’re going to visit it when we come home. Anyhow the reason I mention it is because it happens at the Plaza de Cervantes (claro) annnnd that’s where we meet the bus. So again: big time festival: big time inconvenience haha. We had to take all our little suitcases and backpacks at 8 am and migrate a street down or so and it felt soooo silly. I hate feeling like a tourist.  Derp derp derp don’t mind us and our backpacks, pillows, and rolling suitcases on this ancient cobblestone while you’re just trying to catch the bus for work…

So these three cities are pretty small in my mind. I know they’re bigger than my tiny-tourist brain can fathom but they definitely weren’t big bustling cities like Madrid and Barcelona.

In Ávila we went to see and walk the giant murallas (walls) of the city. You know when you have days in class where you sit for 50 minutes and walk out not sure if you processed a single thing? That’s kind of how I’m feeling now writing about this weekend. Because I’ve got nothin’. Well shoot I definitely processed it, I just can’t remember it. For shame.

In Salamanca we walked the centro of the city, including (wait for it) the cathedral!! Haha. But there are some interesting things I remember about Salamanca that I can present in no particular order:

This is a staircase. Obviously. But it was just a funny little part of a palace we went to. The guide had said “notice how it’s not closed off to the city… there are two doors. So if an enemy were to come, the guards would point them to this staircase. And it’s tall enough it would give the royal family to prepare themselves but also it’s small enough that you can’t fight within it. “ I actually don’t know if I’m quoting that as accurately as I could, but like I said… it was a harder day for listening haha.

Salamanca is a university town, that’s why it’s so big. I think there are about 17,000 students or so in the town, a lot of them extranjeros learning Spanish. There are tourist shops (like all cities) every 50 feet or so, but instead with sweatshirts and tshirts for la Universidad de Salamanca haha. And there aren’t shoe stores at every corner. Salamanca is cool but I actually think Madrid is a lot cooler, although I know I’ve only seen a few hours of the city. Somehow I have skipped over our stop in Zamora. I think the issue is that Zamora and Salamanca are too similar with the S-sounds. Also it’s because I legitimately can’t separate them in my mind. So from this point on the specifics of these stories are all just heading south haha…

Salamanca has this thing for frogs. It was tough for me to put this together at first because when the guide started talking about the history/story she would say una rana (frog) and I heard arana (araña = spider) haha. But then we would walk down the street and see a bajillion frogs at the tourist shops. So anyhow, it’s all based off this story that I am also going to link you to so my sparknotes does not destroy it:  http://spanishinspain.blogspot.com.es/2014/08/the-frog-of-salamanca.html OR journals.worldnomads.com/colleen_finn/story/.../The-Salamanca-frog

Basically, Salamanca loves frogs. Skim the articles.

After our tour of the city, Rachel, Sarah, Alyssa, and I decided to sit down and grab dinner after a day of walking. And it was phenomenal. It’s such a European thing to sit and just enjoy a meal and your company and it’s so relaxing! When you make the time for it anyways. Otherwise it’s way stressful because you just want “american service” (quick, to the point, bend-over-backwards-to-please–the-customer). I had a seasoned hamburger with tomatoes and fries. I know that doesn’t sound exotic, but it was so stinking good. And I know if I haven’t mentioned it here, I at least made in my mind a goal to order different things to eat but I will talk about this in a sec.

Probably one of the most fun things we did in Zamora (?) was going out to eat as a group. Eating as friends is so stressful figuring out the check. But sometimes our director pays for us to get a snack together that the guide recommends to us when we finish, and we actually had a meal and it was so good. I made a goal in my mind at the beginning of the study abroad to step out of my comfort zone and order things on the menu that I either 1. Have never had 2. If I’ve had nothing on the menu at all, order something I can’t pronounce and so far this has worked flawlessly with the exception of when people ask what I ate I also can’t remember it haha. Sometimes though, you gotta be real… I am in Europe and paying for food, just because I’m having a cultural experience does not mean I should hate my life (or in other words.. my meal) because sometimes it’s anyone’s best guess when we’ll have time to sit down and eat again. SO IN CONCLUSION oh man I just love hamburgers

Other things we did:

SAW SOME CATHEDRALZ

WENT TO SUM MOOSUMS

TALK WIF DA ESPAÑOLAS

Alyssa and I went to this cool Art Nouveau art museum and it was really great. It wasn’t the type I was hoping for (Alfonse Mucha: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfons_Mucha) but I had time to sketch some really fun things. Maybe someday I’ll post those here, too. It was fun going to a loser museum. Of course it was professional and with important pieces, it also had these beautiful stained glass pieces and was just a smaller museum (aka: not the Prado) so it was just a little bit more home-y. Oh and in regards to “talkn wif sum españolas”, that’s not a cool story. We just walked across this ancient roman bridge to the other side of town looking for a famous statue. Apparently it was at the beginning of the bridge and we didn’t see it, so we had a fun chit chat with a local while she walked us back to show us. I love these people!

So remember that link about the frog I just gave? You really should read it. It has this great bit about Ávila that I will straight up copy/paste and not at all claim to have written:

Ávila is a fortress town, with a medieval stone wall that surrounds the city. The town is probably most known for St. Teresa of Ávila, a nun who founded a more primitive order of Carmelites known as the decalced, or “barefoot” Carmelites. After she died, her body was exhumed and found to be in pristine condition—so much so that the Catholics regarded it as a miracle and declared her a saint. As a reward for sainthood (okay, I am writing this part with a touch of sarcasm), a few fingers were cut from her right hand. Allegedly, Franco himself (Spain´s dictator until 1975) kept these fingers next to his bed.

Gruesome little anecdote, isn´t it? But then again, many religious stories are.

We saw this. And I was still gathering my bearings after temporarily losing the group (yes: I’m that kid on the field trip... basically always) and I remember having the 13 of us plus the tour guide huddled around this glass case that said NO TOCAR, NO FOTOS.

Because there was a finger behind the glass.

This stinking ancient, rotting, once-fleshy thing!!!!

Honestly………………………………ew.

So if that is not an exciting way to end this post, I don’t know what is haha. A pointless and funny bit about this trip is also this little tangent I have about the “spain accent” … because I love it. And I feel like among extranjeros it’s hit-or-miss and especially in our group it’s definitely more of a miss. But here’s the thing: IT’S SO USEFUL.

For those reading who don’t speak Spanish or are unaware of the specifics of the “lisp-y Spain accent”, in short, in Spain they use the sound / θ/  or “theta” (but say it like you’re Spanish… so th-ay-tah. Actually I can’t really break that down better unless it was in person). It’s the “really gross lispy Spanish” that I’ve basically heard every in the states say they can’t stand. And I agreed with them up until I had heard it and had to experience it. For example, and my explanations are limited over text, but for example:

Zapato (LA: zah-pah-toe)

Zapato (ES: th-uh-pah-toe)

Luz (LA: loo-z, almost exactly the same as “lose” like “you lose the game”)

Luz (ES: loo-th, like “mama my tooth is looth!!” haha)

Decir (LA: day-seer)

Decir (ES: day-th-ear)

but the “lispy” theta sound is not used for every s- sound or every time you see a “c”

Casa (LA: cah-sah)

Casa (ES: cah-sah)

Considerado (LA: con-see-d-air-ah-doh)

Considerado (ES: con-see-d-air-ah-doh)

*LA: Latin America ES: España

Dang I am so good at this phonetics game. #jokes

ANYWAYS the reason why I mention it:

Once upon a time back at BYU I was having a discussion about different dialects in Spanish, as Spanish students usually do pretty much at least once a week. Someone had told me that the Spain accent is actually ‘super useful in regards to spelling’ or something like that, but… I pretty much forgot it almost immediately after.

But now it has come back in vivid HD color: because I spelled “Zamora” wrong for this entire post when I first started writing I haha This happened since 1. I hadn’t seen any signs that said “Zamora” all day and didn’t think anything of it until the little red squiggle popped up on Microsoft Word but also 2. I spent the day with our BYU group which includes a general majority of Spanish speakers who have learned south-american Spanish. This includes mexico, Costa Rica, or our director and his wife who are from the Domincan Republic. SO when Profesor Alba is saying “Zamora” it sounds exactly exactly the same if he were to say “Samora” and so thus we see my plight.

That took way longer to explain than it should have, but cheers to you for reading this far!!

Peace swag blessinz and frozen yogurt,

Lotsa love

Jessie

Also: we walked around a fountain six times to help us find true love. Oh Spain.

Also also: Alyssa and I went to a 15 minute theatre production for 3 euros and it was hilarious. Not for the faint of heart. Read: not a G-rated performance, not for an LDS audience. Lessons learned… oh Spain.