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The Balancing Tale

"Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends.You are constantly off balance."

- Cesare Pavese 

Traveling can balance you and leave you unbalanced at the same time. Life happens at home when you are not around, trains take longer than you think and you end up taking 6 different trains sometimes to get where you want to go, traveling makes you tired. 

After walking the streets of Italy, and wondering the ruins of Athens, after several hours of train rides to Paris, Copenhagen, Goteborg, and Oslo I came to a realization that despite the joy of traveling to someplace new its hard because I started to feel off balance. 

In all of those places, I encountered water and sailboats! In those times when I've been traveling, I felt like I was on my sail boat. You set off looking out onto the water, wanting to feel the waves splash across your boat, wanting to catch the wind, go fast go far, race the other boats, see the sun set from the middle of the lake, explore the other side. However, what you don't realize is how strong the winds get in the middle, how confusing the winds can get when they come from multiple directions, and how when you're in the middle of the lake how much balance it takes to keep your boat from capsizing. When a gust of wind comes you have a couple different options: (1) let out your sail, slow down, don't capsize. (2) sheet in the sail, catch the wind, hike out, balance the boat. (3) sheet in, catch the wind, forget about balance and end up in the water. There are many other variations but these are the main three. When you've been sailing for a while, finding the balance of the boat comes naturally, knowing what to do in situations is like knowing your own name. 

I don't have that luxury yet of knowing balance on a study abroad program or knowing the balance of traveling like I do the sailboat. Life is all about finding and creating balance between social time and alone time, balance between too much sugar and the "right" amount, balance between talking too much and talking too little, balance between family and traveling, balance between studying and traveling. We are faced with this challenge of balance everyday. So how do I find and create balance between all these aspects?

This is what I have learned so far. Balance is about being flexible.When I look at water it reminds me of something my dad always said to me. That you just need to let things run off your cheek like water and oil. Or something like that... who knows what he actually he said because I was crying so much when he said it! Essentially, he was saying that I need to let things go so that the world around me can rebalance itself. When you're on a sailboat and you know you can't balance your boat, there is one thing you can do, we call it the safety position, let go of the tiller and the main sheet and your boat turns into the wind, you may feel a little wobbly, but it gives you time to collect yourself and your boat. It gives you time to rebalance. 

Balance is about knowing your limits. Balance is about being able to say that you know yourself well enough to not be afraid to say no or say I need to stop - to let go of a few things in order to collect yourself. Balance is about knowing what your priorities are and what needs focus for the world around you to rebalance itself.

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Heavenly Father, in you we find balance. May we draw closer to you everyday so that we can experience that balance so that we can experience shalom.

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Excursion #5 - Rotterdam

Rotterdam! A diverse city, which isn't surprising since it is a port city and was the main hub for migration to the new world - Hotel New York!! Additionally, there are 30 mosques and about 250 Christian Churches for a population of just over half a million making it the Netherlands second largest city.

A theme commonly repeated on all of our excursions is that space is everything. These houses are a great example of that. Rather than using the space on the ground the architect decided to use the space in the air. This leaves room for shops, walking paths, a little garden, and bike storage just below the houses.

The most impressing portion of the excursion to Rotterdam was the visit the Turkish Mosque. We drank Turkish tea, discussed the Islamic religion, and saw inside the prayer room. This visit helped me to see past the news and how media portrays Islam. I never realized how clouded my vision could get but the visit helped me to see past the muck that's in the news.

In a typical dutch fashion, our group biked around the city! But I forgot my emergency potato in case of hunger. ;) Thankfully, we had a stop at the Market! All these different food vendors inside one place. The walls even screamed food (not literally, but in the art)!

Lord, you are the one true God! Thank you for sending your son Jesus to save us from our sin. 

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You know you've been abroad for over two months when you start counting in Dutch! #studyabroad #katiespiceurope

— Katie Argo (@katie_argo) March 19, 2016

from Twitter https://twitter.com/katie_argo

March 19, 2016 at 02:25AM
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