Daylight year round: 6 am to 6 pm.

Days in the office are filled with trying to look up spanish words I don't know in the dictionary, browsing the internet, and of course lunch for an hour. The biggest meal of the day, starting with soup, then the main dish which usually consists of meat, rice, potatoes and/or yucca, salad and fresh fruit juice.

I am growing antsy with sitting in the office with not much to do, and am getting frustrated with not having a camera to take photos. Today I'm going to hopefully enroll in a Spanish class at a nearby university.

Last week I went to a mission in one of the poorest parts of Bogota. The Padre proudly showed me around the mission(combination of a church and home for old ladies). Here also, in the afternoons they serve kids a hearty lunch and help them with their homework. After showing me around, the Padre sat me in a chair and had the kids come and ask me questions and then he left the room. I know! That was my first reaction also, 'what! he's leaving me in the room alone with all these kids!' The second, 'What's to fear? Bring it on!' Then came the questions- rapid fire. How many aunts and uncles do you have? Did you actually fly on an airplane? How many kids do you have? Do you shower with warm water? They were sooo excited, all of the kids started talking at once. I could not understand a thing, even when only one child was talking at a time. It was great. Eventually the kids requested that I sing, I don't sing. I sang. Animated camp songs. This got the kids even more excited and they dragged me out to teach me how to play soccer in the street.

Any fears I had about working with children, or not knowing a language evaporated within milliseconds and I left the mission completely speechless. They were so wonderful, and so happy, so simple in the most magnificent of ways.

Being a little selfish on my part, I want more of this more interaction, more depth, more challenge, more of anything. I am still 'observing' and learning so much and know things will begin to fall into place as the year carries on, trying keeping in mind this is only just barely completing my second week in Colombia. Patience Audra, patience.

First Impressions

I stare out my office window into another world. There is a street that winds up the hill leading to a view of a lush and majestic mountain. I get lost in my thoughts, trying to break down everything that has happened within the past week. I suppose I will start with a few things I have noticed...

1. I don't know why they put lines on the roads, because they don't mean anything to cars. Pedestrians DO NOT have the right of way.

2. Bogota is built out of brick, with much more of a European feel, and I am 7th tallest person in the city.

3. Cows, goats, sheep, horses are kept on the sides of roads or in pastures. They are tied to 5ft. ropes that are attached to steaks in the ground.

4. A small cup of absolutely delicious coffee follows lunch, and is had with a small snack for dinner, unless you prefer hot chocolate. plus bread. such good bread.

5. Curbs are about a foot high.

My host dad is having his brain tumor removed today, and the other night I had a conversation with my host brothers about him, and how he has changed. Please keep my host family in your prayers. I cannot imagine how difficult it has been on my host mom or the family and I am so inspired by the love they still have and show for one another, and still have room to generously and graciously welcome me into their family. I feel overwhelmed by the generosity and could not have asked for a better host family, or entry into the country. Every priest I have met has invited me to come to their parish to talk, to help, or just to share a part of themselves with me.

Mostly I have been doing translating work, English to Spanish in the Diocesan office. Tomorrow, I am getting my visa (knock on wood) and Thursday I will be heading out with a priest to help with a few projects in his neighborhood. Photos from a weekend trip are coming soon!

imagine. believe. inspire.

Ok folks, here I am sitting in the terminal of LAX, a quarter of the way to my destination of Bogota, Colombia trying to stay calm. My tickets all got canceled so the nice lady at the ticket counter spent half an hour trying to fix it while I stood staring at the other passengers lugging their the 100 pound bags on the scale and frantically pulling out cheap knock puma knock-offs trying to make their body bags a tad lighter. Watching them while trying to translate their rapid Spanish caused reality to hit me like a brick wall. Doging my fearful thoughts in an effort to stay calm and take deep breaths was not easy.

The reality was that I was standing in LAX thinking about how little I know about the challenges that many Colombians face. I began thinking about how I do not know what I will encounter over the next year, will it be the 10 year old child begging for money that once received will be used to buy drugs which ease the pains of being homeless and alone? Or will it be having to see first hand the damage of Plan Colombia seeing that lands that have been raped and pillaged? These thoughts quickly escalated when I realized that yes, these are the some realities I might have to face, but there is also so much more to it then this.

It is unusal that I let these thoughts get to me but being 1 am and just having finished my last phone call in the US I am having difficutly articulating my mixture of feelings and emotions. But summed up aside from a little tired I feel good. This is exactly where I am supposed to, and want to be. I am ready to be humbled, to learn, to share, to give completely all I have to give, to fully live this experience. This year will be full of challenging and amazing moments and I feel good and am ready to embrace everything, to embrace life. So I want to leave you all with a bit of advice I heard recently...

Go create yourselves memories!

I fly away... September 9th

As I fall deeper into the whirlwind of preparations for Colombia there is one nostalgic song that plays on repeat in my mind, it is a terrible soundtrack. It takes me back to my teeny bopper days of the late 90's to the pop boy band group N*SYNC. For some reason unannounced to me I cannot stop the "catchy lyrics" from playing on repeat, they a go little something like this '...here we go one more time, everybody's feeling fine now. Yes, yes, yes here we go now." (It does make me smile as it transports me into the memories of the younger years of my exquisite youth)

The ironic thing happens to be I do not think 'everybody's feeling fine now'. Many people have expressed their strong feelings about their views on Colombia AND their even stronger views on Audra Marie Krislock, age 23, living in Colombia for one year. These thoughts include but are not limited to the simple fact that there is probably no reason that I would ever need to step foot outside my apartment in Bogota. Not even for a breath of fresh air because that was the entire logic behind the invention of windows. Now I am being a little dramatic and although I do understand this fear and know there is validity to it, it saddens me a little and I'm not exactly how to explain. It might be that I hope that others will feel the same sense of calming peace that I do about my soon to be adventure. But then again God did make all of us humans quite different, so my goal for the year: bask in the worlds inhomogeneity.

Thinking about the wide variety of peoples reactions has caused a realization to strike me. It is the appreciation and love I have for challenge. Challenge causes growth and if something stops growing it dies. This love of challenge/growth is not a feeling everyone gets as excited about, or actively pursues. The number of you who have expressed some concern but intertwined it with such kind words, support and love is very much out weighed by the latter.

And a quick logistical update... struggling to get everything in line before September 9th has made for quite a full plate tacked on with a huge side dish of some big 'life lessons' mostly in the areas of my patience and faith. I have been trying to invest my faith consciously in many positive thoughts and prayers such as: everything with the visa will come through, they will let me into the country without too heavy of an interrogation, and I will have raised enough money before my departure. Aside from those three minor details, I sleep very well at night.

Summer flies

I am getting a little more nervous and excited as September nears and summer flies by. I cannot believe that September comes after August, it seems to be ridiculously soon. I tried watching a Colombian movie a few nights ago, trying to prepare myself and oh boy, I have a ton of catching up to do... I had to put on English subtitles. I have decided to trust in the fact of what everyone is saying about how all my Spanish will come rushing back once I am there.

Update on Colombia... I recently found out I will be living with a host family for the first three months in Bogotá until another YASCer, Laura-Catherine, arrives in January, when we will move together into an apartment. This will be neat, I think I am getting the best of both worlds, a family experience and independence.