thunder thunder.

it's 5:06am. i leave marias home in about an hour, and i leave madrid in 4. i still haven't been to sleep.

i just said goodbye to periko about 30 minutes ago. it was hard. really hard.

it's thundering outside. it's the perfect sort of thunder, too. gentle but still strong.

instead of sleeping, i'm sitting. reading. waiting. and i read something from a poetry book that i was given last summer at the farm that my friend joy wrote. i want to share it. because it's absolutely perfect.

actually, before i came to spain, and when i was questioning whether or not i should come, we were talking about poetry in my small group. so i made everyone get up on a table and read something. i chose this poem, not even really thinking about it. and by the end of the poem, i was crying..in front of everyone..completely unexpected. but now i understand why. thanks, holy spirit.

under the spanish sun

her heart began to breathe

of legendary fairytales

and wildly tossed blue seas

under the spanish sun

her hope was brought to life

of paths that led through forests

and faintly lit dark nights

under the spanish sun

her dream was rising new

of undetermined footprints

and thoughts that danced in few

under the spanish sun

she loved herself again.

-joy collins.

(thanks joy. love you.)

adiossssss. :)

next time i write to you, i will be italian.

-brooke.

packing day.

i am the worst packer in the world.

i have about 50 million things i would like to leave in spain...

also, i have 4 bottles of wine, all of which were given to me for free might i add, that are causing me quite a dilemma. i can't mail them..unless i want to be a felon...and i can't put them in my bag..unless i want to pay extra money for having a 50 million pound bag.

rats.

i'll figure something out. mostly because i want to have dreamy nights with my friends drinking wine on my porch, eating brooke-cooked meals, and looking at my mountain. soaking in the beauty of the Lord.

i leave at 6:30 am. we're about to spend quality time with maria. then we're going to an amusement park with periko. i thought that today would be really really hard. but it's been okay so far.

the Lord is good. so good and kind. I'm incredibly thankful for every moment, every heart, and every breath of this season. he's intentional, guys. so intentional. i love that about Him.

-iva

ps. just in case you missed it yesterday... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqUsAHTUPTU

here it comes.

it hit me today.

i'm leaving friday. i'm leaving maria. i'm leaving juan. i'm leaving my 3 baylor girls. i'm leaving my daily unconventional spanish life lesson sessions with juan. i'm leaving eating all of my meals on the terrace of my dreams. our favorite spanish friend and maybe one of the most incredible guys i've ever met, periko. the peace of this home. my corner nook bed. being 20 minutes late to school everyday and having maria and juan laugh us out the door. i'm leaving the home i've made here. and i'm sad. i'm really, really sad.

i usually don't cry about leaving somewhere before the day that i leave, but this afternoon, monique and i said goodbye to a lot of the kids in our program who fly out in the morning. it started then i guess. it's weird because even though i'm leaving madrid, i'm still not going "home home". but i'm going to italy which will be so good, i know it. but moral of the story is, i walked around the royal palace this afternoon with my friends and tried my best to take it all in. i came home with monique and napped some, and i woke up and ate dinner with maria. i haven't stopped crying since. i'm a big baby. lets just be honest. i can't handle this.

it's crazy how quickly a month has flown by.


and it's even crazier how much i've fallen in love with spain.

spain has given me the most beautiful space to live my life without any pressure or any expectation of who i'm supposed to be or what i'm supposed to be doing. it's been really really good for me. because believe it or not, i put a lot of pressure on myself when it just comes to simple living. and that's ridiculous. but i'm learning. and i'm moving. everyday i get a little taller and a little freer. and i like that. i'm thankful.

someone told me something last summer that still continues to rock my life even to this day.

"the thumbprint of the enemy is pressure"

holy crap. yes. is that true, or is that true? just saying. if you don't get anything out of what i write at all, remember that.

i don't really know what to blog about anymore. i've kind of been a lame writer. but the past 2 weeks have been the biggest whirlwind. in the best sense. we went to a place called Cadiz and layed on the most beautiful beach imaginable. then monique and i discotecha'd it up until 6:30am the other weekend. that was a for sure life highlight for me. it's a pretty normal spain thing, but it's generally not a normal brooke thing. i like it though. i like dancing ridiculously.

i made a new spanish boyfriend. i don't really remember his name. it was faudio or fabio or something..probably faudio. but he came up to me in the discotecha and yelled "shakira! shakira!" at me and bowed in front of me. it was one of the more wonderful, hilarious moments of my life..mostly because i dance like an idiot 100 percent of the time. he found of that my name was Iva, prounounced as Eva in spanish, like Eve in the bible, and he told me that I was Eve..the definition of a woman. this was one of the more uncomfortable awkward hilarious moments in my life. but due to the fact that he was not a creeper, 5 inches shorter than me, and i could have crushed him, he gained spanish boyfriend status.

anyway, i have to go i have to go i have to go! i have much more to say. many life lessons to share. sorry i'm a lame blog writer. but i gave you this at least.

love you friends.

brooke.

ps. song of the day. makes me cry and shows me the face of the Lord everytime.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqUsAHTUPTU

i am riding a moto tonight.


dream come true. dream come true. dream come true. dream come true. dream come true.

hey friends.

short, quick update.

i've been out of town for the weekend and we just got back last night...and i just woke up at 4:30pm. haha. in the past 24 hours:

i've been in 3 cities, 2 trains, layed out on the spanish shore, gotten surprisingly aggressive towards creepy men and rude old women, went to a discotecha until 6am, met a bunch of great italians who protected us from violadores on the dance floor, ate pizza for breakfast with them on the side of the road, played imaginary baseball, watched a full game of chess be hopped out, met a metro creeper who chased us around the metro train, finally lost him, got 2 new spanish boyfriends (one of which is the most precious gay men i've ever met, and the other was just precious), got called shakira on the dance floor all night (personal highlight) and finally ended it all at 8 am.

i love my life.

i'll give you a real update soon. that's just for your imagination to marinate on.

love you guys. it's good to be back at home in madrid.

brooke.

today.

today i stood in front of vincent van gogh and claude monet's original work and cried.

it was a really good day.

blending.

fact.

the other day i was walking down the street and a woman comes up to me and asks me in spanish if i lived here.

YES. I AM BLENDING.

it took everything inside of me to smile and say no. i can only wish for now.

but the good news is, i am blending. my future hopes of living in spain someday are looking bright. Praise God.

it's true though. i'm blending. i don't get heavily stared at as much on the metro, though it still happens. AND i can completely fend for myself in the H&M dressing room. that's really all that matters, right??

I have three pieces of really good news. well, four.

The first: today during our class break, i discovered paprika pringles. holy crap. reason enough for me to move back to spain. i like them even more than chicken nuggets. THIS IS A BIG DEAL.

second: i found out where the nun sweets are hidden, so today we are going to go buy sweets from nuns in plaza conde del miranda. i'm excited.

third: i have a new plan of action for riding a moto. i'm going to pick one that i like from the rows after rows of motos that i see parked on my way to school everyday, and leave my phone number on it. it's worth a shot, right? it has to happen.

but if it doesn't happen in spain it can happen in.........

ITALY!!!

that's right. breaking news piece number four. I'm going to italy. Monique and I are going when classes are done and are visiting her family for another week. so that means, dear boone and america, i won't see you until mid/late julyish.

sorry.

but i love you.

wish me luck on my nun sweets, moto, and kike adventures.

brooke.

(i don't have a song of the day yet, i'm still singing the cranberries. listen to it again.)

good morning, spain.

Today is another day. And today, oh so thankfully, is a new day.

I was sick again yesterday. Probably worse than I have been, but i think it's mostly because I'm dehydrated (or so my self-proclaimed MD skills have decided). I drank 9 bottles of water while we were walking around toledo on thursday, and drank a lot (so i thought) yesterday, but i realized last night after feeling like i was going to pass out all day, that i hadn't peed in two days. not at all. scary stuff. so needless to say, i drank jarros de agua after jarros de agua for dinner...and peed...a lot. joyfully cheering inside of myself each time as i walked to the bathroom.

today, i feel much better. though i still can't breathe.

I just came outside to the terrace to find a bird sitting on my laptop, just hanging out. he flew away when i came to sit down, but he's still lingering around some, here and there. i think he likes me. or my muffin that i'm eating..which would make much more sense..but i am going to let myself believe that he likes me. you know, my personal little spanish pet bird. i hope he sings me spanish love ballads.

On friday we went to a place called Toledo. It's in the south of spain, and it's absolutely beautiful. Super historical. Really intriguing. We visited some cathedrals, a monastery, and a synagogue. I'm learning so much. I am going to know everything about the history of spain by the time that this trip is over. i'm okay with that. i like spain.

i took yesterday to rest. i went and hung out in a coffee shop with my friend Chris, and wrote postcards. there's nothing like a starbucks in the middle of madrid. the sounds of ray lamontagne and boisterous spaniards laughing, while sitting in a sunwarmed cozy chair=so ideal. i am sure that many of you reading this will reap the fruits of yesterday, too. i wrote some killer postcards...just saying.

on a more personal note, yesterday was a pretty monumental day for me, on a really ridiculous level. judge me if you want, but i'm overcoming fear here.

all of us from our program were hanging out late on wednesday night because we didn't have classes the next day because it was a holiday (ptlptlptl). and as we all probably know, brooke (me) isn't the best going-outer because i don't really drink a lot. but since we're in spain, and since our motto right now is "cuando in espana" i went anyways, and decided in my heart that i was going to have fun. that i was going to love myself. and that i was going to enjoy being young and strikingly beautiful (ha! c:) while being sober. woooo!

i was successful. i had a really good time. i like being young. and i like being strikingly beautiful. and i like being sober. and that night, (get ready for it kim forren and jessica langevin!!!!) i met a boy.

(don't worry, mom.)

his name is enrique, kike (keekay) is his nickname. it's pretty much the standard spanish nickname for anyone named enrique in spain. he's really nice, about a foot or so taller than me, he speaks perfect english, spanish, and italian. and he's smart. like really smart. he's 25 and works as a psychologist, so i am sure that he was shrinking me for the entire hour that we talked. within the first five minutes of us talking, he found out that i came to madrid to study spanish, so from that point on, he refused to speak to me in english. so at this point, i was not only terrified because i was talking to a boy, but i was also terrified because i was talking to a boy...who is much smarter than me...in spanish.

but like the Lord told me on the plane over to madrid, I'm overcoming fear in a new language. literally now.

disclaimer break: i absolutely can't believe that i just wrote about a boy that i met on my blog. who am i? this is weird. for the record,

1. i am not in love. nor am i in like

2. he is not a creeper (praise God).

3. i generally try to use good judgement

4. i still fully believe with all of my heart that boys are trouble, so don't worry.

5. he was not drunk either (praise God again.)

6. this is really good for me. (I LOVE YOU MOM!)

so yeah, anyway, he and i just talked for an hour or so, in spanish, because according to him, if i'm here to learn spanish, i'm not allowed to speak english. hahaha, i think it's a really great philosophy. and then when my friends were ready to leave, i told him it was good to talk to him and started to walk away. but then, he stopped me, and asked if i wanted his number. i almost peed my pants (except, i haven't been peeing a lot here recently, luckily this time).

i've never ever taken a number from a boy.

i've never ever given my number to a boy.

especially in a foreign country.

but you know what they say...cuando en espana.....

so i said SURE, fully intending to never call him, only taking it to be polite. so he gave me his weird, 9 digit european phone number. and told me about 3 different times to call him.

whatever. brooke davis does not call boys.

but then yesterday, after my day of rest with starbucks, ray lamontagne, and postcards, i decided i wanted to call him. where this desire came from, i have no idea. but you know, i figured something.

it's time to stop being so afraid of other people.

so whether or not i called him because i wanted to see him or because i knew it was good for me to get over this fear, i'm not sure. either way. i had to do it.

cuando en espana, right?

so after about an hour of freaking out, stressing myself into having a near asthma attack, and convincing my roommate to call and pretend like she was me on the phone, i finally calmed down and called him. ha! this is a big deal people!!!!! he was great. super nice. super gentleman of the year award to kike. so i invited him to come hang out with some of my friends and i.

he said yes. HE SAID YES.

guys, you have no idea. it took an act of congress for me to press send on my phone.

so he did. he came and hung out. he was great. speaking spanish was great. all of that was great, don't get me wrong. but i must say, i was absolutely terrified the entire night. i am terrible at talking to boys. terrible. even if they like me. NO. especially if they like me.

however though kike is great, i can also say, that it may have been one of the most awkward nights of my life. long story short i learned quickly that 25 year old business professionals have much different interests than a large group of 20-21 year old students in spain from the united states. meaning that my friends and his friends weren't the easiest two groups to mix.

did i mention that it was awful?

i quickly became very apologetic.

so he and his friend left early, and brooke, having her nerves shot, left and went home shortly after.

ayekarumba.

this morning, sitting on my porch with the Lord, kind of reflecting on things, i realized something and decided some things.

i refuse to apologize for myself.

i refuse to apologize for the things that i love.

i refuse to compromise what i know and what i've learned from the Lord through living for anyone--spanish OR american.

i know who i am. i trust who i'm becoming.

yes i am young. yes i still have so much to learn, but i've already learned so much. part of humility is wisdom. and part of wisdom is humility. you can't have one without the other.

but now i can honestly say this. i am proud of myself for calling that boy. i'm proud of myself for choosing confidence and grace. yes, the night was awkward, but it wasn't my fault. i'm not going to apologize for that.

and to bring it all back in, i'll say this. the Lord is moving me forward. always moving me forward. always moving me forward. glory to glory. victory to victory. because that's what i was made for. to be victorious. to be fearless. to be humble. but to be wise. to love myself. and i do. i really really do.

so whether or not kike ever calls me ever again, whatever.

plus, we gotta learn to laugh at ourselves. we take ourselves tooooo seriously tooooo much.

seriously, whatever.

i'm just proud of myself. i refuse to be afraid.

He gives us a voice and something to proclaim every day.

plus, my husband is going to be super dreamy and super anointed and super chosen for me by the Lord. i aint scurred of no love!

that's all. thanks for reading this long rant. thanks for valuing it with me.

it took a lot for me to blog about a boy.

love you all. :)

brooke.

PS. SONG OF THE DAY:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlMWAl7tIro

i'm sorry feet.

hello world.

my feet hate me.

since being in madrid, i've walked everywhere, in really not great shoes. yes they're cute and perfect..but they're also perfect for giving me blisters. i have four blisters on each foot, right where my toes and the ball of my feet meet. it huuuuuuurts. i couldn't walk very well yesterday, and i tried to wear new heels out to match the spaniards, but that was a fail. the heel wearing didn't even make it down our nine flights of stairs.

but maybe tonight will be more successful. they're super cute. i have to push through.

today is saturday. i don't know what i'm going to do today. i think i want to go buy sweets from nuns. and spend some good quality time by myself and with the Lord. Spains been so beautiful, but it's been hard in the sense that i've gotten really little amounts of time to myself. but today, it's going to happen. it has to happen. because it's going to be a good, good day.

love you friends. :)

brooke

cuando en espana...

hola mundo.

i've been really bad at blogging lately. like really terribly bad. sorryyyy. i in fact though have had many life moments where i'm like dang. i need to write about this. anyway. im committing to doing this now before i go to sleep.

since i've been in madrid, i've been walking my little butt off. the balls of my feet are completely covered in blisters, in places i didn't even know it was possible to get blisters. my feet feel it. but i like it. i like walking. i'm a healthy girl now.

tomorrow we go to a place called toledo. it's in spain, the south of spain to be exact. it's going to be great. what is there, i am really not sure, but i am excited either way, and am sure that i'll have learned plenty to tell you all about in a day or so.

things in the Cortez/Dominguez household have been bueno lately. Maria and Juan are well. The other day, Juan told Monique and I that we were boring because we slept too much. He told us that all we did was sleep and eat, sleep and eat sleep and eat...and that in a week we would be dying from depression. hysterical. for the record, i am not depressed, and i am very busy as well. For a few days, things were maybe a little intense around the house. It's quite possibly because culturally men and women dynamics in the home are just a lot different. But we've been laughing a lot with Juan. Laughing a lot with maria. Acting like 5 year olds all together. It's perfect. I couldn't ask for a better household to keep me from the spanish "violadores" (creepers) and to ask me about how my spanish boyfriends are.

In the past few days, monique and I have just gotten really really comfortable. Comfortable in spain, comfortable on the metro, comfortable with each other, with juan and maria, with the other girls in our casa, etc etc. So it's been good. because we've gotten past those initial uncomfortable moments of insecurity...thus bringing forth lots of laughter.

The other day in class, i made a list of some life lesson observations to blog about. They're importante, mostly.

1. Never judge by your first impressions.

Mother Teresa once said "If you judge someone, you have no time to love them". We must give everyone a chance. Never write anyone off..you might be very pleasantly, beautifully surprised.

2. Everyone--i mean EVERYONE, has a right to self-confidence. To living a life free from fear.

Everyone has a right to love themselves completely. And we must allow ourselves that rights.

This past weekend i went shopping with maria and monique. While trying on clothes i realized that i am a giant in the spanish world. Spanish girls are really tiny. And they wear clothing that is even more tiny than them. And walking down the streets with my incredibly beautiful friends, i'll admit that i had a couple of days of complete insecurity..dealing with stuff that i haven't dealt with in a long time. but then i decided this.

insecurity is completely ridiculous. and i chose to be confident. and i chose to love myself. because if i was fearfully and wonderfully made, then i can be sure that i wasn't made inferior to anyone. but so perfectly who i am.

plus, self confidence, in my opinion, is the most beautiful thing about a woman. period.

3. Our everyday experience can change our lives if we let them. we must be teachable. Goodness gracious, must we be teachable. If we lose the ability to learn, then we lose the ability to live. Something the Lord taught me a long time ago was this: "Wisdom is always learning". It is ALWAYS learning. We are given a choice in everything. To choose maturity or to choose to be immature. To choose maturity really does refine our hearts. To make us more whole, more full, more wise, more patient, and much more like children.

Isn't that the point? Following Jesus is as simple as our choices sometimes. To choose him is not to choose yourself. But him. To choose the Jesus inside of you. To choose to believe that you're no longer apart from him, but now one with him. And you have to honor that and get over yourself and just LOVE yourself. You HAVE to.

I love life lessons if you haven't noticed. Annnnd also, i love life. period.

Side note observations about spain:

1. they never sleep. nightlife starts at midnightish. People stay out til 6am when everything closes. this is crazy to me. but fun. also, clubs in spain are called discotecas. hows 80s, right? :)

2. spanish men are still very forward. i think i already said that once. but also, italian men are more forward. nooooooo bueno.

however, there's been some really redemptive things happening in that department. since being in spain, i've been stared at, yelled at, and asked really not okay things by men. fully frustrated and done with spanish strangers and never wanted to go anywhere monique and i made a friend. we met him last week when our friends were walking around madrid our first friday night trying to find something to do. our friends met his friends and the rest is history. since then, monique hung out with him a lot. he took us on a nice little walking guided native spaniard tour of madrid. he knows probably everything. he's probably the kindest guy i've ever met (other than the fact that he hates the police). he speaks no english, and never wants to learn to speak english, because he's fully convinced that spanish is better and that he never needs to go to the states because he doesn't think it necessary to ever leave europe. i think i fully agree with him. he's a lot of fun, and i'm glad he's spanish. everyone needs a good spanish best friend. thanks, Lord.

another random side note.

The other night while walking around el sol, which is like the hot spot in madrid, I saw prostitutes all up and down the street for the first time in my life. i know that i've seen prostitution in movies and statistics and stories, but to actually see the woman---to see the life---right in front of you, was completely different. my heart hurt. and it hurt really really bad. what made it worse was that they were on the same street as the police were just hanging out..maybe 25 yards away...doing nothing. it made me sick. the reality of that lifestyle became really real and really intense. i can't imagine having nothing or no one to come home to.

okay. sleep now. toledo in the morning. 100 million degree weather y mas blisters on my feets. for the record, i am feeling a lot better. i still can't breathe very well, but im trying. i've been trying to run in spain for the past couple of days. it's been successful.

k. love you all. besosssss

iva.

ps. 2 things.

first, everyone in spain calls me iva. i love that. it's mostly bc no one can pronounce brooke. but iva (or e-vah as they say) works beautifully for me.

second, go look up the song "he woke me up again" by sufjan stevens. RIGHT NOW. i've been singing it all day. thats all.

segovia.

hola amigos. :)

finally, a real post. sorry for the delay, because i know you've all been sweating to hear about my life. (jay kay, but not really.) it's tuesday afternoon and i came home sick from school today. i woke up, tired and grumpy and couldn't eat my breakfast. by the time i got to school, i was coughing my brains out. i took my inhaler like 7 times yesterday and 2 times today already and it's helped me none. this has never happened to me in america. que pasa, espana???

it's okay, because it's making for really good down time to rest and to process and to read and pray and be taken care of by maria. tuesdays are the days when she cleans the flat. i really think that woman has magic in her hands or something, because every thing that she touches becomes beautiful. seriously, monique and i have been trying to keep our room clean..for the most part...and we both thought that we were doing really well. until now when i just came home and it feels like an angel is among us. it's peaceful again in here.

so now i rest. and tell stories.

on thursday our class went to this place in spain called Segovia. it's an incredibly beautiful place. it's where the first (maybe first?) roman aqueduct is and it's HUGE. huge. far beyond my mind how human hands could build it. so then we walked around the city and explored a castle from the 1500s, you know, the norm.

That day i kind of was in a "i want to see segovia through my own two eyes and through my heart" type of mood so i kind of strayed away from the group some and took it all in. I got up to the top floor before we climbed the tower and i saw a huge window with a seat in it, overlooking the mountains and the city of segovia.

it took my breath away.

i've never been able to say that about anything that i've look at before, i don't believe. but it did. i just sat there, quiet. taking in the light. taking in all that my eyes could see. and really tried to feel. ha! oh did i. it was perfect.

completely random added tidbit: later that day, i was walking through the city, and i saw a girl in her wedding dress, running through the city with her groom. it was perfect. they'd just gotten married and they were practically floating. as if the day could get any more magical.

i have officially been her for 1 week today. i'm already sad that this journey is already a week over, but the Lord keeps assuring my heart that the best is yet to come. I believe that. i fully do.

sleep now. i know this isn't a lot. but i have to much to say! unfortunately, i have to sleep. HAVE to. maria beckons, and i can no longer breathe. pray that i get better! i want to be able to take it all in. literally.

love you all.

brooke.

also: just to let you into my mind a little more, there are 2 songs that are my life right now.

the first:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pDiBno4ZfQ

i sang this the entire day at segovia. i can't even describe to you how honest it is.

the second:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VIQ3Mo2x9w

because i'm in a redemptive season. and monique and i sing this every morning.