It makes me laugh to see in my previous post that I thought then I was just under the four month mark...because now I am pretty sure I am just under the actual four month mark. So, naturally it feels like no time has passed at all. I was intending to leave in early June but since the best time to visit Jaime in Duluth is at the beginning of July, it seems to make the most sense to leave at the end of June, probably the 30th--that's a full 33 months anyway, which is the complete balance of what I promised (I remember that I arrived in Israeli on the 25th of September and started serving in my office on the 30th of September 2009).
I am sad to report I am finding it extraordinarily cold outside, and I bundle up every time I step outside, yet I am always amazed to see that these torturous temperatures are always somewhere in the 50's and 60's. I do not know how I will survive come fall.
I had my pilgrimage at the end of February, beginning of March. My whole occupation centers on bringing pilgrims to the Holy Land, and I know that pilgrimage is a source of great joy and inspiration for many people, yet I had a hard time enjoying it myself. One of my friends who was to have his pilgrimage at the same time as me ended up cancelling it altogether shortly beforehand and I couldn't really understand why at the time, but now I can. I think we are both the sort of person that would rather do meaningful work than just go on vacation. A pilgrimage does not equate with a vacation, it is not all sightseeing and self-indulgence but something spiritual, but there are parallels. You can't work, for example, and you get spoiled with people working for you while you...let them, and it is all entirely focused on the self. It's a reflection time. Actually, that part was quite intense. I tried to do as much reading and reflection as possible and I felt like that was a big responsibility (since I practically had people waiting on me to allow me to do this). I have to admit, though, that early on I thought of calling the whole thing off myself and going back to work. It was a bit harder for me to enjoy because I live here and I've seen and done everything, though not all at once until now, and because I was alone and I think it's more meaningful if you have family members with you. Or at least friends. Of course, I made friends on pilgrimage but I was sort of disappointed at the quality of the conversations I had with them. I don't quite know how to explain or justify that without being snobbish (or maybe there's no way because I'm being snobbish). But it seems like the quality of the conversations that I have with other staff generally far exceeds the quality of the conversations that I had with my fellow pilgrims. It could be that my expectations were too high. I expected that we would talk about matters of spiritual import on our pilgrimage but it seemed all they wanted to talk about were movies and popular fiction novels and linguistic idiosyncrasies and even politics. My patience was quite tried to hear some of my American compatriots lament things like smaller portion sizes at restaurants and the difficulty of finding peanut butter. I tried to connect with people, but ultimately it was my responsibility to try to connect my soul to God, so I tried to focus my energies on that.
In the middle of my pilgrimage began the yearly Baha'i fasting period, which is 19 days (today is day eight) of abstaining from eating and drinking during daylight hours (obviously this is a symbol of the spiritual component...like pilgrimage, fasting is meant to be a time of reflection, maybe a sort of spring cleaning of the mind). Somehow it is extraordinarily easy this year. I don't miss food, and I like the feeling of a little hunger, which feels like resetting my connection to internal rather than external hunger cues, which is good, because I feel that I overeat a bit ordinarily. I do miss water, but even that is a good thing since I drink water to the point of feeling bloated sometimes (the result of having a desk job and being constantly exhorted to drink more water). All in all it does feel like an external recalibration. With that being easy, I can try harder with the inner recalibration.
In light of the fast I haven't been doing yoga but I expect to get back into it at the end of March. If I maintain my expected schedule I'll be doing yoga right up until almost the end of June and that way, hopefully, I'll learn enough that I'll be able to sustain a yoga practice without a teacher (good, because lessons are expensive) or maybe with infrequent instruction when I get back. I expect graduate school to be stressful and so I am trying to line up my coping mechanisms now.
Speaking of graduate school, I've been told that I've been admitted to the Spanish translation program and to the library science program. Now all I'm waiting on is the graduate school, so I can't see why I wouldn't be as good as in. The fall timetable gets posted at the end of this month and I think registration begins sometime in April. Oh, and I haven't heard anything regarding my FAFSA yet and I don't quite know how long that takes. Now I'm a bit anxious because no news either means it's still being processed or something went wrong. I know it will be intense but I'm really looking forward to more higher education, particularly because this time my aspirations are much clearer.
