Inner Geography. imaginingplaces
 
Two more days and october ends. Until now I stop and start looking back. This year has been passing so fast. I remember january, when I was applying to study again. I thought this year I was going to start a PhD. Instead, I have been studying a certificate degree in  sustainable tourism. I started in april and now is october....it really has been so fast!
A lot of things have been happening; some good ones other bad ones, but I still think in my dreams and goals and how I am going to get there. There´s a saying "if you want to tell a joke, tell God about your plans". How true is that. One thinks about the future and starts making plans, but suddenly things change. It has been a year and three months since my surgery. This year I felt sick three times and I hope next year to be completely healed.
People come and people go. There is not enough time to spend it with friends but I have more time for myself. I needed this. Is this the schock of the 30´s?
For three weeks I have been dreaming strange things. Does this mean a change? Now I think about my future as a single. I can´t depend on my parents all my life. I think about a better job where I can earn more money and have something, a house, a car...nobody is going to support me unless I find a husband...but that´s not my priority. I am a woman and by nature sometimes I feel I want to have kids. I love kids! But I see how is everything outside in the world and I thank God because I´m not a mother yet. Why am I taking things so seriously now? Maybe is the age.

I am so happy because my kids got back, I really missed them so much. And today again, I met the nun...the beautiful old nun. We sat outside a sushi restaurant and started to talk. She told me again that nobody believed her that God talks with her, I do. Of course I do.  You can feel when God speaks with someone. I don´t know what it is but you just feel it and it transforms you. I am so different than two years ago, than last year and I am so happy to be what I am. I have a lot of peace and I needed that in my life.  I want to start working on my art project again, to travel, to study, to learn as much as I can, to help....I want to do many things.  I am glad all the bad things are gone, am glad I left all that.

I was telling today to my friend Khadim that people change some time in their lives. I don´t know if it´s every ten or eight years. Since last year I have been changing. How do you call that?  Most important is to feel good, to be healthy in all aspects and I have achieved a mental, spiritual, emotional and a physical peace and balance. I sometimes think about the past and ask questions, but that is just the PAST. It passed. Nothing will change the things that happened. But that doesn´t going to stop me from growing neither.
I see all the images of my life: friendships, love, travels, games, hardwork, fears, wishes. I really don´t have any reason to be frustrated or sad. I have more than many people. I have reached places that not many people reach. And I have seen a lot  that many people don´t dare to see.
I have been rejected and hurt a lot of times. That broke my heart. Now, it´s very hard that someone or something break me. Yes, maybe is the age. But everything I have been living, everything I had received and given, I wouldn´t change it.

Thanks Coach, Khadim, Rumy, Tosin, kids, the beautiful nun and lif
 
Yesterday I started my second month at the English School. I still work with the kids and I should say that I love them very very much. These guys are amazing! And I laugh everyday. They make me very happy.

Before traveling, I was feeling tired of teaching. I was thinking that I needed something else. I was thinking in something more challenging. But for a reason -I still don´t know which- I still teach. I don´t complaim because I am very happy there. Now more because I will have two more groups, adults. And I have a student who is prepraing herself for the TOEFL. This is very challenging! And I am very grateful for this opportunity because it will be very useful for me if I want to apply again to a PhD program.  Next week I start with my other two groups. But I feel sad because my kids have a strange schedule. And in order to keep them, we should change again their schedule,. The problem is if their mother will accept this. I hope yes because I really like these kids. Yesterday, one of them told me that he became fond of me, that he didn´t want to change teacher. These type of things are the real things in life. This is  important. Everybody should care more about love and friendship in these times of violence, hate, racism, ilness, destruction, envy, selfishness, distance...
And today we didn´t speak with their mom, so I don´t know what´s going to happen next week but I hope their mom changes her mind and change their schedule so I can keep them : )

And today, at 8.00pm, I almost burst into tears. I got out from the school and went to my car at the parking lot and then I saw the nun that three months ago I had  bought  some candies. She was walking on the streets at 10.00pm alone, carrying a small trolley and selling candies for her children. I was eating sushi and nobody bought her anything at the restaurant.
Today I saw her walking on the parking lot, I was inside the car and started it but then I saw that a boy didn´t buy her anything and I turned off the car took some money and went with her. So I started to chat with her and I asked  if they needed something for the children or for the ill and elderly people they take care of. She told me that they need a lot of things. That many nuns don´t want to be with her because she speaks things that God tells her. Nobody believes her. I do. She told me that their place is very far and dangerous, a poor neighborhood. That everyday before going out she prays but that one day, she didn´t pray and went out to sweep the street and a woman pushed her and she fell. She hurt herself but still she is on the street late, alone, selling candies because they need money. I wanted to cry so much at that moment because I thought of my mother. I would never let her be alone on the streets, walking by herself and ill. She told me that she didn´t sell anything and she wanted to take some money to buy milk, eggs or bread. I ran into the car and took all the cash I had and I asked her where I can see her again to give her some things. And she was so happy to receive something because now she had something to buy food. She returned home at that moment. She left.

I thought of all the stupid things one tends to buy. It´s okay if you have money. But it´s not okay if you spend it in silly things, in things that you will not use, things that are not neccessary. It´s okay if you have money, no one chose to be in the place we are now, in the place we live, in the country we live, in the family  and friends we have,  in the studies and job we have. It´s okay to buy something with the money you earn because of the hard job you develop. But let´s be honest, there are a lot of people outside who earn a lot of money withouth any effort and the worst is that they don´t share it. I thought that we should be more conscious about the things we buy, the excess of junk food we buy, of what we eat. Right now there are millions of people with hunger and the number will increase. Some of us, and I include myself eat chocolate, good chocolate, wine, have a nice and expensive dinner, buy expensive clothes and shoes and waste money in uneccessary things. It´s your money, you know what to do with that. And it´s not your fault have all the material things you have. Just be conscious. That´s it. Think in the other beside you in the others that are far away. Just be more conscious. Everything is a chain. We exist in a web of relationships, links to nature, people and God. If you think in that you would be making a change.

I am still figuring out what I am going to do. I don´t know what I will be doing, where  and how I will be living. Sometimes it worries me when I feel lost, but as long as I feel I am going the right way, I will be persistent and patient, I will do my best not only with myself but with others.

Things have to change. Everything and evrybody need a change, the Earth needs a change. What can we do to make that happen?