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Sunshine Blogger Award

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Leannaatc at Short Story Long nominated me for The Sunshine Blogger Award.  Thank you!  I am legitimately excited to answer your questions!

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The rules for the Sunshine Blogger Award are:

  1. Answer the 11 questions from the blogger who nominated you.
  2. Nominate some wonderful bloggers and write 11 questions for them to answer.

Short Story Long’s Questions…

  1. Who is your favourite Youtuber?
    Longtime favorite is Grace Helbig, but I’m currently pretty obsessed with JoshuaDTV and PsychoSoprano (aka the cutest married couple in the world) and her alter ego Miranda Sings.

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  2. You have been captured! The protagonist(s) of the last book you read is coming to your rescue. What are your chances of survival?

    Adelina from The Rose Society is going to help me out!  With her power to create illusions and her growing comfort with….killing people….I think I will be rescued very easily.  However, I will want to leave her company asap, because of the aforementioned comfort with killing people.   Continue reading →

A Week in Greece #12: HD Planning, Agatha Christie, and the Beach!

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Language Update

Short Version:  *mouth fart*

Long Version:  I have pretty much used zero Greek this week, and I can feel the pieces that I know slipping away from easy recall.  The problem is, I want to talk to people!  The thing I bring to the world and to relationships is TALKING – having deep, long conversations about anything and everything.  That might sound like a very good reason to learn Greek, but everyone in my life speaks pretty much fluent English.  So when we’re talking, I have two options:  struggle to express 10% of my thoughts in Greek, or else express 90% of my thoughts in English.  So why did I even spend two months learning Greek?  I don’t knooooow.

(I do know.  It’s just that the gap between “enough to get by” and “fluent” is SO BIG.)

Everything Else Update

This week has been SO GREAT, for me personally and for HD generally. Let’s start with me!  The past couple weeks, there has been some mild conflict brewing between HD staff, mostly because we are all working on our own (until we have our office set up) and that is a great recipe for miscommunication.  This weekend, I started daydreaming about how I am a counselor!  And I could see how I could fix everything!!  But after slowing my brain down a little, I felt like God was telling me to step back and do nothing.  It’s not like my idea was bad (it was phenomenal, as all my ideas are), but I wanted to be the savior.  I wanted to control everything.  Story of my life!  So instead, I started praying about what my role at HD is…and it’s not to be in control.  It’s to serve, and by that I mean actually serve, not pretend like I’m serving while in reality I’m manipulating the situation so that I look good.

So on Monday Continue reading →

Self-Hatred, Legalism, and Grace, Grace, Grace

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I distinctly remember sitting on Lindsay T.’s couch on July 4, 2013, drinking from a cheap Strawberry Daquiri Seagram’s bottle.  “I don’t know if God loves me,” Lindsay admitted.  We had recently upgraded our acquaintanceship to friendship, and this conversation was a milestone.  “God loves me when I’m good,” I responded.  “But deep down I’m pretty sure He’s just waiting to give up on me if I screw up.”

Just two years later when I graduated from seminary, everything had changed.

I spent three years hearing my professors say things like, “God is not the god of karma, but the God of grace,” and “It is grace that justifies us, sanctifies us, AND glorifies us,” and “When I get to heaven and God asks why I deserve to be there, I’ll just shake my head and whisper, ‘Jesus.'”  I spent three years in a church that offered weekly Communion so that we never forgot where our strength comes from.  I spent three years in a small group where we argued about abortion and gay marriage and Islam and transsexuality and feminism in safety and love.  I spent three years befriending counselors who were delighted to discover my darkest secrets and shared their own with me.  I was spoiled with grace.

But then I moved home.  The problem with leaving your hometown and changing is that when you return…you revert to your old mental and emotional habits.  Or at least, I do.  Who was I before I learned to trust in God’s unconditional love?  I was the Good Girl.  I measured my worth in my modesty, I argued people into heaven, and I covered my possessions in simplistic Christian statements.  I was determined to earn people’s approval.  I was determined to earn God’s approval.  I knew how to work the system, and honestly, it was comforting.  Legalism is nothing if not controlling, and I am good at controlling things.   Continue reading →

Friends, Food, and Spiritual Insight: A Christian Conference in Greece

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A few weeks ago, Anthi invited me to join her and some friends in going to Leutraki (near Corinth) for a weekend conference with the Free Evangelicals of Athens.  Apparently I have not been attending a Free Evangelical church, but when asked my opinion on free will vs. predestination (“I think they’re both right, but we don’t know how”) I was given clearance to come.

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I didn’t expect to learn anything, since the whole conference would be in Greek, but I was super into the location.  We stayed at a resort by the sea and paid only €105 for two nights and six buffet meals.  That would have been enough to satisfy me, but Anthi made sure to find translators for me during each presentation.

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Can we pause a second and talk about how humbling it is to not know a language?  There’s the everyday “everyone is talking about something, and I have no idea what it is!” and the similar “oh no, they are asking me to perform and all I can think of is ‘Μιλἀω ελληνικἀ λἰγα αλλἀ νομἰζω οτἰ ξεχνἀω πολὐ’ and I said that last time.”  But there’s also the next level up: being translated to while 130 people sit around you.  This is maybe an introvert-specific humiliation, since my highest aim in life is to blend in.  There’s something so humbling about letting everyone know that you’re alone in your confusion and that you need help.  This is a good thing, I think, learning to accept help….I just don’t like the process of learning it.   Continue reading →

Workout Week #13

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THIS WEEK’S GOAL:
Workout 20 minutes at least 4 times this week.

GOAL MET!!

Workout Note

I did it!  Mostly because I now have real workout shoes (aka sneakers aka an item I haven’t bought in at least five years)!  And because I found Ashley Horner’s Full-Body Circuit Workout on Pinterest.  As I’ve mentioned numerous times before, the thing most likely to kill my workout drive is BOREDOM so finding new combinations of exercises is key to keeping me interested.  I’ve been combining one day (around 10 minutes) with a 10-minute cardio workout on my Sworkit app, and by the end I am SWEATING.  More than other weeks, so I think this is a good combination.

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I made sure to get my four workouts in early this week because I spent the weekend at a conference…and unexpectedly walked over 10,000 steps both Friday and Saturday!

Food Notes

That conference I mentioned?  Had € 18 buffets for every meal, free with our room, and I was NOT ABOUT TO WASTE THAT OPPORTUNITY.  What I mean is, I ate a lot.  But before that, I was really good all week about keeping track of calories…and therefore eating a meal of one apple + two pieces of chocolate cake.  I blame PMS and also this article about how it doesn’t really matter what you eat so long as you restrict calories.  I don’t super believe that, but for one glorious night I went along with the idea.

Tomorrow it’s back to healthier habits.

 

NEXT WEEK’S GOAL:
Workout 20 minutes at least 5 times this week.

A Week in Greece #11: Shopping, HD Scheduling, and Computer Games

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This week was super weird.  I was either hard-core working or hard-core lazing around, which is, actually, my two favorite modes of existing.

On Sunday, I skipped church because my birthday weekend had depleted all of my Social Batteries.  Olga stopped by my room after her service, and we wound up talking for a couple hours about singleness and past romances and future hopes (thus proving that although five minutes of chatting puts me in a coma, I can have deep conversations for days).  She was hugely encouraging to me, especially when she said, “I’m not really interested in marriage unless I am around someone I want to marry.”  And I thought – YEAH.  Why am I letting myself get distracted by Wishes and Maybes and Daydreams?  Why am I wasting time swiping left on Tinder?  There’s no one around that I want to marry, so until there is, I’m going to focus on being awesome and working hard and creating meaningful experiences.

On Monday, I went to the mall for the first time!  It would take 13 minutes to drive there, but it took me an hour by public transportation.  I took the prostiakos for the first time (the metro, but for the suburbs), and it was very rewarding to figure out a new facet of the Athens public transit system.  The mall is like, super fancy and huge, and I was once more ashamed to realize I have very low standards for Greece.  It’s a European city!  It’s awesome!  How did I get so lucky as to stumble into a life here?   Continue reading →

Funny Moments with Greek Friends

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*discussing And Then There Were None, BBC’s newish mini-series*

Anthi:  Maybe you could stay after our meeting and we will watch that show.
Me:  Yeah!  It’s three episodes right?  Are they each one hour?
Anthi:  I think so.
Me:  Okay, so we could totally just watch them all, right?
Anthi:  *laughs loudly*  Oh Tricia, you are so funny!
Me:  …   Continue reading →

Workout Week #12

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Workout Notes

A couple weeks ago, I pressed pause on my workout goals because I had two weeks of friends visiting and vacations.  There wasn’t much time to work out, and I didn’t want to keep myself from eating delicious meals and snacks with them!  But now they’re gone, life has returned to normal, and I am slowly edging back into a routine.

This week started out strong, and I was actually looking forward to focusing on my health again.  This is in large part because when Jenna visited, one of the first things she said was, “You’ve lost weight!”  It was really encouraging to know that other people were noticing results, and I was eager to keep after that (especially since I’m sure I put on a couple pounds from all the food I ate with my visitors).

But on Monday, my foot was hurting again…I assume this is because I’m jumping around barefoot on linoleum.  I am supposed to go shoe shopping with a friend tomorrow, so hopefully this will no longer be a problem.  But it definitely took away some of my drive, as is obvious by how I stopped doing anything after Wednesday!

Food Notes

Much like working out, I’m slowly getting back in the habit of keeping track of what I’m eating.  Friday was my birthday, so I indulged quite a bit.  But even then, the mentality of healthiness is setting back in.  Normally I would eat something sweet for breakfast, and then get something sweet mid-afternoon, and then definitely eat something sweet at my birthday celebration.  This time, I just ate good healthy food all day and indulged in the birthday sweet (chocolate mousse – yum!) at night.

This is exactly the kind of balance I want to strike!  While my secondary goal is weight loss, my primary goal is to eat smarter and healthier.  I want to enjoy food, which means not eating snacks mindlessly.  I also want to eat real food (aka not packaged food) which, fantastically, is much easier in Greece.

Anyway, this week was not super exciting on the health front, but I’m slowly shifting my brain back to exercise and healthy eating!

NEXT WEEK’S GOAL:
Workout 20 minutes at least 4 times this week.

A Week in Greece #10: New Friends, Clean Monday, and My 28th Birthday!

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My Greek classes downtown are over, the friends I made there have scattered to other cities and countries, and my visitors are all gone.  This week has felt a little like starting over again, settling into a life in Pikermi.  I’m making friends, but (especially at the beginning of the week) I was kind of mad about it?  Mad that I have to start over, even though everyone I’m hanging out with is lovely.  I could go into a lot of detail about the emotional side of all this, but…that would take up an entire blog post, and that’s not what A Week in Greece is for!

Last Saturday at 8:30 p.m., Argyris called and said, “This is not a drill!  I will pick you up in fifty minutes!”

“Okay??” I said, glancing down at the pajamas I had already changed into.  I hurried to look like a human being again, then met Argyris, Dina, and Mark in the parking lot.  We picked up Erik along the way, but Argyris refused to tell us where we were going, only that it was a late birthday present for Dina.  We wound up going to an old Oriental Express train that’s been converted into a restaurant.  A live band played jazz versions of old movie songs, and it was really lovely.

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On Sunday, Dina and Argyris went away, so Mark took me to church with some other girls from the school.  It was nice to get to know them a little better, and then we all went out for burgers after the service.  I shouldn’t have eaten one, because at 2:00 I went to Anthi’s house to meet her friends and eat a feast prepared by her chef mother.  Next weekend I’m going to a conference retreat with all these girls, so Anthi thought it’d be good for me to meet them before we go.

On Monday, Continue reading →

I’m 28 Today!

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I was talking to Dina the other day about marriage and singleness.  She said that in Greece girls are encouraged to get married when they graduate from school – from HIGH SCHOOL, and that there is this underlying belief that a girl’s purpose is to get married and have babies.  I said the same thing existed in the States, although the pressure happened when graduating from college.  And then I said, “I wanted that really badly when I was in college.  But if I’d gotten married, I would probably be living in a suburban house in Illinois or Tennessee with a husband and kids.  I wouldn’t be here now.  I doubt I’d have a Master’s in Counseling….I’m so glad I didn’t get what I thought I wanted!”

All of which is to say:  my 27th year was a CRAZY one, and a great one!

While 27, I:

  • graduated from Dallas Theological Seminary with a Master’s in Counseling
  • lived with my grandparents and parents for three months each
  • raised $27,000 in fundraising to move to Greece
  • went on a month-long roadtrip to 17 states
  • worked as a nanny, secretary, and librarian
  • saw Hamilton the Musical
  • moved to Greece
  • learned basic Greek
  • visited New Orleans, Disney World, Seattle, New York City, and Berlin

Putting everything in list form, I don’t know how being 28 could possibly top last year.  BUT, well.  I’m in Greece!  A stone’s throw away from weekend trips all over Europe.  And House Damaris is about to begin, and I’ll get to work as a counselor/teacher/secretary/fundraiser!  And I get to figure out if and how I will stay here after my visa expires…

Life is wonderful!  I mean, it’s also scary and overwhelming, but that’s a pretty good indicator that I have chosen a life of adventure.  I can’t wait to see what good and beautiful and heartbreaking and exciting things happen now that I’m 28!