Welcome friends and family to my "study abroad blog" - a place where I can be myself and share about my time abroad with everyone. This has not been an easy road to travel and it's still hard to believe that this is for real! I thought I'd take some time this evening to express my reasons for taking this trip and to elaborate about my frustrating summer.
I have always wanted to travel, I blame my infatuation with reading for that want. After awhile I was no longer content with just reading about new places, I wanted to experience it for myself! That is one of the reasons I ended up in Chicago for school. A book I read over Christmas break was my motivation behind signing up for study abroad. It's called "Do Hard Things" (what a wonderful title), the main point was that just because we are young does not mean that we cannot do crazy hard unexpected life changing things! Being the list motivated type that I am I wrote down five hard things that I could do with my life. Thank you "Do Hard Things" book, and Bethany for telling me to read it.
I filled out all of the wonderful paperwork and wrote my essays and in no time I got the acceptance e-mail. That is when all of the unforeseen struggles came. First I had to switch my semester from Spring to Fall because I needed to take a few Spring classes for my major before my senior year. No big deal, I had not missed any deadlines for the Fall. That was when I got the best advice from Sara (my roommate). She said, "It will only be 100% when you land in Iceland". I am very thankful I took that mindset.
The paperwork I needed to fill out over the summer for the University of Iceland seemed easy in the beginning, but after having to send out my finger prints to the FBI things became hard again. I had insurance problems, then every contact I had was out of town, then I was out of town, then it was okay, then I was told I could not miss the deadline. Oh, wait, I could miss the deadline I just had to write a cover letter. Ba, that was my summer. Worry worry worry... I felt like I was trying to swim up a waterfall.
Towards the end of July I was sleeping and no joke, I re-experienced a few weeks from last November in minutes. I had a rush of emotions that I had felt during my little health scare and ever so softly God said, "I took care of you then, I've got you now." A few days later I found out that my student permit was on hold because of missing funds.
I have spent the last 17 days of this month making two sets of plans. One set for Iceland, and another for North Park just in case my student permit fell through. There was no way I was going to miss a whole semester of school.
Praise the Lord! I can drop one set of plans. I found out yesterday that my student permit has been granted and on August 29th at 7:20pm I fly to Iceland. Even though I have a million and two things I need to do before that date, I am at peace. I know that God was there last November, He has been there this summer, and He will be there in Iceland.
So please friends, if I ever complain about how hard life is and that I am having a hard time trusting - remind me of summer 2009. ha. Also thank you for all of your prayers. And let me end this post with one of my favorite lyrics from Mercy Me: I am unaware of my fears, unaware of my shame, nothing else matters here, but Glorifying Your Name.
