As you may have gathered from my relative absence from the blogosphere... life is BUSY these days! It's full of lots of good, necessary, and at times, tiring things! One spiritual discipline that I'm working on developing is how to rest well. I'm a major introvert (if you hadn't noticed), I am an internal processor, and I have a hard time saying no to good and fun things! All that said, I really need my alone time to rest, reflect, and recharge, but often struggle to set the necessary boundaries to make it happen on a regular basis. But I'm working on it. I've discovered that one of my favorite things to do on a sabbath rest day is to take a bus adventure to a random place - enjoy the sites, the food, and the random people I encounter.
Yesterday I enjoyed one of the greatest sabbath days! I woke up semi-early and enjoyed a quick yoga video with my teammate Keo. Then I showered and packed up for an adventure to the beach. My roommate Grace and I walked up a few blocks to catch a bus to Venice and Santa Monica for the day. The walk was HOT - probably 85 degrees or more, but when we finally got on our bus, the ride was enjoyable and quick. Grace got off the bus half way between Venice and Santa Monica, and I got off at the Santa Monica pier, going our separate ways until our planned bus stop rendezvous at 430pm.
I started off the day by walking down to the sand, kicking off my shoes and dipping my toes in the (freezing) water. I walked for a little ways, until I found a slightly less crowded area to park for a while. (You could tell it was the first official beach day of the season - so many people!) I spent some time gawking at the beauty of my surroundings, enjoyed apple slices and a PB&J (thanks Grace!), and then took the opportunity to call my parents. I even got a quick 'hi' from my nephew! Then I laid around for a while - half praying, half napping, but mostly people watching.
Then I brushed off the sand, gathered my things, and made the trek up the steep incline to downtown Santa Monica. I had the intention of finding a cute coffee shop that had been recommended to me, but ended up taking a wrong turn. After many blocks of walking in the wrong direction, I realized my mistake and asked a passing women for help. She told me I had a long ways to walk and I'd be better off catching a bus, but we ended up making the walk together and having a great conversation. Turns out she's from Guatemala, so I got to practice some Spanish and really enjoyed getting to know more of her story. We finally parted ways once I was back on track and close to my original destination. I stopped in the shop for a quick coffee, but ended up not staying due to a lack of seating. Instead, I headed over to the public library across the street. I was able to find a comfy chair and enjoy my book for about an hour.
I reconnected with Grace at the bus stop and we finally caught our bus back to South LA. The bus was pretty full, but we were lucky enough to find seats. The bus ride back was LONG, but somewhat entertaining as there was a loud, semi-drunk couple behind me and an older gentleman in front of me that was awkwardly falling asleep on his younger neighbor's shoulder. Never a dull moment on LA public transit. When we finally made it to our stop, we made it a point to stop at the RiteAid on the way back for ice cream! Turns out it was cheaper to get the huge tub rather than 2 single scoops, so we hurried home to enjoy our frozen treat.
After getting back and breaking into the ice cream we heard voices downstairs. We didn't recognize the women from our window, so we decided to see if it might be a new neighbor moving in. Turns out it was one of our neighbors' sisters and her friend. We ended up having a great long conversation with them and sharing our ice cream with them! What a blessing is was. And towards the end of the conversation, one of the women said... 'you know what, to be honest, I've never really done this before.' We were like... 'oh yeah, what do you mean?' And she was like... 'you know, just hang out with people that aren't black.' Whoa, that's pretty crazy. But that's definitely an unfortunate reality here in LA. Even though there is so much diversity, so many of the communities are still so segregated. It was encouraging, yet sobering to hear that comment from her. We have intentions of organizing a recipe exchange of sorts soon with our neighbor and her sisters/friends. So, please pray for deeper relationships with all of them. Afterwards, Grace and I were able to spend some time just praising God for the incredible gifts of the day and how obvious his hand was in everything!
The day was topped off with a movie night with Keo. My mom had cut out an article for me about this movie a month or two ago. (One of my mom's love languages is newspaper clippings, hehe.) The movie is called 'Even the Rain' and portrays a Spanish film crew that travels to Bolivia to film a movie about the landing of Christopher Columbus in Latin America and his subsequent oppression of the indigenous peoples - only to discover that many of the injustices of the past are still very much a reality in the present. Last night was the last showing in the area, so I made it a priority to go! The movie was gut-wrenching and I balled my eyes out, but it was good. That's kind of my style of movie. And it really made me long once again for Bolivia.
We spent the next hour in traffic trying to make our way out of Hollywood. It's midnight people! How can there be this much traffic?? Haha... thankfully, a side of LA that I haven't been exposed to too much at this point. But we turned the frustration of traffic into a fun dance party! I finally crawled into my bed a little after 1am. Phew, exhausted. But such a great day! My body may be spent, but my soul feels rejuvenated. Thank you, Jesus.
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