Otro Mundo

I have been waking up peacefully.

This hasn't happened in a while. I don't get sudden headaches like I used to, or wake up feeling like a train hit me after being completely sober the night before and getting enough sleep. I am reading, biking, writing, breathing, smiling.

I started my job at UNH last Sunday. The past week has been TC training, where 12 of us college-age do gooders get to play trust games, name games, and sit in classrooms all day and learn about important rules to fostering a safe and spiritual community for high school students.

The students who come to this program are tough, at least this is how it seems. They come from broken homes, poor homes, homes with no room, a home they cannot call home, discomfort, conditional circumstances, isolation...and much more. I am going to learn so much.

But they haven't arrived yet. They come tomorrow morning at 10 am and I have to be a bubbly, open hearted role model for the next 6 weeks. I have a feeling I have no idea what is coming. It feels like the calm before the storm.

More perspective = growth. When you can start seeing the world through someone else's eyes, that is when you are learning, that is when you are growing, and that is when you can better balance yourself when times are hard. Reverting back to the starting point, your original thoughts, your original perceptions, is when you are running away from whatever it is that fears you. When we refuse to look at things another way, when we refuse to listen to how someone initially views a situation, a conversation, an event, we are denying ourselves truth.I hope to gain more perspective than I can imagine.

I am enjoying Durham so far. It's interesting to be at the school that many of my loved ones have lived at for so many years. I am glad I have this to hold onto.

I went on a bike ride today into Newmarket. I saw a hidden entrance to a small river/pond (I actually couldn't tell by the shape of it, but I am pretty sure it was a large river, I need to learn the geography of the area better!). It felt like I was back home at Beaver Brook, on my rock, reading and listening to the world move around me. It makes my skin move, or maybe it was just the ants crawling all over me. I saw a chipmunk. You can see so much life if you sit still and observe.

OH

And I bought my ticket to Croatia yesterday.

Depart: September 3, 2007
Boston, MA ----> Zagreb, Croatia
Return: December 27, 2007
Prague-----> Boston, MA

It's all happening...

Catching up with honesty

Every letter, its own magical, imaginative creation. Each word, an innovative continuation of that creation. Each sentence, a hope for understanding.

This is my blog, and I will say it proud. I hope for many things to come of it. I hope for people to gain insight into my very dynamic and ever-changing life. I hope to stay focused in my writings, to have mindfulness while writing, to catch my words up with my thoughts and breathe each sentence in as I go. I hope for understanding.

I most likely will not write in this too much during the summertime. My main objective is to keep you all informed of my journeys throughout the Western Balkans this fall. I leave on September 3, 2007 and will return before December 30, 2007. The program is with the School of International Training (www.sit.edu/studyabroad), based out of Brattleboro, VT. The program is entitled "Gender, Transformation, and Civil Society". I will be taking an intensive Croatian language class, a seminar based on the title of the program, and a research methods class. The last month I have to myself, conducting independent research based on a research question I want to explore throughout the Balkans resulting in a 40+ page paper and creative product. I will be living mostly in Zagreb, Croatia with a host family. I will be traveling to Bosnia and Serbia as well. After the program is done, I want to go to Vienna, Austria; Prague, Czechoslovakia; and possibly Berlin, Germany.

For the summer, I am a tutor-counselor at the University of New Hampshire for their Upward Bound program. Www.upwardbound.unh.edu.

Lila Tov.