More Randoms

so... i don't know what's going on with the formatting of this blog, but it's getting kinda wonky & there's nothing i can do about it, bear with me. :/ these are some more random thoughts i couldn't put anywhere, and the book's something i've been sneaking peaks at on amazon, as i'm getting more and more stoked & geared for greece - it's actually pretty funny. anyway... enjoy! :)

there are winds here they call by name, in the south of france, near nice, they call it the mistral, here it's some horrid name that starts with a t - for terrible i say. it's definately fall here now & it's cold. the winds blow incessantly, in perpgnan they howl & knock you over. they say they last 9 days - 3 progressively stronger, 3 at their height, and 3 coming down. scooters have given way to cars as few of these kids want to brave the cold. i need to buy a winter coat & sweaters, i didn't bring mine as i didn't think i'd be needing any. minus 12 tomorrow they say. i thought grenoble was going to be cold. snow's in our schedule. reading bear grylls is a humbling experience - mighty man. though when the sun shines here it really beats down, i can't wait 'till spring & the southern weather.

i just had a two hour conversation almost entirely in french, and although j'ai fait beaucoup d'erreurs, i feel proud & accomplished, and am starting to think that maybe i can pull this off after all - maybe i will become fluent. hmph. it would be nice. it was also nice to spend some time in good company, with someone interested in more than themselves for a while. but... i'm still thinking in english and it trips me up when i talk sometimes. (i wrote this a while ago... i'm just plain sick of french now. :p)

i'm realizing that hanging out with the rich kids all those years has taught me many bad habits, and i've been living the good life prematurely. walking to school in the bitter cold is a humbling experience, as is remembering what it's like being normal, and having not. not that i haven't been more than deprived in many areas for many years in my life, but again, it's a question of balance, and filling in the blanks healthily. something tells me i'm getting back on course, more and more. as i desire simple & deep true to life moments.

i like my small life here... i like buying only two pears and one persimmen at the corner store. i am learning that one 500g packet of spaghettini can feed me 5 times - 5 times! either i'm a tiny little person (hardly - it's platefuls!) or eating for one goes a looong way. :)

reading bear grylls in all his britishness [finished his everest book] is reminding me of good old traditional church gatherings, pea coats & winter boots, classic easters & christmasses & all that. it's a nice feeling. it's an idealism that i lost and forgot existed in vancouver's modernity, in young life's brashness, in camp's caz. it's nice to have serious goals and serious things to strive for, and it's nice knowing it's okay to come from humble roots, and that you can still reach for the top - it is possible - a lesson i had heard over and over again, but was the only one around me practicing, until it was erased from my memory. classic, traditional christmasses, goals, dreams & wishes. a new kind of purity of life and being. i wish i could write as he does in half-emotion nuance... explaining exactly how he was feeling, gentle & profound. but this is what he has reminded me, and this is what counts. perhaps i will find a home in england after all... i don't know. but i do know that i am deeply traditional & 'classic' after all, something i'd erased in trying to keep up with what's 'cool' - to stay current & relevant... but i think that's just the problem with youth ministry these days... we're becoming like them instead of the other way around... and while that's a danger that's common knowledge & we're warned of, the warning seems to just float on the surface without merit, as everyone does it anyway. and while it's fun for the kids to see adults dicking around - is that really what we want them to get out of it? questions i've raised umpteen times in the past, but only know am i remembering the richness and purity i'd lost, how much of it i had, how substantial it was, and how easy it was for young life to belittle it - that troubles me. anyhow... just looking at the scottish hostels with their cozy attic rooms & plaid wool covers makes me yearn for something i've strived for all my life, without knowing it. i guess i'm a true product of colonization/westernization. a middle-eastern/iraqi-canadian girl, who's always longed to be classically british. how... i don't even know. but all these things are mixed inside me... (surfing included :)) a bit laurence of arabia-esque though i suppose, and so those brits of the 'national geographic society', etc., do deserve to be commended for their honest wish for discovery. anyhow, i've written long enough. it's just fun reading an author who's innermost feelings are so close to mine. great mountaineer, yes, but simple british boy too, yes. we'll see how england treats me this time 'round, perhaps, and hopefully, she will be kinder, and we can be friends. :)

if you want to be the best, you have to think like the best, be among them. 'keep gude company and you'll be counted one of them'.

i wish i had the kind of strength & stamina to climb mountains, but mine is a different kind of perserverence... but i find myself facsinated and entralled by travel lately, and i don't mean my usual hobby, but by national geographic style expeditions. i search for them every free minute, and it just dawned on me that before i got stuck majoring in english literature and becoming a snyde literary nerd, i once wanted to be a geologist, charting the lines of some vast, remote rock face somewhere... perhaps it is time to reawaken such interests. i fear i am not physically up to it though... or am i? i once wanted to be an olympic runner... seriously... i was second girl in my class... hmmm... 'self discipline' - i need to kick my life into high gear.

i'm not bored with life, i'm just bored with this program. i need to throw myself into some more challenging waters... i need to go on a full out adventure i'm finding i need to go to the next level, i'm remembering my goals before societal politics and childish distractions bogged me down... i'm remembering sincere idealism again & NOT selling out... but i don't know what this means or is... :/

i need to disappear somewhere, somewhere wholesome & simple & fun & alive. australia. live on farm w/ sweet family.

growing up, growing up, growing up... i feel such pressure to 'grow up', get a real job, but people with real jobs are boring drones who hate their lives & have mid-life crises... what's so wrong with trying so hard to avoid that?

i feel like there are definate greasers & jets here sometimes, like the outsiders or westside story, or to sir with love. there is also a petty gossipiness i'm not a fan of. i feel like this is now a test of endurance more than anything else: i've never been away from home this long before, and while i was hoping it would be more pleasant, at the end i'll be a different person, yet again, & hopefully fluent in french.

if you look at all the things people proclaim in their status on facebooks, it's like a little microcosm of thoughts, hopes & prayers, that God deals with everyday. it reminds me of that scene in bruce almighty.

"the longings which arise in us when we first fall in love, or first think of some foreign country, or first take up some subject that excites us, are longings which no marriage, no travel, no learning, can really satisfy."