UnSettled.

I was beginning to worry about what to write in this entry. I've been here for 6 days now. I only had my first lecture today. The past week has been spent mainly getting 'settled' into the house, getting to know the people in the house that will soon be considered family, and going through manuals and orientating ourselves on what YWAM is. This last week has been tough. Tougher than I would have expected. At first, it was fine. I was sufficiently distracted. But slowly it is hitting me: I'm half way around the world, and it will be that way for a long time. And it has been the reason why I don't sleep at night, or why my appetite has suddenly disappeared. But last night, as I was talking to friends back home, one of them said something during goodbyes that really caught my attention.

'Enjoy being on the mountain.'

Here I am, given an experience that most people will never have. I am in a foreign country, with a house full of awesome, amazing God-loving people who coincidentally have the same taste in music as me, seeing beautiful things, doing awesome stuff, and all I can do is look behind me or look far off into the future. I spend all my time thinking about the journey up to this point, or thinking about what I'm going to do when I get down the other side. But what about right now? Right now, I'm at the very top of the mountain. The view is (apparently) breathtaking, but I'm not looking at the view, am I? I want to enjoy this part. I want to sit back, breathe it all in, drink up everything Ireland has to offer me; I want to marvel at the beauty and potential that Youth With A Mission is offering me. I want to enjoy being on the mountain. So this leads me to my first prayer request! That I would enjoy the view, and not spend my time looking down, when I could be looking up.

Cheers!

[ PS - Eventually, I will get around to actually telling you all what I'm doing with my time and what I'm learning and such, I promise! Once lectures start picking up and local outreach gets up and running, I'm sure it'll be far more interesting than the 7 hours of mind-numbing child protection videos and the foundational values of YWAM... although the latter is great, ha! ]

Airplane Diary

Immediately after getting off the flight, I did the worst possible thing I could do: I read the letter from Stef. We hadn't even taken off... No, we hadn't even taxied away from the gate and already I was short of breath, holding in the sobs as best I could. The poor couple behind me must've thought I was on my way to London for my mother's funeral. The lady across from me, a harsh woman who obviously leads a rather lonely life and likes to yell rude statements at the poor girl behind her, kept looking at me as if I had infected her with some tragic disease. At least I had been fortunate enough to have an empty seat beside me. It felt like my chest wanted to collapse in on itself. And I wanted nothing more then to drop everything and run. Run back to my mom, to my friends, to my bed, where everything is comfy and safe and normal; unchanging.

After trying to distract myself with music (bad idea), I managed to find sweet relief in a movie. 146 minutes of lovely nothing. After considering watching another (I had scowered all the options enRoute had to offer me: 3 movies and 2 TV episodes interested me enough), I figured I was tired enough to fall asleep. The second that distraction of finding the most comfortable position was gone, that familiar ache returned. This leads us to this moment. I sit typing this rather depressing note upon my iPod in hopes that it will keep the ache away long enough for me to gather myself. I wonder if this makes it to my blog... Mason has been telling me to update it... It's not my typical entry, that's for certain, but then again, this isn't how I spend my typical day. I apologize if you're reading this and are disappointed that it's not funny. But the title of my blog was never 'Some Girl Trying to be Funny'. If you didn't know, it's actually called 'Adventures of a Girl', and sometimes adventures aren't very happy, at least not at first. In fact, this blog was started specifically for this particular adventure. This entry was a long time coming.

And so, as I try to survive the toughest part of my journey - a sleepless 9.5 hour flight to London, then on to Ireland, I can't help but think about how blessed I am; I am flying overseas for the adventure of a lifetime, to see the world, and then I get to come home to the most amazing people I will ever know. I love you guys.

3 hours down, 6.5 more to go. Now if only my heart could stop aching, I might actually get some sleep, however restless it may be.