I was just excused from our morning meeting because it's about planning, and I'm leaving in less then a month, so no need for me to plan for the future. Now I am sitting here on my bed, listening to the soundtrack of Pride and Prejudice thinking of what I can write and update you all on.

We experienced a tiny earthquake last night, enough to wake me up, but, in my state of grogginess I decided it was just my imagination that my bed was moving and the window shaking. In the morning I come to find out it's not my imagination but others experienced it too. This is my first encounter with earth shaking.

Lately I've been reading many books to occupy my time and to also expand my minute vocabulary. Which surprisingly has been working but hasn't helped my spelling much at all.

This last book I have been reading, which is by Paulo Coelho, reveals the struggles of a girl who observes life and yearns for love. I want to share with you a short part of the book. I am not posting this because I feel like she is speaking for me, or I feel like our lives are the same. But only because I believe there is some sort of wisdom in these words.

"I spent today outside a funfair. Since I can't afford to fritter my money away, I thought it best to just watch other people. I stood for a long time by the roller coaster, and I noticed that most people get on it in search of excitement, but that once it start, they are terrified and want the cars to stop.

    What do they expect? Having chosen adventure, shouldn't they be prepared to go the whole way? Or do they think that the intelligent thing to do would be to avoid the ups and downs and spend all their time on the carousel, going round and round on the spot?

    At the moment, I'm far too lonely to think about love, but I have to believe that it will happen, that I will find a job and that I am here because I chose this fate. The roller coaster is my life; life is a fast, dizzying game; life is a parachute jump; it's taking chances, falling over and getting up again; it's mountaineering; it's wanting to get to the very top of yourself and to feel angry and dissatisfied when you don't manage it.

    It isn't easy being far from my family and from the language in which I can express all my feelings and emotions, but, from now on, whenever I feel depressed, I will remember that funfair. If I had fallen asleep and suddenly woken up on a roller coaster, what would I feel?

    Well, I would feel trapped and sick, terrified of every bend, wanting to get off. However, if I believe that the track is my destiny and that God is in charge of the machine, then the nightmare becomes something thrilling. It becomes exactly what it is, a roller coaster, safe, reliable toy, which will eventually stop, but, while the journey lasts, I must look at the surrounding landscape and whoop with excitement."

This is NOT a Christian book or anything. But, it makes me think of John 10:10 (I am not paraphrasing John 10:10 either). We can either let the thief come and steal our life by weighing us down with worry, fear, etc. or we can allow God to give us life, freedom in Him so we can live it abundantly. We need to chose what attitude and perspective we look at life with.

That's all, just a thought.